Brooklyn Students Collect Hundreds of Names Through SMS Efforts.

There are two organizing truths  The Urban Labs deem self-evident; organizers have authentic and transferable relationships and live data make organizers more effective.  These truths help guide me to sincere organizing efforts...  Look no further than youth voting work, for the past six years many groups have been creating more accurate voting files of young people as well as hiring peer leaders to reach out to potential youth voters.

The Urban Labs experiment at W. Brooklyn High School with students being trained in social justice organizing are evidencing these truths. When first introducing this experiment our initial concern was, will young people use a short code to get their community involved in their talent show?  I think we can conclusively say yes! With only eight hours of organizing training through the IJJRA curriculum, and two weeks with the short code there are collectively almost three hundred unique id’s in the IJJRA database.

IJJRA and the students are introducing the SMS code to their everyday life.  They are asking people they know to opt into the program by texting the students name to #70376.  IJJRA will be sending all unique ID’s a follow up text asking them to take a survey and then be able to test how transferable the relationship is between the youth organizer and its community.  June 11, will be the biggest test to see how many of the people reached actually come to the talent show.