Tag Archives: technology

Happy Week! The best things this blog has done for me

Posted on May 8, 2012 by | 2 Comments

It’s still Happy Week, and I’ve been thinking about the reasons that I started this blog in the first place, and what I hoped to get out of it, and what it–and, more importantly, the practice of writing it–has done for me over the past few years.

My life has changed a lot over the past 3 years; when I started the blog, the twins were still babies, I hadn’t really started consulting, and, of course, I had 3 kids instead of 4, none of whom were in school full-time.

But, in other ways, it hasn’t changed that much, really. My biggest challenge, then and now, is trying to balance my role as a mom and my passions as an advocate. I still feel pulled into direct advocacy, and then struggle with how family-unfriendly a life that revolves around media work and legislators’ needs is. I still get a huge thrill on the first day of a new semester (and feel like a graduating senior on the last day of class!). I still wish that I had more time to read blogs by really smart people, to get through the ever-growing list of titles to read in my calendar, and to eat a meal uninterrupted.

But, this week, I’m reflecting not just on how I have changed in the time since I started this blog, but also how it has changed me…or, in some cases, kept me from changing. The 6 (2 a year, no?) awesomest things, then, that this blog has done for me, in no particular order.

And, please, because it’s Happy Week: has it done anything even somewhat awesome for you? Would you be willing to share?

  • Kept me in touch with former students: It is truly a delight to get a comment from a student I had a few years ago, or to see a former student and hear that he/she has been impacted in some way by our ongoing relationship through the blog.
  • Expanded the walls of my classroom: While former students are much more engaged than current ones–likely because they no longer have so much reading to do for class!–it is a real asset to my teaching to be able to use the blog as an extension of a conversation we’re having in the classroom, or as a way to connect my students with other thinkers in and outside of the profession.
  • Introduced me to some insightful, passionate people: Some of my favorite people I have never met in ‘real-life’, yet I feel so blessed by the generous way they share their reflections, and even their guidance, online, in their own spaces and here.
  • Kept me engaged with scholarship: While I’d never pretend that my writing here is of peer-reviewed caliber, it is such good discipline for me to have to write, and read, regularly, in order to produce content for the blog. Especially with the demands of my family, teaching, and my consulting work, it would be so easy to let those practices slip by, and I believe that I would suffer, personally and professionally, for it.
  • Connected me to the social media sphere: I don’t think that I would have embraced social spaces online as thoroughly as I have without the blog; it was definitely my motivation to try Twitter, for example, and it complements my personal Facebook engagement, too. I can’t really imagine my life without those outlets, and those relationships, now, and so I’m grateful.
  • Given me an outlet: There’s no denying it; I’m happier now that my husband isn’t the only entity to whom I can vent about policies that are maddening, or rave about organizing campaigns that are inspiring. When I finish a book, I have something to DO, actually, with the sticky notes that I’ve littered it with. And that’s really therapeutic.

    Thank you, those who read and, in so doing, both enrich my thinking and justify my pursuit. YOU are, without a doubt, the awesomest of the awesome things that this blog has brought to me.

    Happy Happy Week, to you!

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Happy Week! The awesomest things I’ve seen lately

Posted on May 7, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Image from I Wish This Was

This is Happy Week! So, then, here are some things that make me super happy/excited/energized/hopeful/inspired.

What awesomeness can you share?

IfWeRanTheWorld: What would you do if you could do anything? And can’t we?

FIXES: Innovative approaches to solving major problems, available in RSS feed every Wednesday…like a dream come true.

Social Work Activist Reader: There hasn’t been much new content added to this lately, but what’s not to love about anti-racist, ‘justice-centered social work’? Online?

The Fun Theory: Parenting has taught me how much easier it is to get people to do things if they are fun. Try NOT to smile at the piano staircase.

Minnesota Idea Open: Ann Wiesner at Grassroots Solutions showed me this earlier this year. Crowdsourcing problems, with the added dimension of geographic-based community. It builds identity and addresses real concerns, and I think it’s pretty awesome.

