delaceytate-blog
Sum Of Us: Digital Intiative Profile
It
is evident when watching the 6 o’clock news and in reading the papers that
atrocities are committed every day. From exploiting vulnerable people to
capitalizing on the destruction of the environment. Left and right the largest
and coincidentally most profitable corporations such as PepsiCo, Monsanto and Nestle,
take what they want no matter what the social or ecological consequences. With
such large bureaucracies doing so much wrong it is hard not to feel absolutely
powerless in the grand scheme of things. Especially when a cause one believes is
in a foreign country overseas. Often people obsessed with exposing examples of the
corporate power grab by writing articles and attending protests sometimes feel
as though their efforts are futile. Naturally, the question “how can one person
make a difference?” comes up quite frequently in these types of discussions and
I myself have asked this many a time, largely in my grade12 English class. This
class was headed by a particularly “passionate” teacher by the name of Mr.
Letson. Each day at the beginning of class he would pull up the news and rant
for about 30 minutes concerning the daily abominations committed by man. He was
beyond inspiring. One day he pulled up another website instead of the usual CBC
or CTV. It was called Sum of Us. He
talked about the organization for his usual 30 minutes, describing it as a
truly unique petition website, then moved on with the lesson. However, after
class I found myself still thinking about it. Intrigued, I delved deeper. I
found that Sum of Us is a petition website, but not the kind that weird aunts
use to spur poorly researched environmental chainmail to everyone in their
contact list. Sum of Us, with the help of their near 14 million members,
creates comprehensive campaigns, runs them and, unlike others, makes waves and
wins. Although many people associate online petitions with slacktivism, Sum of
Us is different and very influential. They stopped fashion giant Zara from...
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What is Sum of Us?
Sum of Us is a global advocacy group consisting of nearly 14 million members and 32 paid staff from 11 different countries. They run petitions on issues concerning climate change, worker’s rights, the corporate power grab, animal rights, corruption, human rights and discrimination. It is funded solely through member donations and they accept no monetary support from any corporation or government, thus rendering them completely unbiased. Each time the site is opened Sum of Us asks, quite politely, that their members help them to continue winning campaigns by donating however much a month. An interesting thing about the site is that they suggest that their members either donate to the website directly or to a specific cause they believe in. An example of this is the campaign that Sum of Us is running against Nestle for suing the small township of Osceola, Michigan—The town of 2000 people refused to let Nestle bottle their groundwater for ridiculously low costs. So far members have raised $30 000 dollars to cover legal costs for the town of 2000 people. It is a small drop in the bucket seeing as Nestlé is the biggest food company in the world, with a market capitalization of roughly US$247 billion (as of May 2015) but, every little bit helps, and the number grows every day.
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Text
How do they make the site accessible to the majority of people?
Sum of Us’s campaigns have been featured/mentioned in The New York Times, Reuters, Financial Post, The Guardian, The Telegraph and many more. In addition to this they are active on Youtube, Twitter and Facebook. This creates great publicity for the site due to the high traffic within these popular news outlets. Sum of Us has also featured all these sites on their platform as well. The reason being is that their descriptions of campaigns are written in a colloquial version of the 1950s Toronto Star style. Which is fairly succinct and comprehensive. They mix this style with the New York World’s dramatic sensational writing to get the readers riled up. In addition the descriptions are littered with random phrases in bold and italics. This is a strange combo to say the least and often leaves people quite confused. However, at the bottom of the page, Sum of Us always puts up other various links to these acclaimed sites. They are available in English, French and Deutsch. This allows people to do their own respective research and make informed decisions to better their understanding of the petition/campaign and what it stands for. This also makes the website accessible to almost everyone no matter their intellectual ability, political party, or native language.
0 notes
Text
How are campaigns created, regulated and organized?
Sum of Us have people within their staff that are dedicated to finding causes worthy of their own respective campaign. However these specific people can’t do it all on their own and they do not. Any person can suggest a campaign to Sum of Us through their “contact” tab and they even have a dedicated team of people checking their inboxes regularly. This can come in quite handy. For example, if a worker at Monsanto gets wind of a particularly nasty deal the company is about to make they can email, call or even write a letter to Sum of Us, suggesting a campaign. As long as there are cold hard facts, the campaign managers of the site can work with the person who emailed to create a skeleton of a petition. After they have a cause for concern, Sum of Us then presents it to a test group of 10 000 members to see if it is something that genuinely concerns and interests the public. If yes, the campaign goes live and is ready for signing and if there happens to be an error in the campaign, one can email the site as well, suggesting amendments.
