Neighborhood Networks as a cure for White man's overbite
To keep the post short here, I'll put a description of promoting NN at the Odunde festival in a comment.
posted by Dumplingeater @ 6/15/2005
4 comments
Liberal Malcontents
We're liberal, and we're malcontent.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
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4 Comments:
Going to the Odunde festival was really interesting, and pretty inspirational. First of all, it reminded me just how difficult it is for me to grasp the fact that in actuality, there are parallel universes within this city. If it weren't for the fact that a NN Ward Coordinator e-mailed the NN listserv about connecting NN to the festival, I may have been completely unware of the fact that, 400,000? people, from all over the country, would be hanging out on South Street. I'd estimate that 1/3 of the people I talked to were not from Philadelphia, indicating that people from areas quite far from Philadelphia were more aware of a huge event going on in my city than I was.
ShockandAwe had a somewhat different technique, but I approached folks with two questions, (1) Are you from Philly? (2) -- if they were -- "Would you like to be involved in raising the minimum wage in this city." I canvassed for about 1.5 hours, but only 1 person who answered "yes" to the first question answered "no" to the second question (actually, he answered, "That issue isn't very important to me"). I then talked about the upcoming rally in Harrisburg and talked to them about things they might do to show support for Rep. Cohen's legislation and to voice their support for raising the minimum wage. I used that discussion as a segue into talking about the need to get local politicians to begin addressing issues that are of concern to the people in their communities, and I presented NN as a way to help people get together with their neighbors to create agendas of what concerns them, to communicate those concerns to their representatives, and to hold their representative accountable (or to empower new representatives who are). Here I was, a middle-aged (as ShockandAwe reminded me) white guy, wearing a visor and Birkenstocks, trying to hide his white man's overbite, and I found an extremely receptive audience. Of course, I have no idea how many people will follow up, but if many don't, that is at least in part because NN doesn't quite have its act together yet about how to bring new recruits on-line. But one woman took a stack of flyers to use as a point of discussion with her minister. Another, who works at the welfare department, took a stack to share with her colleagues and acquaintances.
Based on that experience, I have little doubt that if we reach out to "disaffected" (look, i don't like that term either, but I don't really know what term would be better) voters, we could have a lot of success. Some are worried that it would be viewed as condescending if a bunch of middle-class white people fan out into the ghetto to "start telling Blacks what to do." I believe that fear has a bit of condescension hidden inside of it. Disaffected voters know what they want to change. I didn't have to convince anyone that they're getting the short end of the stick. I just needed to have a convincing alternative to represent. Many of the people I talked to believed that NN is a good model. Now the trick will be to make links to a wider community to get the word out, and to create systems that function efficiently to link people together -- no small task given the enormity of the task and the limitation of resources. If only the DNC would really get behind such efforts!!
Yeah great work, Dumpling and S&A. You guys are my heroes! Fear is one obstacle, selfishness is another--I was out riding my bike that day!
Yes, the fear and awkwardness can be a projection more than reality (more blog therapy?). Two points: (1) Obviously, getting "buy-in" from community organizations that already have connections would go a long way to increase credibility. (2), not to attack, but I think the civic education thing is a bit elitist. The system really isn't a representative democracy. It's broken, and people know it. The best way to educate people and consquently to get more involvement is to actually show people that government can represent their interests. That's why much higher percentages of upper class and white people vote -- because it does work for them.
Sorry, I don't see what's so complicated that requires education. "This person is your representative. Her job is to represent the opinions of the people in her disctrict." People already know that is what the system is supposed to be. And they already know that it isn't working. Ok, maybe it would be a good thing for people to know more about the structure (see post at Young Philly that begins to explain the Ward system), and how it is supposed to work. But how complicated is that? "That person is your Ward Leader. These are her past activities. Do her activities represent your interests?"
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