I Wish This Was: This reminds me a little of a photography project I did with immigrant teenagers more than a decade ago, when they cataloged what they saw in the community around them, and what they thought it said about what others thought about them. Except even cooler, I think.

Open Source Leadership Strategies: File this under the category of ‘awesome people who are doing terrific things’, because I met Marisol Jimenez-McGee more than 10 years ago, and I couldn’t be happier to see her sharing her incredible talents in such an exciting way.

The Montana State Supreme Court: Honestly, if I have to try to convince one more should-be voter that his/her vote DOES still matter, in the wake of the Citizens United ruling, I might scream. Thank you, Montana, for meaningful campaign finance limits.

Nonprofit Vote: The good people at NonprofitVOTE are on my happy list for sending me emails every week with resources to help nonprofit organizations engage their clients as voters. I even appreciate their exhortations, because I just love their incessant emphasis on our responsibility to shape the electorate. Love them.

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But our path can’t be that easy, or why advocates can’t be Amazon

Posted on April 10, 2012 by | 6 Comments

Even I, who have not watched television since the 2008 Olympics, have seen those “easy button” commercials. And my husband and I joke about how Amazon.com makes it so easy to order (just 1-click! great!) that we end up buying way more than we really needed (and paying more; we’ll do just about anything to get stuff delivered).

We know that there are two ways to shape behavior: the hard way, which requires motivating people to do something different, even something that they may not really want to do; and the ‘easy’ way, which relies instead on changing the context in which behavior happens, so that we reset the default.

I still think that there’s a lot that we can do to make it as easy as possible for people to advocate, and I still think that’s a fundamentally good idea. There are enough barriers to action naturally that we need to make sure that we’re not constructing any more.

But, the more that I think about it, the more convinced I am that, unfortunately, we just can’t make activism too easy.

If our targets–those decision-makers we want to listen to us and to our concerns–know that it’s that easy, I worry that our impact will be sorely diluted. I mean, the movements that have really changed societies (and, in the process, laws) have required far more than a click from people. And that has been precisely their power, the ability to demand much of people who, in the process, discover much about themselves and their leadership.

I don’t know what the tipping point is, certainly, that spot at which advocacy becomes too easy to be very meaningful. And I’m not going to stop thinking about how we need to build cultures within our organizations and our movements that create as many entry points as possible, that provide people with activism mentors, and that integrate advocacy into people’s lives to the greatest extent possible. To do otherwise is to pretend that “real” advocates will do anything, against any odds, and that kind of martyr complex doesn’t do anyone any favors.

But I’m also not going to spend a lot of time figuring out how to “amazon” our advocacy efforts, how to strip them down to such a low threshold of engagement that we are asking very little of those we want to move.

Because, really, are we moving them much, in the ’1-click’ school of activism?

I get it, I do, that building activist structures is probably easier than helping people connect meaningfully with a cause, and with each other, and overcoming the powerful inertia built into our psyche and our culture in order to bring people together for transformation.

I guess I’m just concluding that our world is a little different than buying books (and loaf pans and tape refills and everything else my husband finds for us on Amazon). Here, there has to be some sacrifice, because the advocacy is a signal to those in power of what we’re willing to expend to address the problems that motivate our action.

There has to be some struggle.

And that doesn’t come with free shipping.

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Third-order Engagement: Friends don’t let friends advocate alone

Posted on March 29, 2012 by | Leave a comment

While I admit that I’m slow to getting around to try out all of the really exciting tools that I learn about on Beth Kanter’s blog, it’s a very fertile place for new ideas about revolutionizing nonprofits, and it’s the first blog I make a point to check in on when I want to be challenged and reconnected to the field.

Often, posts about technology in nonprofit organizations lead me to think, also, about offline applications of the same concepts, which is exactly the case with this post from this archived post about “third-order engagement.”

