Organised activisim is more effective!

I've just been talking with some people about being an activist, and I realised as I did that that perhaps my take home message is it pays dividends to be organised when you are an activist - at least the kind of activist taking part in political processes. 

What every political activist needs!

I reflected a bit on this in a previous post, but realise now that there is a bit more to it. 
As I've mentioned it is good to get many submissions into something that you want to see change.  This has worked for cycling advocates at local government level in Christchurch, However it has made no difference whatsoever at national government level over the last couple of years, whether that be around the GCSB bill, the Government Policy Statement on Transport or changes to the RMA and even things associated with CERA.

Timing probably also matters:  Possibly the government will be more tractable next year when they are facing an election (although I"m also sure that they won't put up anything contentious as they have in years 1 and 2 of this election cycle).  Likewise, getting the CCC to change its mind may be easier in an election year, if you can prove that a lot of people feel this way, for example!

There is also the small problem of the enormous amount of work that has to go into a submission, particularly if you have to do the whole thing yourself - read the appropriate documents (and often to write an effective submission it is helpful to know quite a lot of background (like how transport planning works in the case of supporting cycling or walking), think about the implications and then gather evidence to support your comments.  Being linked to a group of people with similar interests can help to spread the load and can also mean you can collect lots of ideas to support your viewpoint and indeed the ideas might help you form your viewpoint. 

Of course, those of us who are activists also know that there is way more that we could be doing but of course we simply can't do it.  I often see a call for me to write submission on topics that I do care about and I know matter, but I have to just think "hopefully someone else out there is looking out for that because right now I just can't."   In this latter case, if I do have a bit of time and I have access to some background information, then I might put something together in my own words or send in something to say I support that submission. But I won't if that information is not there because I simply don't have time.   So this says something about how useful I find it being networked with people who have different interests and who can keep me up with the play on what his happening.

These days, social media and the internet can help with this kind of organisation, although it is also clear that these need to be treated with an awareness that they may not be entirely private!