organizing is not campaigning, and high numbers does not mean effective organizing

Last night I had a very interesting conversation with a friend of mine who is  creating a tech start up catalyzing local civic engagement.  My friend is engaging in conversations with many companies much larger than themselves to find resources to expand their model nationally.  The offers this start up is getting are exciting and come with the expectation of being in hundreds of cities quickly.  Scaling this local organizing effort fast is the way they will be able to continue to fund doing this work.

In talking with my friend about organizing models to use to scale its organizing I realized we were looking for an answer that doesn’t exists.  There is no quick way to organize a community and you don’t need millions of people to have a successful organizing effort.  Organizations should take this decision to scale quickly very seriously; the how they do it will determine their true impact in society.  But it also begs the question, why must one thing be in hundreds of cities quickly and has that led to us being more effective in pushing our policies?

Is our culture so mass marketed that we must recreate the momentum and look of Obama 08 regardless of what the momentum gets us? Of the millions of people who participated in Organizing For America, very few of them are active in supporting the work it takes to get to hopeful change.   They we’re easily discouraged because the relationship was not deep enough to withstand the disappointment of the expectations they had of Obama.  

Scale and impact are not interchangeable when your goal is organizing.  It’s a choice.  So often organizations sacrifice organizing to be able to hit numbers.  The problem is in doing so; you also sacrifice your relevance to people.   This kills any deeper growth because your communities may not be as with you as you think… Easy come easy go…

If civic organizations can hold the space for organizing when campaigns do come into town they can be absorbed by the on going community efforts and feed into the on going business of hope and change.  Campaigning is not organizing...McDonalds does provide food products to millions of Americans but nobody pretends it’s the same as a home cooked meal.

Net Neutrality... why it matters

Today I was given a great update on the Media Democracy Program house at Proteus Fund and the powerful work they are doing. The Media Democracy Fund supports organizations advocating for the publicd rights in the digital age.  Net Neutrality is a key component to this Fund.  The work being supported by MDF is critically important in how we define ownership and access in the 21st Century.

Quick overview on Net Neutrality:

Net Neutrality:   “All Internet traffic should be treated equally”

What advocates say: It protects a communities control of their voice and image.

What opponents say:  Its unnecessary regulation; broadband providers have no interest in blocking content and information.

I must admit, at first I agreed that blocking access and content seemed like an antithesis to the Internet, and that maybe the need for regulation was a little Chicken Little.  Then I thought about what the interest of broadband providers might be.  I figured it was probably the interest of any business, to make as much money as they can.  And while blocking content may not be their first interest, protecting the public is not their first interest either.  I started imagining all the work The Urban Labs hopes to do, and how much harder it will be to do, if such a powerful tool is controlled by business and freaked out!

While I'm not educated on this issue enough to deeply debate the issue I will say that I am heartbroken at seeing the Congressional Black Caucus take a position against this issue.  The openess of the Internet must be protected.  Its important that we, who work in poor communities, learn some basic talking points on the issue and are able to push back on the arguments made against net neutrality.  While we all must continue our primary work, we must see net neutrality as the issue that will allow us to do our work in cyberspace...and if businesses have control, it may stop our work cold.

Check out color of change for more information on this fight... Take it seriously...  and try something for me, call your favorite CBC member and ask them why they are against net neutrality... I wasn't satisfied when with the answer I was given when I asked :)

A quick conversation with Nehemiah Bey, IJJRA community liaison

What do you find the most interesting with the students at West Brooklyn High?

What I find interesting is that our sessions at West Brooklyn High School, (an alternative school), begin when the students actual school day ends, and although these sessions are "credit recovery" classes for the students, they are not simply doing the minimum to receive credit. On the contrary, the students are engaging and very interested in learning new ways to think about violence and nonviolence and how those two constructs relate to the Prison Industrial Complex, their individual lives and their local and global communities.

Who are these students?

These are students who have been, for whatever reason(s), determined not up to DOE standards and have been transferred from mainstream public schools to this alternative school. However, this group of students is proving that a more creative pedagogy is necessary to engage our children and make their learning experience relative to their lives.

That being said, with the students finding the information we are
disseminating relative to their everyday lives, they are excited about
using this technology provided by the Urban Labs to not only promote
their talent show, but also to organize and research trends.

How are you introducing technology as an organizing tool?

In the wake of the Easter Sunday, so-called, "wilding" occurrence, where it was reported that technology, namely twitter, was used by alleged gang members to message and influence others to converge on Times Square and Herald Square respectively, for me that happening, (it's calamitous consequence notwithstanding) demonstrates the power of social networking technology. It's ability to reach
people in the moment will be a paradigm shift in the organizing world that will absolutely enhance the way in which organizers do outreach, message, coalition build and bring community folks together,

Consequently, as Community Outreach Liaison for the Institute for
Juvenile Justice Reform and Alternatives, I am as excited as my students to implement this technology to not only expand my organizations data base, but more importantly, to deepen and strengthen my organizations relationship with the community.

Nehemiah Bey is The Community Outreach Liaison for IJJRA. Bey is also a poet and lives in Brooklyn, NY