The idea, after all, isn’t very high-tech: People are more likely to get excited about something that their friends are excited about. And they’re more likely to be receptive to messages that are conveyed by those with whom they already have a strong relationship.

As the blog post describes, this makes sense for for-profit companies that are learning to facilitate consumers sharing information about products with friends who might want to buy them, too, as well as for nonprofit organizations that can see big dividends when they make it easy for donors and others to find out how their friends are engaged with the same organization, too.

And, of course, it has important advocacy implications.

Are our advocacy efforts set up to make it easy for people to “invite” friends to take a stand with them (with talking points that someone new to the effort can relate to, and engaging actions that people will find enjoyable, and explicit assistance to help people approach friends about the cause)?

Are we investing heavily in our strongest advocates’ potential to bring in new activists, rather than pushing out all of the asks ourselves? Are we moving people from engagement to leadership, and encouraging them to bring their friends along with them? Are we recognizing advocates’ successes in enlarging the pool of the committed, as a “win” in itself? Do we actively solicit new contacts from our current cadre, and do we use technology (databases, social networks) that allow advocates to find other friends and to connect relationally with other activists?

Do we spend at least as much time cultivating a grassroots base as we do trying to mobilize that base towards specific targets?

And, as advocates ourselves, do we make sure that our friends understand why we’re engaged in specific causes, and what that work means for their own lives, and how they can play a part in the effort with us? Do they know that they are welcome, and needed, and valued?

The explosion of social media, and their expansion into every aspect of life, illustrates the fundamental truth that we are relational beings.

That’s true in our social change work, too.

No one should be advocating alone, especially not in this connected age, when so many messages and issues are competing for attention.

After all, when we take a stand, wouldn’t we rather not stand alone?

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Connected Citizens in the New Year

Posted on December 13, 2011 by | Leave a comment

I read the Knight Foundation’s Connected Citizens report (subtitled, “The Power, Potential, and Peril of Networks”) a few months ago (it came out in late April, I think, but, giving birth kind of put me behind in my reading this year), and I’ve been thinking about it more lately as I look to the future, especially since the report is, itself, in part an effort to predict where and how networks may change our lives and our efforts for social change, in the years to come.

I expect that some of the questions the report poses, and some of the hypotheses it suggests, will filter into my thinking and writing about advocacy (especially in the online context) and community organizing over the coming year, but here are my reactions as we straddle this period between the past and the future, at the (almost) dawn of 2012.

  • Do we truly have greater transparency today? Or does the proliferation of information mean that it’s that much easier to hide the important stuff, in the midst of a lot that doesn’t matter? I’m torn about this, really–on the one hand, there’s the demise of traditional investigative journalism, with all that that means for our ability to uncover the truth and publicize it; on the other, there’s the rise of citizen-supported journalism and independent cataloguing of so much that happens in our world. I know it sounds clichéd, but it’s like “the truth is out there,” but will we be able to find and recognize it, in the middle of so much…stuff? And what does that mean for our efforts to be megaphones for the voices that are so often silenced, as we know we must, in order to truly empower those whose stories need to become part of our policy narratives? Since policymakers are vulnerable to this same information overload, how do we push past the noise to be heard?
  • Will technology enable us to turn ever-more inward, or seek and build alliances with unlikely partners? Or both? How do we resist the tendency towards silos, or, indeed, is such homogeneity all bad, in terms of building strong identity? Since, again, policymakers are people, too, how will their increasing reliance on what their “friends” prefer, in terms of policy approaches, and, indeed, even what their social networks hold as “truth” and “information” impact our ability to construct policy solutions that can cross rigid ideological lines? I’m not too optimistic, really.
  • How can we engage our crowds so that the barrier to participation is minimal but still meaningful? As the default for “participation” becomes quick engagement, how do we invest in the deeper relationships that are truly transformational?
  • Social workers know how to “design for serendipity.” From our direct practice experiences, we get the idea that we cannot predict outcomes flawlessly but must, instead, create the spaces (physically and, more importantly socially and psychologically) for real magic to happen in people’s lives. This makes us, I believe, champion “network weavers”, if we can leverage those clinical skills into social change work.
  • Anyone who has ever read the comments on an online newspaper article about immigration policy knows the link between anonymity and the deterioration of dialogue in a public sphere. The challenge here, as we increasingly shift to broader conversations detached from a local, identified context, is to figure out how to cultivate relationships that breed accountability while taking advantage of the boundary-less nature of online networks.
  • We can all get excited about the rise of mutual support and the tremendous potential of networks to address real, pressing need. But we should also be very afraid of the parallel risk that such indigenous resource provision becomes an excuse for abdication of our collective (read: public) (read: we still need taxes) responsibility to uphold the social contract and provide for the needs of those without strong networks in the first place (because such network resources are, like nearly everything else in this world, not evenly distributed).