0 notes
Text
Not your average petition site.
Sum of Us says that they “hold corporations accountable” and that they do. By joining the site and becoming a member, people are not simply “liking” something on Facebook or changing their profile picture to a photo of the Eiffel Tower with the wording #prayforparis watermarked over the top. Sum of Us actually makes a difference. They had a hand in France becoming the first neonic (a proven bee killing pesticide) free country in the world in June of 2016. Not only that but, as previously mentioned, stopped retailers, Zara and Topshop, from carrying articles of clothing made from unethically sourced angora wool. This was after PETA (people for the ethical treatment of animals) released a video depicting an angora rabbit having all of his fur plucked out aggressively while he was still alive. Through their undercover investigation, PETA discovered that in China, where the majority of Angora rabbit farmers reside, there are no animal rights for rabbits. That means rabbits can be treated in whatever manner the farmer sees fit and as one can imagine it is not with great compassion. As soon as retailers such as H&M caught wind of this they immediately dropped all of their angora products. Yet Zara and Topshop turned a blind eye. Sum of Us immediately put the campaign live without the aid of the test group because they were receiving so many emails from enraged consumers. With help of 302 949 signatures from Sum of Us members these retail giants finally succumbed to public pressure. Another campaign Sum of Us conquered was in February of 2014 when companies Kellogg’s and Wilmar both signed commitments to eliminate unethically sourced palm oil from their supply chains in the next two years. They also ran a similar petition against PepsiCo and won that one as well. They currently have quite the array of ongoing campaigns, ranging from keeping waterways clean for wild salmon off the coast of British Columbia to stopping Cartier from sourcing their gems from Myanmar. Each signature makes a global impact.
0 notes
Text
The creator and her competitors.
The creator of Sum of Us goes by the name of Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman. An American/Austrailian activist hailing from Greencastle, Indiana she has been a part of the climate movement for years. She graduated from Duke University in 2004, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. After her graduation, she worked for organizations such as Avaaz.org. Avaaz.org is very similar to Sum of us in the sense that they both run campaigns relating to similar issues, environmental etc. However, they differ in their presentation of information. Sum of Us, as previously stated, includes various other news sites and links for members to do their own respective research. Not only that but Sum of Us works hard to encourage their members to get further involved, by attending meetings or sometimes even to write directly to politicians. Avaaz.org, on the other hand, does not and continues to stick solely to their colloquial and sensational descriptions. It is very probable that Stinebrickner-Kauffman noticed the various flaws within Avaaz.org and this spurred her to create her own new and improved global advocacy group in 2011. Although Avaaz.org has over 46 million members and Sum of Us only has just under 14 million, Avaaz.org has 4 years on Sum of Us and was the first site to create a campaigning platform such as this. Stinebrickner-Kauffman’s version may be a smaller organization however, it is about quality, not quantity.
0 notes
Text
Why is Sum of Us important?
With the mounting pressure on news organizations to conform to what the people want simply to receive more “clicks,” the noble aspects of news are jeopardized. It forces us as a society to ask the question “what will happen to civilization when news organizations succumb to the demands of the public?” Although Sum of Us may not have been the first nor the largest petition site on the internet, they actively make an effort to be different. Within a world ravaged with clickbait and internet quizzes on Facebook, Sum of Us’s outlook is greatly appreciated. They run campaigns not because they are easy to talk about but rather the opposite. The campaigns are created because Sum of Us know that the world must make changes. The petitions are created to force people who perhaps had no previous knowledge of the subject to care. They tell the people what they need to know instead of what they want to know.
