Category: Opinion

#OccupySandy, technology, and relief

Julio lost his home, and church but not his community.
Julio lost his home, and church but not his community.

Nearly a month ago “Super Storm Sandy” ravaged communities from Cuba to Long Island. The aftermath has seen communities leading the relief and rebuilding effort. One group is said to stand out, a surprise according to the media, #OccupySandy.

While it may seem like #OCCUPYWALLSTREET has “changed,” it hasn’t. Anyone who was present at Liberty Plaza (Zuccotti Park) last year knows that OWS has always been a network with mutual aid at it’s core. Just beyond the characters surrounding the park was a show room floor of how a better world might work. Food for anyone who is hungry, clothing for anyone who is cold, and community open to all.

#OccupySandy is simply the realization of a major aspect of #OCCUPYWALLSTREET, mutual aid.

Some are asking how did a group with no disaster relief experience out perform the Red Cross, NYC disaster response, and FEMA? But this is a much more complex question. Community groups can’t repair subways or bridges while the establishment clearly cannot provide comfort and aid to the people who most need it. The community is like water filling in the cracks in between these massive bureaucracies.

Our response was swift and powerful because we had a strong infrastructure in place. Both human and technological, this post will focus on the latter.

#OccupySandy

The basic structure of #OccupySandy consists of distributions centrals that take donations and volunteers then send them out to front line locations in affected areas. Here are some Occupy and non-occupy projects currently in use or development.

InterOccupy.net

The InterOccupy team spans the globe and closely collaborates with Occupy Tech Ops and Occupy.net. Their system is based on HUBs, each HUB relates to a project within Occupy. As the hurricane made it’s way up the east coast an InterOccupy HUB was created: interoccupy.net/occupysandy. This provided a platform to organize local Occupy networks together. Currently the HUB acts as a central clearing house of information. Erica Heinz, member of Tech Ops, details the five day redesign of the Occupy Sandy HUB.

Fusion Table

InterOccupy is also managing a Google Fusion table that provides a way to track changes of locations and place them on a map. This map pushes data to Google’s Crisis map.

Volunteer Intake with CiviCRM

InterOccupy (IO) also manages nearly all volunteer intake. Using the OWS CiviCRM IO can create forms and lists of volunteers. Special lists are being put together for rebuilding efforts along with other needs. Mass e-mails are sent to volunteers or segments of that list. This service is provided by MayFirst/People Link

“Social Media”

I’ve come to loathe the term social media. It’s a silly way of saying “the internet”. Though it is good short hand for when you want to say Twitter and Facebook but don’t want to spell them both out.

Facebook

There is currently a sophisticated operation going on via Facebook. A Facebook group and accompanying chat is used to manage the administration of Occupy Sandy’s Facebook page. With a mix of information and opinion the Facebook page keeps people up-to-date on the dire situation our neighbors are still in while also fielding questions and sharing stories of hope.

Twitter

Like facebook the main Occupy Sandy twitter account (among many) @occupysandy also spreads the news and answers questions. The account is also used to promote very important information to a feed on the InterOccupy Hub. This allows coordinators to tweet to @occupysandy who can then re-tweet that message on to the home page.

Mobile Applications

When power goes out, so too do cell towers. Connectivity is very difficult in disaster areas which makes technology less effective. Here are some apps that use SMS and mobile networking to provide information and relief.

OccupySMS

OccupySMS uses peer to peer matching to connect needs with relief. Using simple SMS gateway provided by Mobile Commons NYC area users can text SANDY to 69866 to post personal needs while people seeking to help can text MUTUAL AID to 69866 and be connected with someone directly. This system allows needs and offers to be crowd managed with little admin overhead.

Contact OccupySMS: occupysms@gmail.com

Mobile Disaster Relief App

Said to be created in just five days the Mobile Disaster Relief App provides a powerful iOS (Android coming soon) app to record pictures and audio for first responders and canvassers. It has mapping and peer to peer need/fulfillment. I haven’t personally been able to use this application.

iPhone download

Maps Maps Maps!

At a recent hack-a-thon put on by #HurricaneHackers there was a general sentiment that we sure have made a lot of maps but aren’t connecting the data dots. Most of these tools and ventures aren’t talking to each other, more on that later. Here are some notable maps:

Google Crisis Map

Many of the maps are ending up here. From InterOccupy’s map of relief locations, to Senior Services map, and a Gas map. Here is a great example of centralizing data into a highly useful map.

