Hey everyone,
I had an idea the other day, and I’m going to put it together. Basically, I’m creating a map of people all over the nation who are willing to donate something – their home, some food, some time, etc – to resistance to war, big business’ greed, and other injustices. Google Maps makes this surprisingly easy, and although I’m not entirely sure how to do it, I’m sure I’ll figure it out as I go.
All I need now is names. If you’re interested in being listed so that people can contact you if they need some help in your area, please email me at rossmlevin at gmail dot com. What I need is:
Your name
What you’re willing to provide
Your contact info (email and phone are preferred, but whatever you want to put is OK)
Your zip code
I don’t want to get too specific, because we all know how snoopy the CIA is 😉
Seriously, though, if this comes together I think it could be a useful tool for activists all over the place. Say you’re traveling to Philadelphia to help out the striking nurses at Temple University and you need a place to stay for a few days – you could check the map and see that, hey, rossl lives near Philadelphia. Then you could call me up and see if it’s all right if you crash at my place for a few days while you’re helping these nurses.
In short, if this works out, it could potentially make organizing these things easier. In a best case scenario, that would mean more action is taken.
13 comments
Skip to comment form
What if everybody across the country started using a secret hand signal to let others know who they can count on?
And maybe painted a special secret mark on their front doors too?
Author
this starts with you! I’ve got to get information from as many people as possible…
which I would describe as falling under the category of democratic infrastructure. People build infrastructure and tools to make tasks easier.
There are web sites dedicated to matching people who need something with volunteers. (Sorry, can’t recall any names, though I think Craig Newmark of craigslist is associated with one.) You might try posting the idea, there, to see if a programmer will help you out.
IMO, activists should largely be focusing on building democratic infrastructure, rather than exclusively on an issue or two. The healthcare debacle proves that what should be a slam dunk is very, very hard. It stands to reason that doing just the same sorts of things, over and over again, for one issue over another, is not likely to succeed, if your cause is at odds with plutocratic interests.
Gee whiz, could the healthcare debacle have anything to do with anti-democratic infrastructure, like the K-Street lobbying nexus? It’s stunning to me that people largely don’t think in these terms, but that seems to be the norm.
Another way of looking at this is: If you keep losing a game, over and over and over, again, maybe you need to change the rules (parameters) of the game, or your strategy.
donations / places to stay – no problem – use a real name – as long as the cause is relatively “PC”
anti-war? please remember the 1970’s and Obama’s ghost (that Chicago “terrorist” teacher crap during the election) / then check out McCarthy witchhunt lists – 1954 – even Ma said at the time everyone knew the lists were fake, but it still messed up people’s lives forever. I know that LinkedIn datamines personal email for connections, but they lie about it. Sorry, I read the LLC agreements on these social sites, and bottom line, they own your data and derivatives of such data without ANY recourse from you, no matter what. On some sites, they actually make you promise that your data must be correct, but theirs will not.
do you really want to hand Homeland Security a list with addresses? I’d prefer that they’d actually have to work for their salaries. Yeah, in theory “they” can find or break anything/alias. In practice, I have never seen a corporation merge accounting systems correctly in 30 years. Try making a DVD with different video and text and photos and web pages. You can get one thing done perfectly on one format but the rest has damage to the data. IT often works against itself with all the “improvements.”
So I bet against any analyst being able to combine the data correctly if it comes from enough different IT platforms, and does NOT use any of their already known search criteria. Maybe call it Doc’s Progressives and keep the actual causes out of it? There’s been a lot of discussion here about language and terms of the new movement. Maybe design some new “buzz” words that have “special” meaning to the people involved. That worked somewhat in the 1970’s…
Author
I have three peoples’ information. Less than what I expected…