Report from the Baha’i Rights Day
July 15th, 2009
As a Baha’i, I am grateful for the friends from the MideastYouth.com and Muslim Network for Baha’i Rights for coming up with the idea and organizing the Baha’i Rights day, which was also made possible with the enormous help of our friends at Iran Press Watch. The idea was simple: get the #BahaiRights hashtag* (see note below) trending on Twitter, meaning, make the the Baha’i Rights one of the top 10 most frequent topics on Twitter, so that people’s attention is drawn to the issue of Baha’i persecutions in Iran and Egypt. Later, this idea expanded to Facebook and blogs to spread the awareness across the entire web. I got the insider view of the campaign as I was helping a little, and so I wanted to write a couple of insights about it.
It seems that universe made a small conspiracy against this effort: the date that was originally chosen, July 9, which is a Baha’i holy day commemorating the Martyrdom of the Bab, also coincided with the 10th anniversary of the student uprising in Iran, 18 Tir. The decision was made to move the date of the campaign to July 11, and so we had to spread the word, and make sure that the Twitterverse, the Blogality, and The Facebookers all know when to raise their voices (or for some who have been talking about this for a while, raise the volume). July 11 was also the date when the seven Baha’i leaders held in the Evin prison were scheduled to go on trial. If I remember correctly, there were only about couple weeks of planning with folks extremely busy: traveling and taking exams, so there was no time to produce a new video clip. However, a simple, but effective web page was built for the occasion, featuring the earlier video, Safeguard the Innocent.
On the actual 11th July, Twitter failed us because a couple of crucial contributor’s hashtags were not working. However, a big discussion of #BahaiRights was generated on Twitter, with various religions and nationalities participating. According to Esra’a Al Shafei, the director of MideastYouth.com, we had at least 4 religions represented. People generated approximately 1.400 tweets in at least 7 languages, and over 4.700 people joined a Facebook group dedicated to the cause. It was very heartening to see all the diverse friends tweeting in support of Baha’i Rights. Possibly because of this buzz, Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish at The Atlantic Monthly featured the Safeguard the Innocent video clip. I learned about through a friend who sent me a message via Twitter, saying, you surely saw this. I didn’t. It was the most amazing surprise and a reward.
Things that worked great:
- Having a central webpage for the campaign where we could point people to
- Having a powerful video clip as a symbol of the campaign
- Choice of a meaningful date (the date of the trial)
- Cooperation between diverse friends over several continents and very short time
Now, couple notes for future about running an online campaign:
- Test Twitter hashtags for key accounts several days before the event (it can take Twitter support several days or up to a week to fix the issue)
- Pre-prepare high quality tweets that include facts, quotes, links, and stories
- Be clear on what action can other people take to help
- Include tips on tweeting, retweeting, and hashtags for those new to Twitter
- Establish additional goals of the campaign (i.e. find 1,000 people to sign Amnesty’s petition, etc.)
- Make a list of human rights activists to contact, and notify them about the event beforehand, so they can give their support
The Baha’i Rights day was not limited to only Baha’is, or only Muslims, but participants were from all over the world representing diverse religions and personal beliefs. We envision a similar day for the Sunnis in Iran, and for the Kurds who continue to struggle for their rights throughout the Middle East.
*For people not familiar with Twitter, hashtags are a way of marking up keywords on Twitter that enable others to easily find tweets with topics of interest.
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