Advocacy is more than spam

It seems like daily I have 2-3 action alerts in my email box at work and perhaps as many with my home email account. I am one of those cause-based folks supporting environmental issues, peace and justice issues, health issues and human rights issues. Unfortunately Internet technology makes it so easy to create an online action alert that EVERYTHING becomes an “act now or else” issue.

The net effect of this inundation of actions is the creation of a cacophony of noise which fragments our message in a million directions. The causality of the this noise is the attention of political leaders, the opposite of what we hope to do. I have been told by political staffers that email advocacy, especially that which appears to be generated by commercial software, is treated as spam.

So, the question is, what does real advocacy look like? For example, I received an action alert on the HEDIR Listserv.

Tell President Obama: No More Money for Ineffective Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs;  Fund Comprehensive Sex Education

My first question was, is there anything that would suggest that Obama or his team will continue to perpetuate the myth of abstinence only sex ed?  Likely not, considering that during the campaign we heard “Obama’s one accomplishment in the realm of education was legislation to teach ‘comprehensive sex education’ to kindergartners.” Despite how this was a distortion, the underlying reality is that President Obama supports age-appropriate, comprehensive sex education.  So the question is, “why this action alert?”  Is spamming President Obama is the right method for advocating on this issue?

Anyone who has worked on policy change or, better yet, shifting federal or local funding through policy, likely knows that the process is a tad more complicated than having 10,000 people spam a legislator.   Advocacy is not about creating spam but is the work of creating an intentional plan to build a coalition of support for an idea and then strategically working the very complex political process to push through the bureaucratic inertia until change happens.  I hate to see us fall for the illusion of advocacy, thinking that we are making a difference because of a click of a mouse because often when we click the mouse we aren’t advocating but merely creating noise.

On the same day, that I received the invitation to spam the president I received from the American Public Health Association the following update

“Representative Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) introduced H.R. 463/S. 21, the Prevention First Act, to promote pregnancy prevention and reproductive health. The bill includes a measure to fund age-appropriate, medically accurate comprehensive sexuality education programs, including information on contraception and abstinence. Currently, federal funding only exists for abstinence-only programs and totals about $176 million per year. Critics of abstinence-only programs claim that the programs do not deter adolescents from having sex. Moreover, they fail to prepare adolescents to become sexually active or protect themselves from unintended pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS and, in some cases, include false or misleading information. Last year, APHA Executive Director Georges Benjamin testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in support of funding for comprehensive sexuality education programs. You can read APHA’s testimony at: http://www.apha.org/NR/rdonlyres/11DDC21C-1AFB-4167-80D0-F365E3AEE0FA/0/AbstinenceOnlyTestimony.pdf.”

So, I would suggest that a better advocacy strategy would be not to tell Obama to stop funding abstinence-only sex education but to positively work to advance this bill. With a bill number you have the power to direct your representative to take positive action. In this case, we should be working with our local Representatives and Senators and be asking them to sign on to this bill as co-sponsors.  That allows you to make a direct positive contribution to real legislation rather than a non-descriptive, “please don’t fund abstinence only education” blast email. This takes more than a click of a mouse. It means making a local call to your representatives offices, writing and mailing a handwritten letter and, if feasible, meeting with your legislators’ staffers if your legislator could influence the process, for example if they sit on influential committees like:

House Science Committee
House Education and Labor
House Appropriations health subcommittee
Senate Health, Education and Labor
Senate Appropriations Labor, Health Subcommittee

Please understand that this post is about advocacy and is only secondarily related to comprehensive sex ed. Comprehensive sex ed was just a low hanging piece of fruit that I could hang this post on.

For more resources on Health Advocacy see:

National Association of County and City Health Officials: http://www.naccho.org/advocacy/

Tags: comprehensive sex education, health advocacy, politics
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