0 notes
Text
Full Essay
It is evident when watching the 6 o’clock news and in reading the papers that atrocities are committed every day. From exploiting vulnerable people to capitalizing on the destruction of the environment. Left and right the largest and coincidentally most profitable corporations such as PepsiCo, Monsanto and Nestle, take what they want no matter what the social or ecological consequences. With such large bureaucracies doing so much wrong it is hard not to feel absolutely powerless in the grand scheme of things. Especially when a cause one believes is in a foreign country overseas. Often people obsessed with exposing examples of the corporate power grab by writing articles and attending protests sometimes feel as though their efforts are futile. Naturally, the question “how can one person make a difference?” comes up quite frequently in these types of discussions and I myself have asked this many a time, largely in my grade12 English class. This class was headed by a particularly “passionate” teacher by the name of Mr. Letson. Each day at the beginning of class he would pull up the news and rant for about 30 minutes concerning the daily abominations committed by man. He was beyond inspiring. One day he pulled up another website instead of the usual CBC or CTV. It was called Sum of Us. He talked about the organization for his usual 30 minutes, describing it as a truly unique petition website, then moved on with the lesson. However, after class I found myself still thinking about it. Intrigued, I delved deeper. I found that Sum of Us is a petition website, but not the kind that weird aunts use to spur poorly researched environmental chainmail to everyone in their contact list. Sum of Us, with the help of their near 14 million members, creates comprehensive campaigns, runs them and, unlike others, makes waves and wins. Although many people associate online petitions with slacktivism, Sum of Us is different and very influential. They stopped fashion giant Zara from carrying articles of clothing made from unethically sourced angora wool. In addition, they are making efforts to impede the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. They are changing the world and doing a bang up job at that.
What is Sum of Us
Sum of Us is a global advocacy group consisting of nearly 14 million members and 32 paid staff from 11 different countries. They run petitions on issues concerning climate change, worker’s rights, the corporate power grab, animal rights, corruption, human rights and discrimination. It is funded solely through member donations and they accept no monetary support from any corporation or government, thus rendering them completely unbiased. Each time the site is opened Sum of Us asks, quite politely, that their members help them to continue winning campaigns by donating however much a month. An interesting thing about the site is that they suggest that their members either donate to the website directly or to a specific cause they believe in. An example of this is the campaign that Sum of Us is running against Nestle for suing the small township of Osceola, Michigan—The town of 2000 people refused to let Nestle bottle their groundwater for ridiculously low costs. So far members have raised $30 000 dollars to cover legal costs for the town of 2000 people. It is a small drop in the bucket seeing as Nestlé is the biggest food company in the world, with a market capitalisation of roughly US$247 billion (as of May 2015) but, every little bit helps, and the number grows every day.
How do they make the site accessible to the majority of people?
Sum of Us’s campaigns have been featured/mentioned in The New York Times, Reuters, Financial Post, The Guardian, The Telegraph and many more. In addition to this they are active on Youtube, Twitter and Facebook. This creates great publicity for the site due to the high traffic within these popular news outlets. Sum of Us has also featured all these sites on their platform as well. The reason being is that their descriptions of campaigns are written in a colloquial version of the 1950s Toronto Star style. Which is fairly succinct and comprehensive. They mix this style with the New York World’s dramatic sensational writing to get the readers riled up. In addition the descriptions are littered with random phrases in bold and italics. This is a strange combo to say the least and often leaves people quite confused. However, at the bottom of the page, Sum of Us always puts up other various links to these acclaimed sites. They are available in English, French and Deutsch. This allows people to do their own respective research and make informed decisions to better their understanding of the petition/campaign and what it stands for. This also makes the website accessible to almost everyone no matter their intellectual ability, political party, or native language.
How are campaigns created, regulated and organized?
Sum of Us have people within their staff that are dedicated to finding causes worthy of their own respective campaign. However these specific people can’t do it all on their own and they do not. Any person can suggest a campaign to Sum of Us through their “contact” tab and they even have a dedicated team of people checking their inboxes regularly. This can come in quite handy. For example, if a worker at Monsanto gets wind of a particularly nasty deal the company is about to make they can email, call or even write a letter to Sum of Us, suggesting a campaign. As long as there are cold hard facts, the campaign managers of the site can work with the person who emailed to create a skeleton of a petition. After they have a cause for concern, Sum of Us then presents it to a test group of 10 000 members to see if it is something that genuinely concerns and interests the public. If yes, the campaign goes live and is ready for signing and if there happens to be an error in the campaign, one can email the site as well, suggesting amendments.
Not your average petition site.