SparkRelief

Another powerful map that covers many relief topics. SparkRelief.org provides a great user interface and allows for clear and simple peer to peer relief.

Other maps:

The Human Story

When far removed from a disaster it can be easy to lose touch. When we deal with data, points on a map, we can forget that those points of data are all embedded with a human story. The story of tremendous loss, courage, and solidarity.

The People Who Were Killed By Hurricane Sandy

Artur Kasprzak, 28, NYPD officer, drowned after saving his family, South Beach. Lester Kaplan, 73, lawyer, hypothermia, Brigantine, N.J. Edith Wright, 52, teacher’s aide, swept out to sea, Montauk. Read more about this.

Kimberly Smrkovsky, 25
Michael Robson, 13
Herminia St. John, 75
Jessie Streich-Kest, 24 and Jacob Vogelman, 24

Story Line

StoryLine is a collaborative documentary for us to share experiences of Hurricane Sandy and relief efforts. Using any phone or mobile device, you can create a story by calling or sending a text or picture message. StoryLine is a project of HousingisaHumanRight.org, Interoccupy.net and the MIT Center for Civic Media (civic.mit.edu)

CowBird - There are some stories on CowBird too.

Getting things done

Sandy has proven that given access to the right tool people can extremely effective.  There have been a number of tools used and developed around Sandy.  Within #OccupySandy Google’s integrated apps have been put to heavy use. In the first few days Gmail addresses were set up, Google Docs shared, Google Voice, and Google Groups.

While I’d rather see stronger use of Free & Open solutions, Google products do perform quite well and illustrates how strongly integrated tools can increase effectiveness. Being able to share and collaborate on a spreadsheet between two locations is very remarkable.

When we look at the problem that people had to solve after Sandy it’s fairly simple: report needs, fulfill needs, and let others know a need has been fulfilled.

One of the now many spreadsheets used within “the” Occupy Sandy shared Google Drive folder is an unassuming document named OS Requests. This document currently tracks all the requests and dispatches to and from locations on Long Island to Staten Island. It is used between both of Occupy Sandy’s main distribution hubs 520 Clinton and Jacobi Church.

I was asked to come into Occupy Sandy to make a task management system. It became clear that something much more powerful was needed. As it turns out around that same time Mark Prutsalis (@Globaliist) was doing the same thing. Mark is the CEO of Sahana Software Foundation.

Sahana

Sahana is a disaster relief software that came out of the 2005 Earthquake and Tsunami in Sri Lanka.

Mark and developers Fran (@franboon) are currently working on site to get Sahana configured for Occupy Sandy. Mark wrote a blog post about setting up a kitchen in Bay Ridge where most of Occupy Sandy’s food prep is moving to.

Sahana looks very promising and I will surely write more about it soon. It is currently being adopted by the Occupy Sandy team both here in New York and in New Jersey. Adoption is tough in a decentralized network like Occupy Sandy. Sahana is mostly in use at the higher level dispatch locations rather than “front line” locations.

Each location, from Staten Island to Red Hook to the many locations in the Rockaway are finding their own tech solutions. As we expand Sahana’s use will work to integrate into existing systems rather than trying to replace them.

I was also able to catch a bit of a lesson on a FEMA system being put in place for VOADs or Voluntary Organizations Active in a Disaster. I will share more on that soon as well.

Get Involved

If you are interested in working on these technologies I highly suggest attending the #NYTechResponds Sandy Benefit Weekend: Hackathon & Relief Agency Conference. December 1st and 2nd.

If you would like to get directly involved with Occupy Sandy Tech work please contact me at drew@nycga.net

"Pass me the David Graeber, bitte!"

Copyright, Expertise, and Book Burning

I’ve been involved with Occupy Wall Street and the NYCGA since before there was an occupation on wall street. I remember going to a General Assembly in Tompkin’s Square Park one Saturday and being very delighted by the gentleman facilitating that meeting. He, along with his co-facilitator, did a really outstanding job.

It wasn’t until months later that I saw the same man on Democracy Now! that I was made aware that he was David Graeber, famed anthropologist and anarchist. Apparently a very big deal. To me he was just another organizer.

