I strongly endorse Mark Dorosin and Penny Rich in District 1. Both will bring good ideas and real leadership to the Board of Orange County Commissioners. In District 2, I support Renee Price who will be
a better advocate for progressive policies than the incumbent. If you live in Hillsborough or rural Orange County, you will also be selecting 3 school board members. I recommend giving a vote to Lawrence Sanders who will bring thoughtful enthusiasm to the job. And there can be no doubt that Valerie Foushee is the best choice for NC House in every way. I’m happy to say that The Independent Weekly agrees, and endorsed all of these candidates as well.

If you enjoy living in one of the most open-minded and forward-thinking counties in North Carolina, as I do, I hope you will join me in voting for these hard-working progressive leaders. And if you have your own ideas about who people should vote for, I hope you will join the conversation at orangepolitics.org/issue/elections/2012.

Ruby Sinreich
Chapel Hill

This year, I have worked with the conference organizers to develop a hybrid format. I have seen hybrids work well, and I’ve seen them fail badly. I think we have come up with a structure that is truly the best of both worlds. This new approach gives us some reassurance in advance that there will be some great sessions to attend, but also allows the attendees to shape the event into whatever they want and need. Many participants don’t think of themselves as leaders but just as everyone has something to learn, everyone has something to share as well. This event allows all of us to do both.

So check out the schedule. Do you see something you’d like to learn? Do have an idea about what is missing? Add it on the wiki. Once we get the conference started, both the pre-selected speakers and the people thinking up emerging proposals will all have the opportunity to “pitch” or explain their session the participants and get added to “the grid.” What happens next is up to us! (For more about this process, see my blog posts from previous unconferences.)

Come on out May 4th – register by Friday the 27th to get the $75 early bird rate – and help us make this the event that you want and need!

Anyway, I’m telling you that to tell you this: For years when my friends drooled over iPads and and Android tablets, I was not moved. I bought a netbook that runs Ubuntu instead. But suddenly I find myself desperate for a tablet! What changed? A few things, including being a parent and seeing the many applications from ebooks for kids, to games and videos that can help entertain and maybe even teach my son. I’m also going on a long trip for work soon and want to do  a lot of reading. I do a lot of live-tweeting during meetings that I think I could do from a tablet if I had an external (probably bluetooth) keyboard. And a colleague recently mentioned that a lot of folks watch videos on their tablets while working out at the gym, which I could see me doing if I ever go ahead and get that membership.

So I have a lot of geeky friends, and I thought you might be able to help me decide on the best tablet for my needs. Some of the criteria I’m looking at:

• Not made by Apple, and an open of an OS as possible. I like WebOS and so I’m open to the Touchpad as well as the many Android choices.
• Preferably smaller than 10″ for ease of holding up for long periods, but this is not a deal-breaker.
• SD or mini-SD slot so I can easily add music files.
• Sturdy enough for a preschooler to play with it, or a large supply of compatible cases.
• Bluetooth or some other method of connecting with an external keyboard.
• Excellent full-featured web browser as almost everything I do is online.
• Decent battery life.
• Bonus: able to act as a remote control to my media center, which is a computer running Windows and Ubuntu.

Here are some of the leading contenders I’ve looked at recently.

Bridging The On-Line Real-World Gap: An Interview With Ruby Sinreich Of Netcentric Campaigns

Ruby Sinreich is the Web Maven at Netcentric Campaigns, a division of Green Media Toolshed. She is also the founder and editor of OrangePolitics.org, a progressive multi-author blog about politics based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Previously, she was the Online Organizing Manager in the Public Policy Division of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.Ruby and I talked in the following interview about Netcentric Campaigns and building an effective on-line strategy to support off-line, real world political organizing.

Ruby:

Network-centric advocacy is based on a philosophy of empowering the grassroots, your supporters, the “network.” We try to build strong networks between activists so they collectively form an effective movement. There are five aspects that we think are necessary for effective social networks

1. You must have strong social ties so that the members trust each other and know who (with what skills) is in the network. Friendster/MySpace/Orkut/etc. are one way to build social ties, but so are in-person gatherings. Happy hours can also build your movement.
2. There needs to be a common story that ties members together. They should have a shared sense of what the problem or what the goal is. This can vary widely, it might be a generally shared value, or it might be a mutual bad guy.
3. There has to be a dense communication grid so folks have many ways to meet and communicate with each other. Blogs and social networking tools are a part of this, so are instant messaging and face-to-face gatherings.
4. The members should share resources with each other. This could be money, space, information, etc. Like a directory that members can access, or sharing expertise.
5. Finally there should be a sense of purpose so the network members know what the network is for. So they think of it as a tools for collective action or whatever the goal is.

Marshall:

It seems that there has been work to bridge the online world and the offline world for progressive causes for at least a few years now. Are there specific lessons that have been learned that have changed the way that you now advise organizations to, for example, build strong social ties with online and off or build a common story?