Sum of Us says that they “hold corporations accountable” and that they do. By joining the site and becoming a member, people are not simply “liking” something on Facebook or changing their profile picture to a photo of the Eiffel Tower with the wording #prayforparis watermarked over the top. Sum of Us actually makes a difference. They had a hand in France becoming the first neonic (a proven bee killing pesticide) free country in the world in June of 2016. Not only that but, as previously mentioned, stopped retailers, Zara and Topshop, from carrying articles of clothing made from unethically sourced angora wool. This was after PETA (people for the ethical treatment of animals) released a video depicting an angora rabbit having all of his fur plucked out aggressively while he was still alive. Through their undercover investigation, PETA discovered that in China, where the majority of Angora rabbit farmers reside, there are no animal rights for rabbits. That means rabbits can be treated in whatever manner the farmer sees fit and as one can imagine it is not with great compassion. As soon as retailers such as H&M caught wind of this they immediately dropped all of their angora products. Yet Zara and Topshop turned a blind eye. Sum of Us immediately put the campaign live without the aid of the test group because they were receiving so many emails from enraged consumers. With help of 302 949 signatures from Sum of Us members these retail giants finally succumbed to public pressure. Another campaign Sum of Us conquered was in February of 2014 when companies Kellogg’s and Wilmar both signed commitments to eliminate unethically sourced palm oil from their supply chains in the next two years. They also ran a similar petition against PepsiCo and won that one as well. They currently have quite the array of ongoing campaigns, ranging from keeping waterways clean for wild salmon off the coast of British Columbia to stopping Cartier from sourcing their gems from Myanmar. Each signature makes a global impact.
The creator and her competitors.
The creator of Sum of Us goes by the name of Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman. An American/Austrailian activist hailing from Greencastle, Indiana she has been a part of the climate movement for years. She graduated from Duke University in 2004, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. After her graduation she worked for organisations such as Avaaz.org. Avaaz.org is very similar to Sum of us in the sense that they both run campaigns relating to similar issues, environmental etc. However, they differ in their presentation of information. Sum of Us, as previously stated, includes various other news sites and links for members to do their own respective research. Not only that but Sum of Us works hard to encourage their members to get further involved, by attending meetings or sometimes even to write directly to politicians. Avaaz.org on the other hand does not and continues to stick solely to their colloquial and sensational descriptions. It is very probable that Stinebrickner-Kauffman noticed the various flaws within Avaaz.org and this spurred her to create her own new and improved global advocacy group in 2011. Although Avaaz.org has over 46 million members and Sum of Us only has just under 14 million, Avaaz.org has 4 years on Sum of Us and was the first site to create a campaigning platform such as this. Stinebrickner-Kauffman’s version may be a smaller organization however, it is about quality not quantity.
Conclusion, why is Sum of Us important?
With the mounting pressure on news organizations to conform to what the people want simply to receive more “clicks,” the noble aspects of news are jeopardized. It forces us as a society to ask the question “what will happen to civilisation when news organizations succumb to the demands of the public?” Although Sum of Us may not have been the first nor the largest petition site on the internet, they actively make an effort to be different. Within a world ravaged with clickbait and internet quizzes on Facebook, Sum of Us’s outlook is greatly appreciated. They run campaigns not because they are easy to talk about but rather the opposite. The campaigns are created because Sum of Us know that the world must make changes. The petitions are created to force people who perhaps had no previous knowledge on the subject to care. They tell the people what they need to know instead of what they want to know.
0 notes
Text
Works Cited:
“SumOfUs is 14,197,838 people stopping big corporations from behaving badly.” SumOfUs - Fighting for people over profits, www.sumofus.org/.
“SumOfUs.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 14 Oct. 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SumOfUs. “Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman”, Linkedin Profile, Linked In, www.linkedin.com/in/taren-stinebrickner-kauffman-953b9831
“About Us.” About Us , SumOfUs, www.sumofus.org/about/.
“The World In Action.” Avaaz, secure.avaaz.org/page/en/.
“Sum of Us.” Huck Magazine, 27th August, 2014 by Alex King, Jessica Chou and Vittoria Mentasti 27 Aug. 2014, www.huckmagazine.com/perspectives/activism-2/why-i-do-what-i-do-activism-2/sum-us/.
“Avaaz.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 6 Nov. 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avaaz#Global_campaigns_selection_process.
“Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 31 Oct. 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taren_Stinebrickner-Kauffman.
“A Look Inside the Angora Rabbit Wool Industry.” A Look Inside the Angora Rabbit Wool Industry | PETA, support.peta.org/page/1846/petition/1?locale=en-US.
“How we're funded.” How we're funded, SumOfUs - Fighting for people over profits, www.sumofus.org/about/funding/.
“Nestlé.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Nov. 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9.
WOODTV8. “Protest outside Nestle hearing in Osceola County.” YouTube, YouTube, 15 Nov. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=65Tz455OFe0.
e
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