Pepsi Challenge Grant:
The Progressive Slate and Communities Joined in Action, Lifting the Digital Curtain
Rural communities and communities of color live behind the digital divide. They don’t have access to the same online organizing tools as white, urban upper- and middle-class neighborhoods. As a result, progressives find it difficult to engage the under-served.
Each year at Netroots Nation it is noted that too few people of color are included or heard.
I have an idea to increase the numbers of people of color attending the annual conference. I want to tap the existing organization Communities Joined in Action and send leaders of these community health coalitions to Netroots Nation and introduce them to online organizing tools.
Communities Joined in Action is a national alliance of local coalitions working to end disparities in health care. CJA believes health care is a civil rights issue. It works to create civil rights facts on the ground by teaching coalitions in underserved communities to use the Affordable Care Act and other tools to ensure access to quality health care among the poor, people of color, the homeless and other hard-to-reach populations.
This year, a Marketing and New Media Committee has been created and dedicated to teaching coalitions to build power through community organizing, and to make use of online organizing tools. I have been tapped to chair this new CJA Marketing and New Media committee. I have submitted a Pepsi Challenge Grant for $50,000 to help Communities Joined in Action to bring a large CJA delegation to NN12 to caucus with bloggers and to learn on- and offline organizing techniques. I will also help CJA to develop webinars to teach community coalitions across the US to use some of these tools.
More below the jump:
David Trujillo and TheFatLadySings
Lucia Sanchez and Raymond Ortiz
at the NN11 American Indian
Caucus last year
Last year, I brought three colleagues from
Rio Arriba County in Northern New Mexico, to NN11 in Minneapolis. We attended the American Indian and Latino Caucuses as well as workshops in community organizing, messaging, online tools, etc. Since then, Rio Arriba County has hired a Public Information Officer, revamped our
County and
health council websites, including a
blog so we can communicate directly with the public.
Last week, mindoca traveled to Rio Arriba County to teach us to use and train others to use new media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs. She explained their use in advocacy campaigns, marketing websites and blogs, community strengthening activities and legislative action. Mindoca also attended the annual CJA conference in Washington, D.C., where she trained coalitions to use online tools in their organizing efforts and to build community power.
The people who came to Netroots Nation helped to organize the training. Ray, our IT guru, connected seventeen laptops and iPads to wireless networks. People from our health, DWI and food councils and county staff tweeted for the first time. Imagine a roomful of people who had NO PREVIOUS ACCESS all tweeting one another and brainstorming about how to use this tool to reduce drinking and diabetes, to help neighbors purchase locally grown organic food from local farmers, or to pass needed legislation.
We didn't limit ourselves to twitter. We learned how to use facebook, YouTube and Storify (which I didn't even know existed). And we learned to choose the correct tool to accomplish our organizing goals.
By the end of the training, we were planning ways to reorganize our councils to allow us to maintain and connect a website and blog, as well as separate facebook and twitter accounts. In the coming weeks, we will begin teaching the public to use these tools.
My friends and I want to attend NN12 next year and provide a way for colleagues from Communities Joined in Action to attend as well.
We have joined a group of progressive organizations to jointly compete in an online fundraising opportunity called Pepsi Refresh Everything. To help us, click this link (http://bit.ly/...) to register an account with the Progressive Slate. Then click on our link (Communinties Joined in Action, Lifting the Digital Curtain) to go to Pepsi and vote.
Please vote every day in December!
If funded, the grant will also send two members of Native American Netroots who would not otherwise be able to go to Providence. And NAN will help Communities Joined in Action to recruit American Indian coalitions as members.
My colleagues and I hope to see you at NN12 Providence, Rhode Island. We hope to be able to tell you there about the many wonderful facets of the Affordable Care Act that are helping us to eliminate health disparities. And we are eager to learn about the use of online tools to register and mobilize our communities to vote.
Rather than asking you to donate money, we're asking that you to sign-up to be a daily voter for Communities Joined in Action in December.
As a daily voter, you'll receive a short email each morning with a link where you can go and cast 5 votes each day for all the organizations on the Progressive Slate (that's what we're calling all of our groups working together). We'll know by the end of the month whether we won or not.
Working with the other organizations on the slate, we're hoping to build a group of several thousand daily voters—can you sign up now to help us win?
Please Tweet and share.
We need diarists to help us promote this cause every day in December.
Sign up for a day in the comment thread below.