Craigslist Foundation Oakland Gathering

Last week we conducted our first gathering to share stories about the challenges faced in building stronger neighborhoods, and brainstorm about strategies and tech tools that could assist in that development.

We received such a huge response to our initial outreach from Oakland that it was a natural first destination. I am thrilled to report that the discussion was as lively and insightful as we could have hoped for, with a diverse group of activists, non profit professionals and engaged citizens speaking candidly about their own community building experiences and the obstacles that impede their progress.

We started the meeting with a discussion on leadership, asking the group if they believed that individual leaders are more important than institutions when it comes to community change.

There was a consensus amongst the group that change could not be possible without a combination of strong leaders and an organizational infrastructure, with Rachel Matthews pointing out (first!) that “someone has to have the first idea”, a sentiment Peter Plato echoed in his assertion that ‘No one raindrop thinks it is responsible for the flood”, emphasizing the importance of individual initiative. Sally Keane raised an interesting interpersonal angle on this, stating that from experience sometimes this individualist approach can make group members “shut down and defer to the one or two strong voices in the group”.

David Roach cited Dr.King’s successes as leader as being dependent on his ability to “follow first, and lead after”, attributing his individual impact to the many different organizations that augmented his message, while Randolph Belle stated the case for individual leaders as essential providers of “direction and context”.

Hector San Roman pointed out that revolutionary movements know that “one person rule creates a fragile structure’ ,although Evan Frisch was astute to point out that without leadership “over time there is a tendency to lose sight of the original goal”, indicating that sometimes organizations can be more concerned with their own survival than the task at hand. Sasha Esposito San Roman also spoke to the burden of “bureaucracy, which dictates that I have to spread the leadership around”.

The second statement we posed questioned the position of the internet as the key to improving communities, with Adhi Nagraj raising an interesting point about how some of Oakland’s biggest problems are founded on “racial and class based barriers that the net does little to dissipate”.

There was a consensus amongst the group that there is a big problem in translating online enthusiasm into ground action, and Idan Levin raised an interesting angle suggesting that it is exactly this “lack of foot traffic” that is instrumental to his San Pablo neighborhood’s decline.

Ashanti Branch, an educator, fears that the technological divide between those online and offline means that “we miss out on the people that could be creating the biggest change in our communities”, a sentiment echoed by Aeeshah Clottey who has identified a great number of offline leaders in her West Oakland neighborhood and works to help familiarize themselves with the tools. “Once they get it, they GET it!”.

Jim Ratliff was a bold evangelist of these new technologies, stating the connective and productive benefits of the web in his wired neighborhood. Diana Sherman, a non profit professional, spoke to how collaborative tools “increase her bandwidth” immeasurably, although vouching for the “low tech, hi touch” benefits of her local community dinners.

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Our group brainstorming session about neighborhood communication was fruitful, with some of the nuggets paraphrased here:

Idan Levin “My neighborhood list would claim to solve all of these problems, but is somehow still insufficient”

Diana Sherman “We need more granular control for users subscribing to our mailing lists. Perhaps a tag based opt in/out format”

Jim Ratliff “Narrow topic mailing lists are not durable. There is a problem with people believing that these applications should be customized exactly to them”

Diana also raised the interesting distinction of ‘circles within circles’, where (for example) you may only have the cell number of five of your neighbors, which in turn fragments who you have access to and who not. Privacy is a concern, as while everyone in one’s building may be comfortable with exchanging cell numbers, you may not want to share those details with an entire block.

In my mind this raises an interesting question, namely about borders. At what point do we draw the distinction between those inside and outside of our community, and how can tech tools endeavor to redefine those parameters?

Other (paraphrased) gems from the discussion:

David Roach “My community trusts word of mouth information, we need a presence on the ground to validate the information”

Randolph Belle “We need a portal to match people with resources. We need it to be the first thing they see when they go online”

Peter Prato “With so much information online, a tool to get relevant information to the right groups at the right time is a burning issue. Why is it so hard to disseminate info, when (paradoxically) it has never been easier?”

Jim Ratliff ” A wiki structure would be a great way to memorialize and critique community success stories”

Idan Levin “Those offline, over time, become invisible. Gangs are winning over the internet as they are organized physically, locally”.

We would like to publicly thank all who participated in the discussion, and are excited to hear their ideas and developments moving forward. Special thanks also to Cynthia Bazan and Policy Link for their generous donation of time and space.

Next to D.C!

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