A-List Bloggers Network » Blog Action Day

Peer Pressure Was Intense Today

Cynthia D'Amour — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 02:34:18 +0000

� To blog about poverty.

Today is Blog Action Day.

Bloggers are encouraged to blog about some aspect of poverty.
It’s a worldwide effort.

I had planned to talk about something else today.

But the pressure started escalating yesterday.
And was strong-arming rampant� today.
In group blasts and by individuals.

I’ve got mixed feelings about the discussions.

Of course, poverty is an important issue.
I’m not sure focus sans concerted call to action is going to make a big impact.

I decided to write about the actual day instead.

Almost 10,000 bloggers had registered as blogging on poverty today.
People are proudly displaying badges showing they are part of the voice.
Bloggers� invited those� without blogs to participate in the discussion.

Here’s what I wonder - why is Blog Action Day so big?

And chapters moan about no volunteers?
Leaders� struggle to get members to meetings?
Only handful of members actively enjoy and promote advocacy efforts?

What’s the difference?

A simple graphic people can show? (Like the “proud member of” logos?)
An important issue? (Is your chapter’s mission milk-toast?)
An aggressive word of mouth campaign and invitation to play? (Hmmmm…?)

Or maybe I’m just missing something?

Makes me think of chapter leaders…how do you get your members as excited and committed as the bloggers involved in Blog Action Day?

Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty in DC

Elizabeth Engel — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:03:00 +0000

Signing up for 2008 Blog Action Day got me thinking about being tagged in the Changeblogging meme and how poverty and lack of political representation might relate to each other.

When I was in grad school, I had the opportunity to read John Gaventa's Power and Powerlessness, a study of rural Appalachian mining communities, their mistreatement at the hands of the coal mining companies, and the general unwillingness of the US and state governments to step in and do anything, "anything" even including enforcing laws on the books not in the mining companies' interests.

Gaventa looks at three types of power relationships: those that affect bargaining, those that affect the "rules of the game," and those that affect the social construction of meaning. Unsurprisingly, those who lack power (money, political influence, representation) come up short on all three (additional information about the book available from publisher University of Illinois Press), thus maintaining a status quo that benefits the powerful minority at the expense of the powerless majority.

As a resident of the "taxation without representation" District of Columbia, these issues are frequently on my mind. DC is two cities: a wealthy, professional, largely white city of people whose power relationships don't depend on local representation, either because they are able to circumvent the need for federal legislative representation through money and access or because they are not "officially" DC residents and so have representation through their "home" location; and a poor, under- or unemployed, largely non-white city of people who are largely ignored by the power barons of the federal government who are their neighbors (and yes, they are neighbors - DC isn't a very geographically big place).

The power relationships reinforced by the lack of money, access, education, etc. of large parts of the resident population stack the deck against those residents: we lack the leverage to take a strong position in negotiations, the "rules of the game" have been set by others in ways that are not in our favor, and social meaning is constructed by those who control the public space.

So should we all just give up and resign ourselves to being the laboratory for every idiotic idea some representative from Back of Beyond Town, Midwest State wants to foist on us, unable to decide our own laws on a host of items that our federal structure generally relegates to state or local control?

Hell, no, and I'll tell you why: the power of (you guessed it) social media. A Google search of "DC Voting Rights" turns up over 300,000 entries. The Internet, and more specifically, citizen created media, have allowed a variety of organizations from the District government to formal DC Vote groups to Common Cause and the League of Women Voters to local bloggers to find each other and organize around a variety of events and actions designed to raise awareness and end this injustice.

This, I think, points out the larger importance of a non-commericalized Internet. Sure, the Web provides a voice to plenty of wingnut groups, but it also provides one of the few large-scale organizing forums accessible to groups not part of the existing power structure of the US.

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What I’m Reading

Elizabeth Engel — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:29:00 +0000

All the cool stuff being written around Blog Action Day 2008. It’s not too late to participate!
Michael Wilbon on the impending Dallas Cowboys implosion. Hey TO: I’ve got my popcorn ready!
Daily Kos, to keep up on the polls. I can haz blowout?
c-o-m. Groovy!
The WaPo on WTF just happened?
Miracle at St.…

Still Flabbergasted! Doesn’t happen often. The office phone rang. James answered....
What I’m Reading Not too much other than my email this week -...
My Funny Valentine We did it our way. Commercial pressure says Valentine’s...

Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty

Elizabeth Engel — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:26:00 +0000

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

I’m participating – are you?
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