Organizers' Collaborative

At the end of March, I had the pleasure of organizing a workshop, "New Tools for Peace and Justice Organizers" at the AFSC-sponsored conference, New Strategies in the Time of Obama. The lively, well-attended workshop brainstormed the topics that people wanted to address, reviewed how Web 2.0 has changed organizing and the types of tools that are now available.

Anna Galland, field director of MoveOn.org, provided a neat typology:

• tech to communicate and plan internally – list-servs, google docs to allow simultaneous planning
• tech to amplify our voice – google maps showing where we are, allowing us to display a virtual march, Facebook petition that stretched over months
• tech to harness the wisdom of crowds to let smart things rise to the top – like WhiteHouse2
• tech to achieve advocacy goals – like the email-based tools that allow us to immediately call or email our senator
• neat appealing or "sexy" tech – text messages so you can deliver messages to your members, ie where is your polling station

Interestingly, much of the conversation came to focus on the first set of tools she identified: collaborative tools like Google Docs, etc.

In someways this squared with my experience in the peace movement where many folks are still getting their feet wet with these technologies and seem less concerned--right now, at least--with technologies that have mass impacts. It seemed to correspond with the fact that many peace organizations are (re)organizing internally and doing less mass movement-building right now.