    Again, there’s more there than what I’ve captured here, including some thoughts relevant to my work with the Sunflower Foundation, particularly this question of whether measuring network health and strength can tell you how close you’re getting to a desired change, given that networks are, by definition, rather uncontrollable and certainly dynamic entities. But, in chiming in so late on the conversation, I’m partly hoping to restart it a bit, since we know that we’ll be dealing, increasingly, with networks in our work in the years to come–indeed, they may become the default way of approaching our shared concerns–and we need to understand how to engage them effectively, how to critically evaluate their roles and their shortcomings, and how their existence will shape ours.

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    Is it time to up the ante?

    Posted on December 1, 2011 by | Leave a comment

    I know, things are hard enough these days, without going out and looking for trouble, right?

    And, yet, here we are.

    Here’s the problem: there’s increasing evidence, I believe, that the kinds of online advocacy about which we were so excited just a few years ago are, in fact, too easy.

    Because we’re not the only ones who know that it doesn’t take much to get people to sign an online petition or click to send an email to their member of Congress (I know, it’s sometimes not as easy as it sounds, but that, unfortunately, usually has more to do with the nature of our relationships with those we’re trying to get to advocate than with the actual, technical difficulty of taking that particular action, and that’s an entirely different problem.)

    A relatively recent survey of nonprofit activity on Facebook, for example, found that, while only 40% of organizations were able to convert their Facebook fans into donors or volunteers, about 66% saw an increase in people taking an advocacy action. And while that sounds great, because we can always use more activists, it makes me wonder:

    If it’s known that people would rather sign a petition than give you a dollar, how much is that signature really worth?

    This is related, too, to the common wisdom (enforced by our own experiences) that there’s just SO MUCH out there, and that it can be hard to sort through all of that information. Certainly policymakers feel that way, too, which contributes to their desire to wade through the noise and find that which most resonates with them. Since we can’t count on always aligning with their way of seeing the world, or having their trusted advisors lend us their voices, that means that we need to either make a compelling case related to their constituency (harder to do, somewhat ironically, in the context of online global networking, because of difficulties precisely locating advocates’ geographies) or develop powerful actions that can rise above the chatter…or both.

    This question, and the doubt it reflects, matters not just in the short-term, when we really want people to listen to what our advocates are saying. Ultimately, key to building strong movements is people’s recognition that their individual contributions are, collectively, part of something far greater. And, so, if that’s not really the case–if me calling my member of Congress on my own would really make a bigger impact than joining with others to sign a petition or click “like”, then am I really part of a movement after all?

    Are we authentically inviting people to transcend themselves and transform their lives, with the sacrifices that such affiliation entails? Or are we selling them the idea of advocacy, in a way that may forever distort their understanding of the real thing? If it’s the latter, what will that mean for the times when we have a really big “ask” of our advocates, if we haven’t been building, at all, but rather engaging in a sort of pseudo-organizing?

