In Spokane...

by Alex Steed

Published October 30, 2008 @ 06:58PM PT

In brief (and watch out for video this evening):

This afternoon we briefly met with Mariah McKay, editor of The Spovangelist and all-around operator/doer in the Spokane do-good-things realm. We were also lucky to, through McKay, meet Caitlin, a young zinester who told us about her [well-founded] distrust of publishing political opinions and taking political action online, and Jim Sheehan (pictured below, standing in front of rainwater collection containers in the Spokane Community Building). The brief conversation with Caitlin was a reminder of what I perceive to be an extreme lack of caution with regard to law enforcement and government surveillance when it comes to online activism. There is, of course, a dialog regarding political rallying around candidates who support / fight against legislation that revolves around domestic spying, but what conversation, if any, revolves around a real, measured caution integrated into online advocacy and activism?

Sheehan works in one of several [green] buildings owned by Jim Sheehan (his father). Space in the buildings have been made available to nonprofit organizations at low rents so as to provide for them a) space to work and b) create a community in which they can productively convene / find potential for collaboration with each other. Jim is working as an interim manager of a community art-house movie theater located in one of the buildings. As he toured me around the spaces, we talked for a couple of hours, covering a lot of ground, including how the mythology of American hyper-individualism might be partially responsible for the "brain drain" in small towns, the benefits of the creation of common community space for nonprofit organizations, and the potential insularity created by community cultivation. There is a lot to unpack from our conversation, which is scheduled to resume this evening, and which I plan to unpack over the next couple of days.

Further, the aforementioned group of us briefly touched on a healthy distrust of "the hype" surrounding so-called Millennial, Marxist-interpretation, savior-oriented historicity (ie. this young group will undoubtedly be the second coming of a coming tide of change). Is this merely a corporate advertising tonic that we're dangerously uncritical of? Are we going to come to too-willingly believe in our own triumphant mythology and come to assume, as a result, that our intrinsic greatness alone will do all of the dirty work for us?

More to come on all of that soon...

And even more briefly:

Tomorrow, we're hitting up the Bus Project's GOTV effort (Trick or Vote) in Portland, Oregon. We'll also be talking with Robin Parker, a communications specialist at the Oregon Trail Chapter American Red Cross. Further, we'll soon be talking with Joey Mornin and Brett Horvath, media strategists at the Pickens Plan when we hit Seattle, and I'll be addressing NetSquared's San Francisco Net Tuesday on a week from election day.