Students take to SMS for organizing; Brooklyn Prodigies show connects

For the past month we at The Urban Labs have been engaged in our first experiment with SMS as an organizing tool. The Urban Labs, working with IJJRA, provided an SMS deck for an event campaign that would allow young people to collect RSVP's through SMS and subsequently facilitate event activities through the same deck.

Through the curriculum being taught by IJJRA, the students helped plan an assembly for their fellow high school students to promote street peace. The messages, were expressed through a student generated video and voted on by the assembly. The students, prepared a talent show highlighting nonviolent philosophies. The students collected close to 400 names for the show through SMS.

The Urban Labs created two use cases for the event sign in and voting system. Both were used very successfully at the event, but the sign in, a wordle activity, was a unique way to use texting at a meeting to capture individual feelings and show them collectively, while tracking all the data.

We asked the young people to text in thoughts they have concerning violence, prisons and peace. Here’s some video.  Seeing their own words, seeing the collective response experience of the room created an energetic reaction.  The young people then began texting in additional responses and IJJRA asked the students to do it again. This was a great indication of how SMS can be used to deepen face to face interactions.

The Urban Labs will be releasing a full evaluation of this experiment done in West Brooklyn High School. Big Shout out to Urban Labs board members Rick Borovoy and Chuck Baker for making it happen.

Experimenting in Organizing

Experimenting in Organizing an introduction

“The real problem is that through our scientific genius we’ve made of the world a neighborhood, but through our moral and spiritual genius we’ve failed to make of it a brotherhood.” MLKjr.

I start this blog with the hopes of creating a way to share my latest project and create a space for like-minded people to share their ideas around the work we are engaged in.

The Urban Lab has emerged as an idea, after 12 years of community organizing and campaigning, dedicated to including the most underrepresented of society into our democracy, through voting, issue organizing and movement building. Through the Urban Lab I aim to create a significant tool in our organizing, building and maintaining consistent relationships. Bearing in mind that relationships foster accountability, and are the building blocks of society.

Along our collective journey for justice, I've found that organizing efforts can often be sacrificed for simply mobilizing and diluting the critical aspect of relationship building. While running the field campaign for The Young Voter Alliance there were times when our desire to hit an impressive number with turn out concentrated our efforts to high visibility events. This hindered our ability to build two way relationships with voters. To turn people out to a rally, event or election is easy. To change the way the masses understand their role in democracy is hard.

We don’t have to look to far to see the effects the lack of relationships have on our ability to fight for change. Through the Obama campaign many national organizations came together to mobilize voters, yet their success in getting out the vote has not translated into the continual activity we need to make change. National organizations have become paper tigers, quantifying you tube hits and e-mails sent to congress as proof of effectiveness, regardless of the continual loss of stability in working class America, proof of our lack of effectiveness.

Local organizations and multi-state organizations that catalyze locally, build strong relationships with the hardest to reach communities, but they do not have the resources to quantify their relationships and expand their networks. Through my work of The Gathering I come across local churches or organizations that entire neighborhoods turn to for stability and safety, like Southwest Youth Collaborative in Chicago, an organization that touches thousands of some of the most disengaged young people annually, giving them life skills and training as well as advocating for them through the justice system.

Technological advances in communication make data collection and continuity accessible and are integrated into on going outreach. The Urban Lab will experiment in communities to create models for relationship building and consistent communication.

The Urban Labs mission is to increase the effectiveness of community organizing by introducing new media and mobile phone platforms to enhance connectivity and the deepen relationships between individuals and community organizing.

The Urban Lab, being incubated at The Community Innovators Lab at MIT, is a space for collaboration and experimentation with communication/technology/new media professionals, MIT and community organizations.

The initial organizing catalyst for these experiments will be creating a community survey that will allow the organizations to collect data and build a database. Community organizations have asked The Urban Lab to support their work by these experiments and are committed to integrating this into their entire program.

The two questions being ask by The Urban Lab are: What are the best ways to harness the unique relationships community organizations have with individuals in urban centers to increase organizing and community involvement in policy change? What does new media and technology offer as new tools?

I have to say that I do not know the answers to these questions, but believe the answer lies in trying. I hope this ongoing discussion entices you to add your thoughts to what we are doing and how. This effort is in its infancy, and could use thoughtful ideas and many minds to shape its outcomes.

I will post weekly updates on the projects and research. I hope you join me on this journey, together lets lend our expertise to local organizations that are held together by the relationships they have. It is in those relationships and through the loyalty and trust established that we would find the answer to building whole and healthy communities. It is only then that we will transform the nation.