    Lest we start off the last month of this year with a complete downer, I think that there are some real opportunities to utilize some of the same utilities on which we currently rely to leverage advocacy with real impact. Here are some of my ideas, and I’d love to hear yours, both in your reaction to this whole “time for a game-changer” proposition, and for ways to maximize the power of our online advocacy strategies and dodge the impotent, as we continually react to how our successes raise the stakes.

  • One of the most promising findings from the Idealware Facebook survey was the more than 70% of organizations who attracted new attendees to their events using social media. If we’re building advocacy into all of our events, as well as using social networking to recuit new participants to advocacy-focused events, there’s obvious potential to build momentum for our work using “new” technologies to drive the oldest of organizing axioms: turnout matters.
  • There are some really inspiring and exciting examples of organizations (and, indeed, individuals, who are perhaps naturally better at this than our fortresses!) using online networks to implement completely nontraditional campaigns. There’s no law that says that your online “ask” has to be a petition or an email. Again, sometimes we make the mistake of requesting relatively little, because we think that’s all we can get, when digging deeper, and inviting our advocates to do the same, can both strengthen our relationship and amplify our voice.
  • Those online petitions or social media “fans” don’t have to be THE campaign, and, indeed, they often are not. But when we organize an event to deliver a stack of letters to a policymaker (complete with compelling personal testimonies, appropriate media pressure, and the inclusion of unlikely allies) are we making sure that that effort echoes with those who originally took the online action, so that they see how it fits into the larger strategy and see how they might, in the future, play an expanded role?

    What do you think? What should be the measures by which we judge the effectiveness of our online advocacy strategies–number of participants, or vigor of engagement, or tangible policy changes? Is what we’re doing working, or is it time to push forward?

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    Teaching virtually, not virtually teaching

    Posted on October 25, 2011 by | Leave a comment

    It has now been about two years since I first started trying to figure out this “blended” (online and traditional classroom instruction) teaching methodology.

    And, although it risks totally jinxing everything, I think I’m finally getting it.

    This semester has been a sort of revelation to me–that the online and in-person learning do not need to happen in these discrete chunks, but can and, indeed, should truly blend throughout the course so that students become accustomed to learning in both venues simultaneously. I’ve also intentionally sought out materials that engage students in interactive learning online, so that they’re not just responding to my content in virtual platforms, but becoming part of a larger community of interest around policy concerns.

    And, perhaps most significantly, it has dawned on me that, since most of my students will, as social workers, consume much of their policy-related information online (rather than in a class discussion format or a peer-reviewed journal), part of my task in these courses should be to help them develop skills to critically consume this material, so that they can analyze and filter and apply similar information throughout their careers.

    Yes, another inspiration that should have occurred to me a long time ago, but, better late…right?

    My favorite part of the blended classes is probably the discussion boards, because I get so much more participation from some of the quieter students than I do in class. This semester, I’m going to use a more detailed course evaluation that assesses student reactions to those individual components, so that I can get a better sense of which pieces they’re actually engaging with, and how those activities are contributing to their overall learning.

    I am, as always, open to new ideas and critiques, but here’s what I’m doing differently this semester that (again, knock on everything!) seems to be working so far:

  • Utilizing course technology to bring in virtual guest speakers–if we can have half of our course content online, why not get guest speakers from Washington, DC (via Skype) to talk about implementation of health care reform?
  • Requiring students to analyze media coverage of policy topics, to heighten their analytical skills and give them practice searching for the frames in a given coverage
  • Integrating short videos and podcasts on policy topics, and, often, using them to replace traditional assigned readings, because they offer much more current analysis than what the peer-reviewed process can provide
  • Working in at least a few “virtual classrooms”, which are sort of like chatrooms, but not in real-time, so that students have a venue in which to ask questions about the course, share materials with each other, and access me
  • Creating online assignments, including the “wiki” resource guides on policymaking that I used last year, too (to provide a nonprofit organization with resources designed to facilitate advocacy in a particular arena) and a presentation about future trends that will impact policy that, by necessity, has to draw almost entirely on online resources

    I’ve only tried to teach policy courses in this blended format, so I certainly can’t speak to the experiences of those teaching (and taking!) practice classes. And I know that some of my students wish that they had the option to take a traditional format policy course, and I respect that. There’s no question that I miss getting to see my students more frequently; in my ideal (albeit overwhelming) world, we’d still meet every week AND have the additional online opportunities.

