I worked for Steve on E-Democracy outreach this last summer; I'd been a fan
from afar for a while. Been on St. Paul issues for a while. He didn't pay a
ton, but it was fun and I knocked on a lot of doors. This commentary is mine
and mine alone.
Corrine Bruning, the E-Democracy lead organizer, lead a super
social-justice/equity training for the last year's summer team. This was the
smaller team from the year before, but in both cases they hired an overwhelming
majority of organizers of color. We all took part in training each other, I
used the Frederick Douglass quote about power conceding nothing without a
demand, we talked about race a lot and white privilege. It was, frankly, better
than I had hoped for in terms of equity work and power analysis.
My door rap was usually social-justice based. I did well with people of color,
because the idea of a forum that is not controlled by commercial interests,
that they can participate in, was a good sell, and it's one I believe in.
The reality of forums is less than it could be. I would rather take the
engagement time and have someone contacting forum members personally and asking
if there's anything they want to talk about or encouraging them to take part.
I worked with Rev Devin to bring together a face-to-face about race and the
violence and the rec centers and the kids in Payne-Phalen. As an organizer, I
think it helped the discussion in the area. We co-led it, because a racially
balanced facilitation team was something we valued.
I think Rev. Miller's a good proponent of a common strain of Black politics.
It's very identity based, but also lift yourself up and Black pride. It is more
conservative than my politics - I'm inspired by Malik El-Shabazz after Mecca,
by the labor organizers of the teens who organized cross racially and cross
ethnically. Vaughn and I work on Unify University which is about racial
solidarity. I'm a white organizer doing all this, and while my training and
experience and intention is to not be abusing my societal power, I know I can
mess up.
The alternatives to E-Democracy are Facebook, NextDoor, Google+ and Yahoogroups
etc. The first couple are corporate through and through, will not give a damn
about Frogtown, etc. Google and Yahoogroups are less overtly evil but are still
communication infrastructure that is not democratically controlled or in the
hands of the community. E-Democracy is a non-profit that is aware of these
community issues, is striving to increase online participation from people of
color and low income, and in the alternatives list, is the best of the lot.
Now, this is the argument people give for voting for crappy corporate Democrats
(at least they're better than the wackos) so I'm not gonna claim that being the
best of the lot is good enough. But with the social justice/racial justice
attitude of the training, the work we did last summer and they did the summer
before, I think Steven and the rest of E-Democracy have the desire to do this
right. That digital participation numbers do matter, and that the outreach
makes it possible to increase participation of people of color and low income.
But while it's necessary to do that outreach, is it sufficient to get that
online? That is an open question but I think it's a great one and I think it's
worth the shot. My feeling was that these neighborhood forums should be taken
over by the post office, or something like that. "The official neighborhood
email list" would be the goal. Now, this is totally where St. Paul's district
councils are set to do something like that. Maybe FNA should nationalize this
forum and take over the facilitation and direction, tying it in with the good
door-to-door work that you guys do.
A final note - there's some heated discussion here, and bring on the passion!
Email does not have intonation or non-verbal communication, which they told me
in linguistics classes is 70% of face to face communication. I've seen really
distructive online discussions, and that's why I think that facilitation is a
good thing. I have also seen transformative online discussions. I hope this can
be the latter.
John Slade
Dayton's Bluff
(PS - I did go over the racial calculus when I saw who Dai's new aide was. "Too
bad," I thought, "The Black-Hmong thing looked good, if nothing else." And, as
a former supporter of Noel for the council seat, I was sad to see him leave.
But the last few Black council-people had Black aides, as folks have pointed
out, and that is the end of my worrying about the race of the council aide.)