2009, The Year of Alliance Building?

by Alex Steed

Published December 05, 2008 @ 06:18AM PT

Today, I've got a post up at the Social Citizens Blog:

2009, The Year of Alliance Building?

Also, Greg Rollett, author of the Gen-Y Music Marketing blog, mentioned my last Social Citizens Post here.

Which post, you ask?

Why, Is Kanye Our Kurt?, of course. Check it out.

Can Millennials Turn around the Housing Bust?

by Alex Steed

Published December 04, 2008 @ 08:36AM PT

Can Millennials Turn around the Housing Bust? By Morley Winograd and Michael Hais, featured on Newgeography.com:

To give Millennials the same opportunity to rescue America, the new Obama administration should give the emerging generation the same attention in its policy initiatives that it expended getting their votes. Certainly the opportunity is there, particularly in rescuing the now devastated housing market.

One unintended collateral benefit of the rapid drop in housing prices across the nation is to put many suburban homes within reach of first time home buyers, something that has not occurred for at least a decade. Even in pricey California, for example, the ratio between income and cost of housing has begun to drop dramatically, notes a recent paper by Chapman University graduate students Gil Yabes and Jason Goforth, with the ratio between income and mortgages dropping by one half or more in Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties, close to pre-bubble levels.

That’s a big opportunity, one that President-elect Obama’s “Home Ownership Initiative” should seize on. The Millennials could well be the demographic that could buy these more affordable homes and staunch the rise of foreclosures threatening the U.S. economy.

The Alliance of Youth Movements Summit is streaming live RIGHT NOW!

by Alex Steed

Published December 04, 2008 @ 07:29AM PT

Check it out - The Alliance of Youth Movements Summit is going down RIGHT NOW in New York City. Awesomely, it's being streamed live from Howcast. Check out the schedule here.

Other excellent videos from Howcast:

• How to smart mob
• How to be an effective dissident
• How to protest without violence
• How to launch a human-rights blog
• How to create a grassroots movement using social-networking sites
• How to circumvent an Internet proxy
• Music as social movement
• How to stage a 2nd-tier protest (by Ken Wilbur)
• The power of organizing without organizations (with a Clay Shirky (not to be confused with the aforementioned fully-bald, spectacled intellectual, Ken Wilbur))

Hello Kitty, Britney's fragile mental state, and Internet Activism

by Alex Steed

Published December 03, 2008 @ 11:48AM PT

Holy crap! CNN actually reported on something other than Britney's fragile mental state, Lohan's lesbianic trysts, or Hello Kitty being named Japan tourism ambassador!

Stupidly-predictable Gil Scott Heron pun aside, CNN published an entire article about Internet activism!

[Note to marketers/parents/old people: Common millennial generation — especially media activist — behavioral pattern: Super-snarkiness about how dumb/bad corporate media is/can be with undertones addressing how I believe I would have written a better story had I had the opportunity to do so.]

According to the article, "Some of the most creative forms of protest and philanthropy are taking place online."

[Note to marketers/parents/old people #2: Of course it is! That's where the people are. In fact, check this out - Change.org Gay Rights blogger Michael Jones got the most hits in Change.org blogging history when Perez Hilton linked his post about the Vatican's anti-gay efforts - That's more folks that came to the site when they accidentally thought it was President-elect Obama's Change.gov!]

The sort-of well-rounded piece addresses criticisms of potential absenteeism in activism 2.0 land, the opinions of WaterPartners International, and the age-old question of "online or in-person?"

Other subjects of interest: YourCause.com, MySpace Impact, and Goodwill of Greater Washington, a personal favorite that used "wittiness" to reach out to a younger, hipper crowd (ie. Millennials who like second-hand clothes that don't smell like hamper).

What bums me out about this piece is that since it's more-or-less a profile — an over-arching view of how activism plays out online — is that it is still stuck on a either/or binary re: activism/volunteerism/service dialog. Within many of the communities that are building and smoothing out the various methodologies of action that are playing out online, there is a concentration on creating a holistic synthesis between on and offline organization. While on the road, I met with:

• Focus the Nation, which created an offline infrastructure and then communicated and organized them online.
• Mary Ann Hitt of ILoveMountains advised that their organization's successes stemmed from work they were able to do online, but also from a synthesis of that and attending meetings and knocking on doors.
• The Bang Gang, a recreational, bicycle advocacy group in Ann Arbor happened to organize via Facebook, but did all of their work together, as people.
• Mariah McKay, author of the Spovangelist and on-the-ground, face-to-face organizer extraordinaire (check out her Spokane, Washington Blog Bible (made out of real paper!) here).
• And many, many other young people who valued the importance of, for the purposes of pragmatism, responsibly bridging on and offline action.

There is a touching story in the piece where Paul Loeb, author of "The Soul of a Citizen,'' a book that examines the psychology of social activism, tells about the importance of conveying the human will/spirit by physically showing up to a march or a protest. CNN couldn't have conveyed this story without playing on the dialectic about this contention between action online and action offline — so for the sake of good story-telling, the contention becomes the focus. Further, it's difficult for an article like this one (An article! CNN almost wrote a real news article!) to convey how people are synthesizing their actions accordingly.

Finally, it's worth noting that some necessary actions don't require people taking it to the street. Revisiting the story of the Washington, DC Goodwill mentioned in the piece, their goal was to rebrand Goodwill and to make it appeal to more young people. That's not a task best-approached by a directing an angry mob. As access-points become more-plentiful, opportunities for different kinds of participation — not just impassioned picket-sign wielding — become possible. Getting more people to reduce/reuse/recycle by shopping second-hand while also supporting the mission of Goodwill will not require shutting down Washington, thus its probably OK that their action remains solely online for the time being.

"Networked democracy is taking hold."

by Alex Steed

Published December 03, 2008 @ 10:11AM PT

"The democratization of knowledge by the print medium brought the Enlightenment. Now, broadband interconnection is supporting decentralized processes that reinvigorate democracy. We can see it happening before our eyes: As a society, we are getting smarter. Networked democracy is taking hold. You can feel it. We the people—as Lincoln put it, 'even we here'—are collectively still the key to the survival of America's democracy."

-Al Gore, The Assault on Reason, 2008.

Holiday stationary for the Christmas-celebrating set of the 66% of Millennials who voted for Obama.

by Alex Steed

Published December 03, 2008 @ 07:52AM PT

Hand-made Obama holiday cards. They're made by Millennial activist Amy O'Neill and available on Etsy.

I am a top 20 youth marketing blogger.

by Alex Steed

Published December 03, 2008 @ 07:01AM PT

I am a top 20 youth marketing blogger. Thanks, Mobile Youth!

Ypulse and Shaping Youth are listed as well!