    Another reason everyone is glad I don’t run the world.

    But my goal with these courses is to create a policy learning experience that transfers as much as possible, and as seamlessly as possible, to social work practice, and I do believe that the inclusion of the online components increases that likelihood.

    Because the real world, after all, is increasingly online.

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    Consuming as Advocacy?

    Posted on September 8, 2011 by | Leave a comment

    People are going to love this.

    Especially on this Labor Day week, because we feel so uncomfortable, often, talking about working for a living, but so very much enjoy talking about our lives as consumers.

    We love buying things, right? Even I, who hasn’t seen a television commercial or a magazine advertisement in two years, can’t run to Target to pick up generic diapers without seeing 12 things that I swear I’ve been meaning to get forever.

    And, so, because Americans are awesome like this, someone has invented Carrotmob, which is a totally American idea:

    Feel good about changing the world, just by buying things.

    No, this isn’t one of those “embedded giving” platforms, the much-debated practice of companies packaging their products with charitable organizations’ endorsement, with a small percentage of the sales going to support that cause.

    This is much simpler, and, I think, much cooler.

    Basically, companies compete to see how socially responsible they can be, and the winning companies get the support of a “mob” of consumers, spending money to reward the company with both higher sales and a lot of good publicity. There’s a real social component (the mobs are literally big groups of people, and the website content is written in a very personal style), which we of course love too, and it’s very “new media”–the website is filled with videos of actions and ways for people to get alerts sent directly to their medium of choice.

    So far, “social responsibility” has mainly focused on environmental sustainability, but there are plans for campaigns focusing on labor rights, too.

    They’re very open about the limitations of such a strategy (first and foremost, people buying too much stuff is part of some of the very problems they hope to address, and yet their campaigns fuel that), but there’s a real potential to bring in activists who wouldn’t normally engage in petitions or even boycotts, and that’s a part of their model of change.

    Check it out, sign up if it appeals to you, and let me know what you think. Is this an exciting example of how to connect people to actions for the social good, or a gimmick that people won’t ultimately pay much attention to? How do you feel about the whole ‘mob’ concept? And about consuming as advocacy? Should we be encouraging people to forego consumption as a political act, or can strategic purchasing be part of our repertoire of tactics?

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    Hey, it’s good exercise!

    Posted on May 2, 2011 by | Leave a comment

    In this digital age, I want to make the case for a return to old-fashioned door-to-door work.

    Yes, as in actual doors.

    And actually knocking on them.

    I know, why would we bother to “waste” all of that time, when we have email addresses and Facebook and so many “easier” ways to organize people?

    In short, because sometimes there’s just no substitute.

    There are still some ways in which door-knocking campaigns are superior to online engagement strategies:

  • You can collect really valuable information about people, the conditions in which they live, and their relationships to their communities by physically traveling in their space. No virtual community gives you exactly this same sense of people’s places.
  • You get a certain credit for showing up that can be helpful in, especially, your efforts to recruit new people to your cause. Precisely because email is so much easier, it’s also more easily tossed away. Yes, some people will slam the door in your face, but, honestly, it doesn’t happen that much. We’re willing to give a little bit more respect to those who actually come to see us.
  • Door-knocking is a great way to get your advocates/members/activists more comfortable telling your story; once you’ve knocked on a stranger’s door (to ask for a petition signature, or a membership pledge, or a vote), you’re much less scared to ask an elected official to take a certain stand. There’s a real comraderie in door-knocking, too, that you don’t get with online strategies.
  • You can multitask on the doors. A good online campaign can get you members and contributions, and maybe petition signers, too. And a well-executed door-to-door effort can get you all that plus some media coverage (because knocking on doors, these days, for anything except a political campaign is really kind of news) and intelligence about your target community, and maybe some good volunteer connections, too.
  • Door-knocking can be part of a multifaceted online and in-person organizing campaign. Of course, these days, you don’t have to choose one or the other. You can collect email addresses when you’re talking with people on the doors, sign up canvassers on Facebook, and vice versa. My point is not to get you to abandon online efforts in favor of traditional neighborhood ones, but rather to rediscover the potential of the door-to-door campaign as part of your overall approach.

