Religion

Throughout the duration of the class, religious institutions continuously arise in our discussions. Whether we are discussing the importance of contacting Churches for the map, or analyzing the different development and adaptations of Churches and Synagogues in Boston, religion seems to play a pivotal role in community organizing. However, I naively assumed that this concept was overrated and has changed as U.S. communities have changed. I enjoyed reading the excerpts of Warren’s book Dry Bones Rattling, because it made me question those beliefs. By providing the Texas Industrial Areas Foundation’s work as a relevant contemporary example, Warren made me appreciate how faith based organizing might not be a new idea but it is certainly is not outdated. Above all though, I appreciated some of the reasons Warren gave for the importance of religion centers during social movements, particularly in reference to race and poverty. He discusses Sidney Verba’s research which showed “that religious institutions play a key role in equalizing political participation because they are sites where people of color and low-income people have the opportunity to learn skills that can be translated to politics, skills like writing letters, making speeches, and planning and making decisions in meetings.” Warren also discussed the uniting power of religion throughout history, writing, “At its best, religion has provided a moral basis to conceive of our place in a larger human society and inspired people to work for racial equality, social justice, and democracy.” These points are extremely valid, and illustrate why we always seem to circle back to religion when talking about nodes and networks.

Warren

Mark Warren makes a number of good arguments about the importance of community organizing in this country's future in Dry Bones Rattling. He proves how much it has declined in the past half century, the unfortunate effects that decline has had on the poor, and acknowledges the challenges we currently face in attempting to revitalize communities. Out of all the points he makes, however, I want to focus on a specific one, and that is racial segregation within and between communities. It's no secret that many towns/neighborhoods/cities have demographics which tilt heavily to one race or another. This could easily lead to members of the minority races feeling alienated in their own area. As a result, these members of the community could turn to one of the many small, specialized groups that Warren talks about, and make that group their community instead. These small groups can be built around many things, but race especially tends to be a strong binding factor. People's allegiances to these respective racial groups only increases segregation within communities, and Warren stresses how important bridging these groups is to being able to effectively organize a community. However, he realizes the difficulty of this as many racial groups could feel almost in competition with other racial groups who most likely do not share the same concerns. In terms of our map, I think the interconnectivity we offer to these various small groups will be huge in terms of encouraging said bridging. It will offer such a wide variety of other smaller, non-racial groups to connect with that each group will hopefully be able to find others it can connect with over shared concerns/beliefs/goals/etc., regardless of race. With each group connecting with just a couple others, we will be well on our way to forming a more cohesive community unit.

Meeting with UMass Boston

The small group meeting on Monday night with a few Tufts students and two UMass Boston students was very interesting and productive. It was excellent to hear from the UMass Boston students how they had used the software in the past, and what their goals were for the future. It seems as though their use of the mapping technology is similar and different to ours in many ways, and out goals and outcomes are very different. They have focused on a small community in Roxbury and have made very personal connections with the community through their work. They have many fewer 'nodes', but their ties to each are much stronger. This is a main point that I see our final goals differing in. UMass Boston intends to maintain these 'strong connections' to each node on the map. On the other hand, I believe that we envisioned our map and website acting independently (as possible) from our initial ground work, with each node taking ownership for itself, and the site being used as a resource.

One of the most interesting ideas that the students from UMass Boston expressed, that I don't think that we even touched upon was the possibility of exporting the map or an certain nodes connections to an outside source, such as a private website. Many organizations, businesses etc have an exported Google Map, listing their location, but also allowing viewers to interact and get themselves directions there. It is not just a link to Google Maps, but an integrated piece of the site. If an organization liked the map concept, I think it would be great if they wanted to export it to their site, publicizing not only our site, but their connections within the community.

Another important idea that came up were making the site accessible to all in the community, especially in language. How to make the site accurately multi-lingual is something we need to explore.

Dry Bones Rattling

Mark Warren's Dry Bones Rattling is a very interesting take on how to get America's social capital back up where it needs to be, yet in a way that includes racial consciousness and participation by all. He uses Texas' Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) network as a model for how this idea can be achieved in the most challenging of spots, the inner cities. Now, his main idea is that the way to shoot up America's social capital, and essentially its democratic ideals, is by essentially making politics and community organizations one through the beliefs, missions, and ethics that drive both.

I've actually looked at Warren's book in another class and context, so it's very interesting for me to put it toward the ideas of what we're trying to achieve. His argument definitely does bode well with social networking, although I feel it takes on a bit of a different notion when put into a digital context. The challenge comes when thinking about the true role that faith could play on a computer screen. While obviously for us, we aren't looking to necessarily connect politics, beliefs, and organizations through faith, I think that his model is hard to recreate as he explains his findings through a faith lens. Faith is a very tricky and powerful subject, especially as we've seen talking about Gamm's article. I'm not sure we could necessarily find the same type of synergy that faith creates to have people "religiously" use our map in the ways we intended it to be utilized. I may be being too close minded about this idea, but I'm having a hard time connecting all the ideas in his article to what we could practically apply to our class and our website. On a less pessimistic view, I certainly believe that Warren's suggestion can be played out in a more broad sense; by looking for aspects in American society that advance/cultivate/catalyze people's participation and how that can be tapped into and expelled towards others to make that phenomenon a norm. That's what I see our challenge as in relation to Dry Bones Rattling.