Ruby:

I don’t really think much about the distinction between on- and off-line. When we know our goal and our strategy, that leads us to tools which may or may not be online. We want to use a lot of online social networking and self-publishing because it’s very supportive of the kind of ties we want to build.

The internet itself is very network-centric (at least right now) so it lends itself to organizing in this way.

Marshall:

How do you advise people to use those tools to build ties in light of age and tech comfort level differences?

Ruby:

I try to connect new tools to old methodologies.

Marshall:

Can you give me examples of new tools/old methodologies that have made the most sense to people new to tech but familiar with old methods of political organizing? Analogies perhaps?

Ruby:

For example, I think Saul Alinsky was a great and strategic community organizer. Baby boomers are more familiar with him. So I talk about how his goal was to build local leaders that would speak out on behalf of themselves instead of doing it for them. Helping your supporters blog about your issue is that same thing – you are raising up their voice to advance the cause and empower them at the same time.

Marshall:

Are there opportunities afforded by these new tools to respond to some of the problems of traditional organizing? Like loud voices having undue influence or male dominance of planning?

Ruby:

Yes, but the digital divide makes new problems. In some ways, the Internet is a level playing field, but only if you are there.

As the New Yorker cartoon quipped “on the internet, no-one knows you’re a dog.” or a lesbian, or disabled, or African American, or an immigrant. BUT…There are still cliques that form, and sometimes they can be insular groups of straight, white guys.

But sometimes they’re not. It really depends on who listens to who. Does the media mostly read the authoritative-seeming blogs of the power elite? Or do they read the blogs of regular folks, activists, people who are just as authoritative but may not have as high of a Technorati ranking.

Marshall:

How do you, or how do you advise others to, change this dynamic of who gets read?

Ruby:

Well to some extent the machines that confer authority (like Google and Technorati) are neutral (ie they don’t know or care that you are a dog), so if more “outsider” voices use the tools that sway them, like hyperlinking and tagging, they can promote the voices they choose.

But I also think we should be building our own networks. Like, do I have to care about myTechnorati ranking? There are more important factors than just numbers of readers.

On my local politics blog (orangepolitics.org) I care much more about the quality than the quantity of readers.

Are the folks YOU want to talk to reading your blog? If not, what are they reading? Try to hang out at the sites they hang out at.

Marshall:

How other than readership numbers and numbers of inbound links can a person quickly evaluate the credibility/authoritativeness of a blog they discover?

Ruby:

It’s also about trust. I usually discover a blog because someone else links to it. If a lot of people I like link to it, or if I personally know and trust the person who links to it, I trust that blog more. You can also look at how much commenting is going on, but that’s not always a good indicator. You have to decide for yourself ultimately.

Marshall:

That sounds realistic for sure. Can you provide me another example of old political methods and new communication tools working together beyond building local voices through blogs?

Ruby:

Door-to-door canvassing and phone banking are old methods. Increasingly folks do not want to be bothered at home, and are turned off by what might be perceived as an intrusion. The new methods are house parties and viral e-mail. Note that both of these come from your own social network, not just a stranger who wants to talk to you.

I trust the people I know more. If they tell something is important, I believe them. If the TV tells me… not so much.

Marshall:

So this new era of communication technologies is actually re-emphasizing the importance of face to face connections?

Ruby:

It’s emphasizing social connections which are often built in person and can be enhanced online.

HASTAC is joining with others around the U.S. and globally on the Internet to protest the outrageous SOPA/PIPA bill that – yes – is still making its way through Congress right now. Major organizations such Wikipedia,Mozilla, and many others are participating in a one-day black out, while others including Google, are using their home pages, as are we, to protest and inform about these frightening bills that would have a chilling impact on intellectual freedom and digital interaction. We were heartened by the news that the Obama administration is opposing the bills and so we chose to to stay online but with a banner on the site, but clearly the debate is far from over. The potential implications of this corporate and politically-motivated censorship upon academic freedom, especially digital scholarship, are simply staggering.

So many others have covered the issues around SOPA/PIPA so well (and my own understanding of the legislation is so comparatively tiny) that I won’t bother to rehash them but will link to some of the best below. Thanks to HASTACers Gerry Canavan for posting about SOPA last month and Alex Leavitt for today’s post about how SOPA opposition galvanized on Reddit. I highly recommend this 4-minute video that explains the legislation, including an important update at the end.