    There’s a reason why local and state elections are often won or lost on the doors, rather than with paid advertising or mailing: people build relationships and connect with issues in a different way face-to-face. That’s still true today.

    There are many sources of information about how to put together a good door-to-door campaign (including how to choose your target area, how to prepare your door script, how to train volunteers, how to protect your folks in the field, how to debrief your canvass, and how to follow up once you’re in the office).

    But I think that most of these campaigns fail not in any of these areas of detail, but in the most fundamental respect: we’re just not trying them anymore.

    Really, any social justice issue lends itself, potentially, to a door-to-door campaign, but those with a strong geographic component (think: school finance, environmental justice, zoning, unemployment, city services, law enforcement) are especially well-suited. Here, there’s really no substitute for constructing a strong connection among neighbors, and awakening a specific, localized population so that they can advocate on their own behalf.

    And, from my own experiences, 10 minutes on someone’s front stoop can do that. Really.

    So happy knocking.

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    You’re most welcome: political opinions as “gifts” to share

    Posted on April 7, 2011 by | 7 Comments

    In this last post during this week of reflections about social media, I’m reflecting on a passage from The Facebook Effect where one of the founders shares his belief that Facebook creates a space for generosity by reducing the costs associated with sharing of oneself.

    And that got me thinking about the ways in which I use social media, and about social work boundaries, and about transcending taboos about disclosing one’s beliefs.

    And, if I can pull all of that together into anything coherent, I guess it’s this:

    I share my beliefs about justice, and politics, and the world, not as much in an attempt to bring anyone ‘around’ to my way of thinking, but to be an integrated, whole person, and to rather transparently share that self with others.

    I don’t think that I do my students, or my friends, or even my family members, any favors if I hide my beliefs, or tried, in pursuit of politeness, to present a bland caricature of who I really am. Nor, of course, would a single-minded pursuit of my own vision of righteous truth likely bring me closer to a generous sense of community.

    But somewhere in between, in the realm of sharing how who I am (wife, mother, neighbor, friend, teacher) shapes what I believe (that we must welcome the stranger, that all children deserve a chance at their dreams, that health care is a right, that poverty is a global shame), I hope that I help others clarify their own beliefs, challenge their previously-held truths, and articulate a vision of “the good society.”

    I did that before Facebook, obviously. Politics have never been off the table in my family, even though there’s considerable difference of opinion, and my friends have always known what I think.

    But I will grant that social media have changed the nature of the conversation a bit, increased the number of occasions when there’s a chance for real dialogue, helped me to discover that some of my friends and even family share views of mine that I hadn’t known, and given me a chance to remind those with opposing views that there is a bond of love and respect between us nonetheless.

    I’m still working on how to challenge statements without attacking that messenger, especially on issues (racial justice, equal rights for gays and lesbians) where I see things very clearly in “right” and “wrong”. I value the practice I get on Facebook, and the chance to weave humor and life and motherhood, in particular, into my activism as well.

    I see it as a gift, too, when my students and others are willing to share their own beliefs with me, as a sort of extension of trust and demonstration that they’re engaged enough to invest a bit of themselves.

    Have social media changed how you share your political perspectives with those in your social networks? If so, how? What’s your response to policy and political debates on Facebook and other social media? How do you live generously, as an advocate of social justice, in this connected age?

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