As the folks behind the Canadians Against Proguing Parliament (CAPP, from here on out) Facebook group work to organize protests in 20 cities across Canada, another protest using the same tools has fizzled. A walkout organized on a Facebook group to protest a looming teacher's strike at Ontario colleges had a pretty pathetic day.

As reported in the Toronto Star:

In a spectacular case of diminishing returns, a Facebook antistrike group drew 22,000 members. Then came 4,000 signatures on an online petition, and 356 students – representing 11 schools – promised to walk out of class.

At Humber College's Lakeshore campus, however, one solitary student, Beth Corbett, turned out to carry a copy of the petition into administration and union offices.

Graeme McNaughton, founder of the antistrike Facebook group, said he had found volunteers at 11 colleges who were willing to lead student walkouts. In the end, however, turnout was meagre, and in no case exceeded 20 people.

Take THAT.

I won't draw many parallels between this and the CAPP group, which has more than 179,000 members at the moment. Presumably some of those people have more of a can-do attitude than the college walkout group managed, right? The CAPP protest looks to agitate against a political party on a weekend (and the weather report looks pretty good), where the college protest would have people skipping classes they paid to attend, and that they might be missing soon enough. Still, it makes clear that setting up a Facebook group and giving the members a time and a place is an insufficient organizational effort.

It will be interesting to see how things go off next weekend, and what efforts the organizers make to take advantage of the huge pool of people they have to draw on through their very popular group.

And if you have any suggestions as to why the CAPP protest will be different than the college walkout, or why it will also fizzle, I'd love to hear them. Drop a note in the comments section.