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Tactic: Colombians Organize with Facebook

Description: Four Colombian uses of Facebook created the group Un Millon de Voces Contra las FARC (a Million Voices Against the FARC) and used the page to organize a day of worldwide protests against the Colombian rebel group on Monday, February 4.

Organizer: Carlos Andres Santiago and 3 other Colombian Facebook users.

Purpose of Action: To oppose the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - Ejército del Pueblo), a guerrilla organization guilty of human rights abuses.

Organizing Tools: Facebook (the mainstream media, as well as business and civic organizations picked up on the Facebook protest and helped to promote it, which was critical to its success.)

Outcome: The rally in Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, drew 2 million participants and was the largest rally in Colombia’s history. Rallies were organized in 185 cities around the world.

Ease of Replication: Creating a Facebook group is free and extremely easy. Carrying out a global protest is more difficult. In order to succeed, your event must catch the public imagination so that other people and groups, particularly the mainstream media, help you in promoting the protest.

anti-FARC protest in Hong Kong, part on the worldwide day of action on Feb 4.

The protest succeed to such as great extent in Colombia because of strong offline support of the online organizing efforts. Many Colombian companies not only allowed their employees to join the midday march, but also issued T-shirts and balloons with the company logo. In addition, the march was actively promoted by mainstream media, especially El Tiempo, Colombia’s only national daily newspaper.

Though not uncontroversial, there is a great deal of opposition to the FARC, a guerrilla organization established in 1964 which has carried a number of randsomed kidnappings and murders in the country. The conflict between the FARC and the paramilitaries that oppose them has grown worse since the 1980s as both sides have been enriched by the drug trade.

Using Facebook to carry out a worldwide series of protests on a single day was is a tactic previously carried out by the group Support the Monks’ Protest in Burma, which at its height had more than 420,000 members and organized worldwide day of protests on October 6th which occurred at noon, beginning in New Zealand and ending in Chile.

sources: CS Monitor, Yahoo! News
hat-tip: Helmi Noman
photo credit: equinoXio