Link fest:

• Wikipedia’s anti-SOPA backout
  http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout
• Reddit: A technical examination of SOPA and PROTECT IP
  http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/technical-examination-of-sopa-and.html
• Artists and musician oppose PROTECT-IP http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa
• How PIPA and SOPA Violate White House Principles Supporting Free Speech and Innovation http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa
• danah boyd: We need to talk about piracy (but we must stop SOPA first)
  http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2012/01/17/stop-sopa.html
• Slate: The Internet’s Intolerable Acts
  http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technocracy/2011/12/ stop_online_piracy_act_and_protect_ip_act_a_pair_of_bills_that_threaten_ internet_freedom_.single.html
• Quite a lot of excellent posts about SOPA from Cory Doctorow  http://boingboing.net/tag/sopa
• The White House: Combating Online Piracy while Protecting an Open and Innovative Internet
  https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#/%21/response/combating-online-piracy-while-protecting-open-and-innovative-internet

I was extremely disappointed to see the Town handle the anarchist break-in at the Yates Building so poorly after working so well with the activists at Occupy Chapel Hill/Carrboro for the past month. What happened last weekend played into every simplistic anarcho-fantasy about jack-booted thugs violently protecting the wealthy. That’s not the Chapel Hill we know, but there is a vocal group of residents that now may never believe otherwise.

I’m undecided about Jim Neal’s specific proposal for an independent commission to study the events of last weekend. Do we really have to empanel a committee to tell us what almost everyone knows (at least in retrospect), which is that the police action was unnecessarily forceful and overly broad? However, I very much want and need some clearer answers from the Town of Chapel Hill.

I understand that the police’s action was taken out of fear of violence, which was rationally based on the (limited) information they had at the time. But it was hardly the only tactic available to the Town. The range of options available could have included sending a plainclothes officer or civilian staffer to communicate with the group, possibly to negotiate or just to give them a deadline to leave. It’s not as if Riddle was being deprived of his non-use of the property, so there should have been time to consult the Mayor and maybe even other community leaders who would have provided valuable insight into the real risks involved (or not involved) before endangering the public by brandishing assault rifles on West Franklin Street and detaining people guilty of nothing but standing on a public sidewalk.

The people of Chapel Hill are owed an explanation and an obligation to try to avoid any further such actions. Below are my suggestions for how the Town can work to make amends and rebuild trust:

1. The Town Manager should investigate the chain of decision-making. Who gave the order, and was it consistent with instructions from the Chief and the Manager? I think so highly of both that I frankly have trouble believing they would have signed off on such an operation. I hope no-one has to be fired, but it’s critical that someone publicly admit that a mistake was made and take responsibility for it.

2. The Town should drop the charges against the squatters (or encouraging Riddle to drop charges, if he pursues them) as a goodwill gesture in response to the excessive use of force and intimidation during the arrests. This can be done while making it clear that the Town will not hesitate to arrest people for breaking and entering property in the future, whether it is abandoned or not.

3. The Town should put systems in place to ensure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again. This might include:

• Improve relationships with local communities to build knowledge and relationships that will help the police to avoid stereotyping and profiling (think “known anarchists” and “random black men walking down the street”),
• develop tactics that address public problems in a more targeted fashion instead of blanketing an entire area with force and detaining everyone inside (think CHPD actions on Graham Street in 1990 and Sykes Street in 2004), and
• give attention and support to the police review board and consider expanding their powers to give feedback on public police activity and to generate additional recommendations for more effective policing in the future.

I understand you may already be inundated with opinions about this, but some of the best analyses I’ve seen have been in the Independent Weekly http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/chapel-hill-cops-vs-anarchists-and-no-one-wins/Content?oid=2706659 and in an essay by Tim Tyson: http://newblackman.blogspot.com/2011/11/things-to-consider-while-occupying.html. I highly recommend reading these with an open mind to grasp the complex nature of this conflict in which neither “side” has the moral high ground.

If you want to know more about what the community is saying, there are quite a wide range of opinions being shared in the comments on OrangePolitics: http://orangepolitics.org/tags/occupychc

Thank you for your hard work, especially in difficult situations such as this. I appreciate your thoughtful consideration of my concerns.

Sincerely,

Ruby Sinreich

Coach Roy Williams said about this game “To me, it’s a way of honoring our military. That’s what it boils down to.” I’m left wondering if I’m still allowed to enjoy the game even though I’m pacifist. I’m not opposed to their service, but I don’t really want to honor it any more than I do teachers, civil rights activists, peace corps members, doctors without borders, and so many others that also make sacrifices to benefit the global community.

