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example, Warren made me appreciate how faith based organizing might not be a new idea but it is certainly is not outdated.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.

current vote count for the name survey

Streets of Hope response

One aspect of this narrative that I think really connects to our project is the creation of the Dudley Advisory Group out of the Riley Foundation's interest. When the directors of the Riley Foundation first saw the Dudley area and La Alianza Hispana up close, they had an emotional response. However, they were not listening to what the community was asking for. When La Alianza Hispana requested funding for a new carpet, the Foundation offered grants that did not solve any real problems. They offered to be a part of a larger, more visible initiative to revitalize the area, without addressing real issues. I see this problem paralleled very often when people try to help causes or organizations. It is imperative that the volunteers, donors, etc. listen to the people in need so that their resources can be put to use. I think that the network we are creating in Somerville will address this issue. It will give groups an opportunity to explicitly state what needs to be done, or at least a means to collaborate to figure out what needs to be done. The progression from isolated grants to the Dudley Advisory Group was an instrumental step, as input from more than one organization helped formulate their plans. I do not think that the ensuing problems stemmed from this collaboration, but that the problems would have prohibited any progress at all if the collaboration and communication did not take place.

Jonathan M. Tisch

I was assigned to read Jonathan M. Tisch's book "The Power of We: Succeeding Through Partnerships" for another class of mine. Yes, this is the Jonathan M. Tisch of who's building we sit in every wednesday night. His book revolves very heavily around the idea of "putting aside our individual concerns in order to work together toward a greater good." (pg. 1). From the second I read this sentence, I immediately began to think about our entire class and map project. The more and more I read the book, the more I began to really realize the immense value that our website could provide not only the city of Somerville, but the rest of Boston and hopefully even further in the future. While many people may think about how partnerships can help them, I truly don't believe that many people and places the real impact of this notion. We've talked about it over and over again, especially when harkening back to Linked, but even we seem to get caught up a bit in simple things like the name of our website and which we like better. Reading Tisch's book made me think on a different note of being in the place of the people that will use our site to really help transform and enhance their organization. I think this is the frame of mind we need to adapt as the semester quickly is coming to an end.

The most interesting and practical chapter in Tisch's book for our class was his final chapter. In it, he discusses how partnerships can help people, businesses, and institutions survive during some of the worst crises, much like we're seeing with the financial meltdown of our nation. I just want to make sure we don't lose sight of this notion. Whether it is putting in nodes ourselves or talking with non-profits and institutions throughout Somerville, I think we really need to stress the point that two is always better than one. Having partnerships can honestly lead to the help or demise of an organization. As the ones who are currently making many of these connections on the web, we really need to put our heart into this idea. With our abilities to frame what the website is going to be, do, look like, and contain, we have to remember our responsibility to Somerville and the rest of Boston in recovering from the economic downturn.