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Document 1 Ricken Patel: the global leader of online protest Last week, a 36-year-old man named Ricken Patel gave the Commonwealth Lecture1 at the Guildhall in London. It was entitled The opportunity of our time and promised a ‘new politics, a new activism, a new democracy’. He is not a
Document 1 Ricken Patel: the global leader of online protest Last week, a 36-year-old man named Ricken Patel gave the Commonwealth Lecture1 at the Guildhall in London. It was entitled The opportunity of our time and promised a ‘new politics, a new activism, a new democracy’. He is not a politician, however, or some multimillionaire megalomaniac, but the founder and 5 president of Avaaz, an online activist group that aims to ‘close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want’. If that mission statement sounds a little fluffy and problematically vague, it's proved remarkably successful around the world. There are now 20 million members of Avaaz, which means ‘voice’ in several languages, making it the world's largest activist network. 10 Since its creation in 2007, Avaaz has been involved in a series of campaigns as diverse as climate change, the Syrian uprising and challenging Rupert Murdoch2. The organisation specialises in sending out email petitions to its members as a means of galvanising public opinion. Avaaz's model is online mobilisation, which has been dismissed in some quarters as 15 ‘clicktivism’, whereby hundreds of thousands or even millions of people need do no more than tap a mouse to register their protest. The suggestion is that the technological ease creates a remote, disengaged form of activism in which consequences and outcomes appear less real. Patel has a stock response to this criticism. ‘To reduce our actions down to clicking is silly,’ he has said. ‘It's what happens after the clicks – how we use that support – that's what brings about 20 incredible change.’ Now the organisation works in 15 languages, has its headquarters in Manhattan, is most popular in Brazil, France, Germany and India, and is entirely financed through its members. Corporations are not allowed to contribute and no individual can donate more than €5,000. ‘I think we have the highest integrity funding in the world,’ says Patel. Adapted from Sunday 17 March 2013 1. a lecture: a speech. 2. Rupert Murdoch: powerful media owner. 14ANTEV1ME3 Page : 2/5 Document 2 The opening piano chords of I Believe suddenly blare out in Parliament Square. A young girl steps forward on the green and stretches gracefully to the sky before being joined in her dance by another and then another, until 150 dancers are enthusiastically shaking their booty in the shadow of Big Ben. 5 The