Here are some excerpts of the conversation on Facebook (Twitter has been, well, less productive):

Let’s just play some good basketball and try to ignore the camo-themed uniforms.
5 hours ago

D: Let’s not blame the soldiers for the decisions of their leaders.
5 hours ago

G: Thank you for this Ruby. I think it’s kind of a neat place to play a basketball game, but the military tie-in disgusts me as well, and I wasn’t sure if it was just my anti-Tar Heel bias kicking in.
5 hours ago

Ruby: D, the leaders are due a lot of blame, but anyone holding a gun has to be responsible for what comes out of it. I appreciate that many military members are trying to protect and serve the country, but there are ways to do that without violence and I don’t see national holidays and showbiz beatification of those peace corps or Americorps members, civil rights activists, teachers, community leaders, etc.*
5 hours ago

D: I can appreciate your point of view. But I also know that many young men and women coming out of high school have limited opportunities for supporting themselves and their families, and the military training, benefits and salaries can be quite an incentive for folks for whom college and other types of advanced training are out of reach for economic or academic reasons. I also believe there are just (WWII, and to a more limited degree, Afghanistan) and unjust (Iraq) wars, and that the blame for the latter rests with our elected leaders (and ourselves for supporting them) much more so than the mostly underprivileged soldiers we send off to die in them.
5 hours ago

M: Okay people. Please keep in mind who your friends are on Facebook and that what you write could strike a very sensitive chord. This subject matter is different from vaccinations and choice and occupy wall street. If you haven’t had a family member serving in the military you have no idea what you’re talking about.
4 hours ago

G: M, I understand. But I find it sorta patronizing when people tell me that because I don’t have X I can’t say Y. I appreciate the sacrifices that veterans have and continue to make, but I think we’re able to comment on whether or not we think it’s appropriate to be linking militarization with college sports without causing too much harm to society.
3 hours ago

M: G, my husband lost his right arm in Iraq and was two steps away from losing his life. His politics are generally middle to liberal, he is a well-educated thoughtful human being, and his reasons for joining the military are complex and rational. And he did carry a gun in another country and he got blown up. What you learn when you are exposed to the military culture is that his story is not uncommon. Many of the Marines I’ve met are the most loyal, generous, thoughtful, and trustworthy people I know. Often their reasons for joining the military run parallel to my reasons for becoming a doctor. As always there is something to be said for acceptance and open-mindedness. And further best be careful what you say about the military around the wife of a wounded veteran because she will lose her shit.
2 hours ago

W: A soldier’s duty, his or her discipline, is to follow orders and ship out when sent. Soldiers do not make policy, they take an oath to defend the Constitution. When policy makers circumvent the Constitution, well, we see the results. Our friend Dubya has destroyed countless lives and will never stand trial for war crimes. Support the troops. Oppose the war.

“Leadership gains authority and respect when the voiceless poor are treated fairly.” – Proverbs 29:14 (The Message)

“Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” – Proverbs 29:18 (KJV)
about an hour ago

G: M I appreciate your husband’s service and sacrifice.
about an hour ago

J: I’m a Vietnam-era vet who agrees with Ruby.
57 minutes ago

M2: The more one reads and learns about the history of wars, the more apparent it is that soldiers are pawns in a dirty game of power & wealth accrual. I personally support each troop on a personal level, but to parrot that I Supprt the Troops is to acquiesce to propaganda.
52 minutes ago

Ruby: M, thanks so much for writing and not just being quietly mad at me. You know I care about you and Jon. And I have had other friends and even family in the military.

I didn’t like Jon’s choice to join the Marines in the first place, but I don’t think any less of him for disagreeing with me. I don’t think he’s wrong for wanting to help other people through military service. What I have a problem with every day, but especially today, is when the appreciation of that service is done in a way that approches hero worship, excludes recognition of the pain of war, and also fails to recognize the wide range of ways that a person can sacrifice and serve their community.

I think the origin of Veteran’s Day is Armistice Day, which was a day celebrating the END of violence while appreciating those who served and especially those who were lost in war. I like that idea better than the big Hollywood Veteran’s Day – as we are seeing played out on the USS Carl Vinsson tonight, for example.

As a Buddhist, I just don’t believe in solving problems through violence, although I can usually make room for self defense (great article exploring this: www.susanpiver.com/wordpress/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-is-dead-one-buddhists-response/). So I am not going to get to a place of feeling “rah rah” about our troops, even though I understand that they are trying to help and are making decisions that make sense to them in their own contexts.

I respect most military service members, but I do sometimes wonder if the feeling is mutual.
12 minutes ago

* Except maybe the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Here’s a live streaming video from the street, below this I’ll post some more links.

Just heard on the live stream from a protester named Lizzie, who just finished telling the story of her arrest: “You don’t need to be here (on Wall Street), light that fire in your own community.” A lot of my friends have been pointing out the difference between how this is (or isn’t) being covered compared to your average Tea Party protest. Can you imagine if a bunch of Republicans took an action this dramatic, or were treated this inhumanely? Not just FOX but CNN and even MBNBC would be en fuego.

• Occupy Wall Street
• Occupy Together (for folks outside NYC)
• Adbusters
• Open source occupation guide (a wiki for demonstrators)
• Anonymous
• #OccupyWallStreet & @OccupyWallSt
• Updates from my friend Liza Sabater who went down to visit the protesters last night