Thought Overflow…Golda’s BlogIf memes are like genes, then having a conversation in which you share ideas and come up with new ones is like…?

0 Political/Community Projects I’m Doing or would Like to Do

Golda to RandomWrites  

So I was talking over ideas with my friend John, and he asked me to make a list of all the ones I’ve been thinking of, or trying to start, recently. And it was a long list! Here it is, and should anyone reading this be crazy enough to want to join forces feel free to give me a ring
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local/remote/general/political
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– helping HEPAC in Nogales see http://friendsofhepac.org. Just set up the shop at https://www.etsy.com/shop/HEPACooperativa need to promote it. Recruit volunteers (maybe on volunteermatch.org) to help manage their websites. sponsor kid at tech school there to mentor others in coder dojo. invite people in Tucson to visit/go on a water drop for No More Deaths (same organizer)

– helping Amani daycare volunteering with my kids there with refugee kids. follow up with dept of health and human services who are giving them a hard time. organize other volunteers to build a community garden there. remember to bring more folders for the kids.

– work on implementing the concept of helping communities in the course of campaigns and not only after winning elections. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/7/30/1685561/-Campaigns-Even-Long-Shots-Can-Create-Change-Now May commission with my neice Hannah some T-shirts promoting local candidates who need exposure, will give or give for donation these shirts to people who can then volunteer/donate blood while wearing them. Also maybe make that garden, above. Maybe use local Tucson volunteer site to recruit more (not sure if has to be non-political there). Maybe offer to campaign coordinators to train their volunteers.

– walk my neighborhood for the Ground Game. invite people to LD9 meeting and/or house party. fix up room so we can have house party

– offer to speak to one or more groups about ground game and political community organizing.

– asked a friend/co-worker if he wants to partner on an app, ‘greenatu’ (terrible name), basically it lets me very quickly say into my phone or press one button, “talk to shanna” or “talk to friends” and it sets me ‘green’ for talking to a specific person or group of people. If they use the app also, and also are ‘green’ in my direction, it either automatically connects us or lets me know a list of the people who are ‘green at me’. This is good for very busy people who have short windows of time to connect, instead of always scheduling phone calls, just turn green at a specific group when you have time to talk, and talk opportunistically to whoever is available. I think it would be good for optimizing time but it would have to be marketed in order to be successful, because its the kind of app that is more valuable the more people use it. This would be for-profit but probably a B corp if I have any say so and it would help political organizers too. If Gunnar is interested may try to get investors.

– after greenatu add stackfor, easy way to save things to show specific person in person. then myapi, ways I want to interact with others, match up. then mindthreads, the organizer thing.

– with creativetucson.org, ‘Hot Seat’ idea (have a candidate simultaneously questioned by one stakeholder from each side of the spectrum. Ping pong, should be funny and insightful, I hope). Email the current candidates and see if they want to do it (already have studio & camera resources) Have already run by the creative staff, they like.

– with creativeTucson.org, ‘Reverse Roles’ idea where a thoughtful person from each side plays each other and discusses some practical issue, they have to act as each other (hopefully not too satirically!) Shanna who does improv very enthusiastic about this one.

– organize more volunteer citizen journalists to get started, kickoff is Sept 18 at this webinar https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/hub/get-trained at 9AM PST I have one volunteer committed to this and want to get 3-4 more.

– eventually finish porting btucson.com to graphql/react interface and maybe have some citizen journalists write there, show connections and relationships between things

– work with LocalFirst to get together a group to do local inventory search so people can more easily find local products, buy local online, local gift cards.

– learn and do more physical making, planting

– ** online not started yet ** – Raise the Voices – maybe raise funds thru crowdpac, basically amplify voice of anyone imprisoned or killed for political reasons

– with Al, work on TheAngryHandicap.com blog site with articles from his life/thoughts; he’s done one thanking former pres bush sr

with civ.works https://civ.works/
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– Local Event Calendars: improve the event scraping and use our interface to make a good local Tucson calendar once George opens up the Freemium version (i wrote the original scraper, george’s team has improved and integrated it into civ.works)

– Making Laws on Github: look at laws at http://represent.us/ and http://publicleadershipinstitute.org/model-bills/ see if anyone local is interested in pushing one or more of these forward in Arizona, if they want to modify put it on Github and try to get people into the process of public modification of bill text. Also try more controversial policy docs/laws like compromises on abortion, maybe a community works citizenship path.

– did – got volunteers at http://volunteermatch.org, George just trained the first two today on a Zoom session, they have started work on Slack since I talked to you!

with crowdpac
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(I already have a whole list of these, but on my other computer, will paste later. this actually should be my main area of focus.)

myself/readers
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– finish writing very detailed take on Freakonomics answering flawed arguments and presenting a different view. for my neice Sarah who asked me to read that book, but will also share publicly.

– write regularly for different audiences. I write for a progressive audience here https://www.dailykos.com/user/wordmonkey/history but want to find a place to engage a moderate/conservative audience. Maybe medium. Maybe my own blog and link things.

– some of the articles: write about applying DBT principles and psychology to politics/diplomacy; about open source principles to laws and society. also best practices articles. Prison reform! Interview experts/stakeholders on any of the above projects.

– continue the FB order of the teaspoon page with one small thing a day

that’s all, I think. Feel free to share all/parts with friends if you want.

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