Friday, November 20, 2009

Petition This!

It seems everybody wants me to sign a petition. I've certainly signed my share of petitions in this lifetime, so many, in fact, that if the FBI doesn't have a file on me by now I will have to consider mine a life not well lived. Petitions are perfect for arm chair activists such as myself: they allow me to have a say without really committing myself to anything.

The problem is, petitions don't wield near the power they once did. The Web has made them a dime a dozen, saturated the market, so to speak. If it's an online petition, almost anyone can sign it, there are no age or residency requirements, and it can often be signed more than once by the same person by simply using a different email address. Any self-respecting government official, religious leader, or company CEO that is the target of a petition campaign knows that a web-based petition carries very little weight.

I'm constantly sending emails to congressional representatives, government agency heads, and corporate presidents; I have a growing list of companies and industries that I boycott; and I routinely make financial donations to select causes and organizations. I almost never sign petitions. I wonder which of Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue's staffers is the poor soul that gets to respond to my emails. Should get a raise.

Anyway, I recently came across Avaaz.org and was particularly struck (annoyed) by the urgent plea to sign a petition against Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. Now, I've followed the actions of Mugabe for years, and he truly is a bad man, one that should have come to a timely end years ago. But as so often happens in Africa, the US, South Africa, and most of the "free world" simply looked the other way. I'm all for making the man's existence as hard as possible, but, come on, a petition?! Do you really think a dictator like Mugabe is going to be stopped by a petition signed by a bunch of nosey foreigners? Will countries supporting the Kimberley Process really be persuaded by a petition signed by some American in Atlanta, GA, whose wife doesn't list the diamond as one of her best friends? Perhaps if 200,000 people in the diamond industry signed the petition, there might be some hope, but a petition "signed" by 200,000 well-meaning global nobodies will fall on deaf ears. I mean, hurrah! for Avaaz for trying, for believing that we can make a difference, but the approach is truly a lost cause.

The petition as a force of global change is dead. It still has local and regional power, but nationally, it's power has waned, too. We weren't all made to be waging whale wars or breaking Starbuck's windows during G8 summits or going vegan or even walking from door to door gathering signatures - trust me, I'm not made of that material - so if all you can or want to do is sign an online petition, then by all means do. But know it will do very little to help the people of Zimbabwe or harp seals near Canada or indiginous tribes in South America or women in Saudi Arabia.

I recently sent an email to the president of the University of Nevada at Reno asking him to halt the practice of purchasing cats and dogs from Class B dealers for animal experiments. President Glick replied back from his own email account letting me know in no uncertain terms that his institution no longer uses cats and dogs in animal experiments. Now, about those rats and mice UNR is using...

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