Solidarity

John Howard made news recently by putting a couple of dull speeches up on YouTube, and Kevin Rudd has launched a big site to sells bumper stickers. As Mark has pointed out, these token efforts don’t really take the online plunge, they just move the same old campaign from talkback and letters pages to a new venue: “the Young Liberal and Young Labor junior apparatchiks have moved on from the traditional talkback phone trees to being alerted via email to post comments on MSM ‘blogs’ and vote in online polls”.

A new CFMEU initiative looks far more interesting as a campaign tool. The union has sponsored the production of a documentary about the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the Gestapo-like outfit that treats union members as if they were terrorists. The 35-minute program is being publicised via a YouTube channel, and when it launches on 14 August, the whole documentary will be available for download at the Constructing Fear website.

That in itself is an impressive idea — compelling content is far more attractive than putting the same old sound-bytes online — but what makes this particularly exciting is the plan to move the campaign offline and into people’s living rooms. According to the site, “We are encouraging community groups, unions, churches and anyone else who is interested to organise their own screenings of the film.” Would-be hosts are provided with a copy of the DVD, customisable promotional materials, and instructions for hosting a successful film night.

This model was successfully used to promote Robert Greenwald’s Outfoxed. The straight-to-video documentary was sold cheap to community groups who were encouraged to organise screenings — within five days, it had been shown at 3000 house parties. The tactic also kickstarted Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, which is now the top-grossing documentary release. And these audiences are engaged in the campaign in the longer term: “After the presentation, MoveOn.org asked the guests to sign up to do volunteer work. ‘It’s a great organizing tool,’ [Wes] Boyd said.”

I doubt that this documentary has the same broad appeal as either Fahrenheit 9/11 or Outfoxed. But if the CFMEU and the film-makers can get Constructing Fear out to construction workers, their families and friends, that is still tens of thousands of voters who will be given a good reason to join in the campaign against Howard, and given a real opportunity to do so.

It’s one thing to have people pass on your viral video, competing as it is with spam, forwarded jokes and chain letters; it’s quite another to give people — for free — a professional-quality documentary and the resources to show it to their friends. There’s a great deal of potential there for political campaigners. I’ll be watching the CFMEU’s experiment with great interest.

[Cross-posted from Larvatus Prodeo.]