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Charles Lenchner, who you will see posting on TAP upon occasion, is the online organizer for the Working Families Party. At Netroots Nation in Pittsburgh, we met for the first time and had a good discussion about the state of local and state blogging in New York. He talked about his experiences and the challenge of finding bloggers in the New York City area who focus on, well, the New York City area. New York City is home to many prominent national voices in the netroots movement, but there aren't too many prominent names on the local front.
Through that conversation and many others comes Organizing 2.0, a conference of bloggers and online organizers from the social justice world. The conference is an important one and will serve as a way for organizers to come together and train, while also learning from each other on how to better organize in the world of new media.
Lenchner has been joined by Elana Levin of Workers United and Nate Heasley of GrassrootsCamp in this effort.
I spoke with Lenchner about the conference. Here are a couple of questions I asked him with his responses to both.
QUESTION: When did you realize the need for a conference of this nature?
LENCHNER: When did I not? As my friend and colleague Tate Hausman taught me, 'culture trumps strategy.' What this means is that the conversation around skills and strategy has to also be about culture. There are reasons why organization X succeeds with online tools while organizing Y does not. Or why sector X is doing better than sector Y.
More directly, I was at the Netroots Nation conference in Pittsburgh where I attended three breakout sessions: for New Yorkers, labor, and state-bloggers. Elana Levin and Michael Whitney were there, along with good folks from The Albany Project. At the closing session they mentioned forums that might take place in various cities - maybe even New York. I contacted NN asking how I can help with an event, but it turned into Organizing 2.0 • NYC with Netroots Nation as a generous sponsor. Elana (Workers United), Nate (Grassroots Camp), and lots more (see the list) decided to take a particular direction that NN might not have.
The response from our communities - labor, community organizers and local political activists - has been tremendous. There's a real thirst for events that mix basic skills training with deeper conversations for particular communities within the overall progressive space in New York.
QUESTION: What is Organizing 2.0 all about?
LENCHNER: It's about building capacity for those of us in the trenches struggling for a fairer New York. This country is still in a recession, with close to 20% un or underemployed. Communities across the state, in cities and rural areas, are suffering. That's an amazing opportunity for organizers, but only if we make full use of the new generation of online tools we associate with MoveOn and the Obama Campaign. Organizing 2.0 is about treating every citizen as a potential leader, and constructing structures to enable the maximum amount of grassroots input and power.
Online and community organizing methodologies complement each other. Or at least, they should. Yes we can!
QUESTION: How do you see the conference benefiting the online organizing efforts for those in New York?
LENCHNER: It's interesting to compare the state of the netroots in New York City and New York State with other parts of the country. I think we're a bit underdeveloped because so much energy is spent on national issues. Has anyone seen or heard of an online advocacy campaign taking flight on a local issue, where the online component was effective and compelling? Has anyone seen local politicians use online space in a creative or significant way? I haven't - and I don't mean to belittle the efforts of folks at TAP working on Hiram Monserrate. It's great work, but right now it's mostly list building. Compare that to how the Netroots worked for Ned Lamont (who is now running for CT Governor) or how FireDogLake, OpenLeft and others came up with innovative whip count strategies for health care, or even how the new Mayor of Seattle pulled off an upset despite having almost no money or insider support. There's so much passion and talent in our state, but we haven't really earned our bragging rights yet.
While I could spend hours griping about how New York issues aren't getting a fair shake, it's more productive to try and organize for the future. When the term was invented, 'netroots' often referred to a lot of mostly white, male, educated and middle class individuals who sort of entered the political arena because of Howard Dean's inspiration. Today's 'netroots' is much more diverse in terms of race, class, gender, age and geography. Perhaps a bit of sustained attention on the part of New York's economic justice advocates will result in new connections between ideas, constituencies and organizations that result in some amazing future campaigns.
QUESTION: In your experiences, how does online organizing differ from old-fashioned organizing (community organizing, door-to-door efforts) and yet, how are they similar?
LENCHNER: The very phrase 'online organizing' does not have an accepted definition among organizers. I love the phrase 'online grassroots mobilizer' because it better describes how online campaigns work - by mobilizing swarms of mostly weakly committed people to do something small, perhaps just once. But the word 'organizer' refers to the central core of the work: dealing with more highly committed people - leaders - that the online organizer works with over time to win victories and build grassroots power.
In traditional, Midwestern Academy circles, 'organizing' is a particular methodology for building power among those who don't have it. That often means lower income neighborhoods, minorities, and so on. The idea is that only those most affected by a particular form of oppression have the legitimacy to lead a coherent and victorious response to it. Online organizing clashes with that notion because on the internet - no one cares if you're an oppressed minority. It's a free for all where traditional legitimizing aspects are no longer in play. An activist for a queer cause might be straight, and no one cares. A leader in the fight against a racist incident or policy (Jena 6, Katrina) might turn out to be white. A supporter of labor causes might not be a union member, and that's fine. Everyone is welcome to produce results, and everyone has the chance to be judged based on those results.
That said, and I'm quoting a MoveOnista I admire, "online organizing IS organizing." And I'm ready to fight with anyone who disagrees. If all you want is to build a list or raise money, that's fine; just don't call it organizing. Organizing is building grassroots power to fight for a better, fairer society. We can do it online or off. The best operations will be a mix of the two.
If you are interested in learning more about Organizing 2.0, visit the website.
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