Hear me Roar

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Just a thought on community organizing online

I have now been in attendance of several online classes and have read articles, other people's thoughts about online organizing, etc. At this point, I have developed a theory of sorts- this may change as I learn more, but here it is for now. The internet and all the current technology that is available is the most useful for the people who are leading organizing efforts to gather new information, ideas, and reach out to other organizers in who are doing similar work. This could be social work professionals or leaders in a neighborhood or community, but the power of the internet is not far reaching enough YET for most organizers to use it as an effective tool for outreach to the masses. The PEW article along with Crandall's article really reiterate how I feel. People with money have better access to technology. Not only that, but people in higher socioeconomic classes more than likely have had more exposure to technology as well. As social workers we have been told time and again to start where our clients are. As I am taking this class, I just keep having this image in my head of a very ambitious social worker out there online trying to organize a community event and failing miserably because he/she was overly eager to get into the technology age and the people he/she is working with are just not there yet. I think moveon.org and some of these other politically driven online orgs are successful because their target groups are 18-50ish people with computers and money. They know that is who their audience is and it works, but that is not our audience as social workers. So I am very eager to learn more about the technology divide and am looking forward to our speaker on Thursday.
One of my classmates hit the nail on the head in the discussion board stating that people in poverty may not feel computers are a priority especially if they don't see it as is a tool for them or how it is useful in some way. I truly believe that this is slowly changing, but it could take some more years. The the question that is hanging out there is "Why is this so wrong?" Yes, computers give us more access to information quickly, they help us in research projects and keeping in touch with friends. I know I spend a lot of wasted time on the computer. I sometime brag to friends how little I watch T.V. I tell people that information with pride, but you know what? My T.V. time was replaced by the internet. I don't play games or surf porn, but I can't really account for a lot of the time I am online. I know I e-mail quite a bit and look up news, but that those 2 things combined make up less than 50% of my online time. So knowing this, how can I promote a technical tool that

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