wrythings

With news that Chicago would move to the next stage in the 2016 Olympic bid, Dan Bassill asked that we take the field for social justice with equivalent passion and dedication. Simply stated: let’s have a Gold Medal for work to end poverty. The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Give and Take blog gave this challenge a controversial spin. What follows is my comment in reply (with a few additional links).

Dan’s challenge is posed for all of us. It’s great that his post is getting attention. If we look for controversy everywhere we are sure to find it even when it isn’t present.

What can the Chronicle do better in this regard? I think there are lessons to be learned in the positive media movement.

I’m not a Pollyanna. There are likely some significant factors regarding the Olympic bid that deserve critical exploration/attention.

The Olympics should bring out our best. Dan’s call should rouse in us that aspiration for addressing the most pressing circumstances in our society.

April 20 the eChicago Symposium was convened at Dominican University, April 20-21 a conference was convened by “A View from the Ground” at the University of Chicago on the 8 blocks of public housing known as Stateway Gardens, and April 21-22 Chicago hosts the Green Festival.

Each event has a deep and conscious grounding in questions of social justice. It feels like many of us are waking up and coming together.

Chicago presents itself as a global city, and aspires to being the greenest city. Calls for sustainable living, living well together and building the Chicago we want are bringing our attention to our institutions and to questions of social justice.

Philanthropy can take a more prominent role in this blurring of the lines between Environmental, Media, Technology, and Social Justice movements.

This convergence of movements is happening anyway, so let’s come together with Olympic aspirations in all that we do, whether we’re in Chicago or not.

Thank you Dan for challenging us to challenge ourselves in the Olympic spirit.

What is Digital Literacy without deep dedication to cultivating Literacy and Judgment? What is Digital Citizenship without ongoing effort to promote a robust Civic Life? What is Digital Inclusion without a true effort and policy of Inclusion? What’s the Expansion in Digital Expansion? Digital Government? Digital Community? Digital Neighborhoods? The Digerati? Don’t get me started on Digital Futures and Opportunities…

Digital isn’t the point, whatever the form: e-this, i-that. We single out recent technologies with magical promise by such signals as they arrive in successive waves. Technology that has permeated society is barely recognized as technology by most of us: television, telephone, tricycles, fire and other dangerous things. We know we need a mechanic when something goes wrong (if we aren’t technically inclined), but with the newer technologies most of society remains mystified (including practitioners).

We can no longer participate in the perpetuation of that mystification through repetition and variation on the incantations. We can’t proclaim the benefits of indiscriminate innovations and extensions in and of the virtual world dreaming that that is enough and will necessarily and sufficiently transform our society.

Digital Inclusion is the term of art that really broke the spell for me. “What art?” you may ask… the selling of networks and network consulting and ancillary services and technologies, whether wireless, WiMAX-WiFi or other broadbands and slices of spectrum. If we’re Keynesians after all, then let’s just say so. If not, or if we’re moderated Keynesians, we had better be more critical of our technology planning and spending. (And by odd coincidence, promoting public discourse on media and technology is just the prescription for an inclusive, civic minded, digital and media literate citizenry ready to take up tools to their own purposes and to make investments toward common purposes.)

We need to become serious about social justice questions, embrace them as the core of our movement. We need to become serious about issues that demand a holistic view, we need to treat our work in the context of the whole of lives of individuals, families and communities.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-digital. To be clear: the digital divide has not gone away but/and deserves our attention in so far as it is a divide, not because it is digital.

I favor a positive view on the way forward as long as it doesn’t deny where we are and what it will take. I see great potential in these technologies and in the expansion of communication capacity. I just want the digital in context and in service to the world we want and the dialogue that gets us headed there, and I want our individual and collective investments to consciously shape the character of our networks and our society. We can’t take these outcomes for granted. The sales pitch is always promising.

So, with each Digitized phrase, we must ask: how does it stand on its own? Can we forget the technical innovation of the moment, live without the distraction and get serious about living together?

In our work promoting Digital Excellence, we’re more than happy to Drop the Digital, we emphasize the Excellence. That’s what we want from students, citizens, families, communities, companies, politics, education and the economy.

If these digital prefix strategies are work-arounds (and no just new and improved sales pitches) for some of us… our attempt at concealing revolutionary socially transforming activity, it’s time for a reality check. We have to become clear about our goals. If it’s a dance of revolutionary work concealed behind revolutionary technologies and obstructed by reactionary policies and practices, make sure it is we who call the tune with the language we choose. Let’s choose what we want and aspire to, not settle upon the limited scraps we may or may not get.

This weekend, three cities are celebrating Earth Day with Green Festivals. I had the fortune of meeting some great people from Yes! magazine who came to town just for the Festival including Susan Gleason, Fran Korten and Neva Welton. An open-spacey dinner, with much discussion of wiki-culture, and an exploration of our cross-connected networks of social justice, media, technology and environment. A great prelude to the eChicago Symposium held at Dominican University.

My only regret is that the between the eChicago Symposium, family obligations and the Green Festival, I wasn’t able to attend the conference at the University of Chicago put on by the Invisible Institute’s ‘The View from the Ground’ … Issues and Inquiries Arising from Eight Blocks of Chicago’s South Side.

This conference will explore issues, themes, and lines of inquiry that have emerged from the eight square blocks that once were the Stateway Gardens public housing development on Chicago’s South Side. Its aim is to enrich public discourse about fundamental issues–race, class, gender, impunity, and institutional denial–by grounding the conversation in the realities of life in an inner city community during a time of “transformation” . . .

I’ve written before about Jamie Kalven of the Invisible Institute.

Each of the three events deals with profound aspects of social justice and brought together some amazing people. Is Chicago awakening?