So why am I bringing this up on the Tech blog? Well as silliness would have it a video has been passed to me of some activists in Germany burning David Graeber’s book. The “manifesto” of sorts cites Graeber’s celebrity, lack of true involvement in OWS, and the copyright notice printed on (allegedly) every page of his book Inside Occupy.

I have a highly technical term for this kind of activity: Dumb fucking bullshit. I also try to use every instance of DFBS as a learning experience, so lets break it down:

Information wants to be free

The obvious way to go with this activity is to point out that a bunch of German “human rights” activists are burning a book by a Jewish author, though it looks bad on paper, I doubt these people have any concern for Graeber’s background. What worries me is the celebration of the destruction of information.

One of their key arguments against the book was that it wasn’t open source. I think that falls very flat. First of all, the publisher is the one who copyrights the book. Yes they are locking away the content and they would be, arguably, better off with a copy left or Creative Commons license but this is the way publishing works, but why?

Copyright isn’t a naturally evil thing. At it’s most basic level it is there to protect the little guy. If David didn’t copy right his book and it became very popular, what is going to stop Mega Evil Printing inc. from making a copy of his book and using their superior logistics infrastructure (and team of lawyers) to out sell David with his own book? This means David’s profits for his work go to someone else, that doesn’t seem fair does it?

What we need to focus on is not copyright in and of itself, but the copyright of that which should belong to the commons. What if Mega Evil Printing inc. purchased the copyright to a specific book binding technique and began to sue all the little mom and pop book binding stores? We must focus on taking back the technology that allows us to compete with these mega industries, rather than compete with each other (or burn each other’s books).

Celebrity and Expertise

I’ve been told that David is “one of the most celebrated living anthropologists“. One might say he is a rock star of anthropology (those must be fun parties). This get confused in OWS often as celebrity. A celebrity is Paris Hilton, someone who’s only claim to fame is their claim to fame. David is an expert. Think about it, if you want to get an expert opinion on why Occupy Wall Street is happening wouldn’t you ask one of the greatest living anthropologists who has literally been involved since day 1 (and I’m not talking September 17th, I mean the “real” day one). I’ve seen this guy at many meetings and evidence would suggest that he is involved in some manner.

Expertise needs to be celebrated! Here in the U.S. there is a general disdain for educated people, or those with experience greater than our own. This isn’t to say that a college grad is more experienced than a high school drop out (like me). No, this is a matter of respect to people who know their shit. I would be perturbed if an anthropologist was talking about network technology or if a arm chair activist (like me) was talking about what it was like to sleep in Zuccotti Park.

In summation, this movement needs to stop attacking itself and stop pretending it knows everything. This guilty until proven innocent nonsense needs to stop. Most of us don’t have the full story. Be it around copyright law, anthropology, any individuals intentions or commitment, or the level of someone’s expertise. A little humility would go a long way.

I could have looked at David facilitating in that park so many months ago and said “who the hell is they guy, why does HE think HE can be up there leading this meeting? What does he know about people, society, or anarchy?” Wouldn’t I have looked stupid…

Reportback: The 99%Spring Training for Trainers and the Plot to Coopt #Occupy

This past weekend I attended the Training for Trainers (T4T) of the 99% Spring. This is being organized by a very large and powerful coalition in which MoveOn is one of the larger partners, as is the AFL-CIO. The 99% Spring action plan is fairly straightforward: train 100,000 people in non-violent direct action (NVDA).

On the one hand, this is obviously a progressive agenda that most occupiers would agree with. On the other, occupiers have struggled with the fear of cooptation to an exhausting degree. I’ve participated in online and in person conversations about the 99%Spring, and the critiques fall into three main arguments:

  1. MoveOn and the DC based labor movement bureaucracy can’t be trusted as they are committed to working within the system and for Democratic candidates.
  2. The 99%Spring uses occupy inspired themes and memes (“the 99%”) but without doing the hard work of actually working with Occupy Wall Street.
  3. The overall effort seems utterly disconnected from the nationwide May First plans that many (most?) occupiers are actively working towards, which are also referenced with “spring” language.
  4. This isn’t it’s own thing, but rather me making fun of how the nervous nellies respond to larger forces in the political world: “Halp! We’re being coopted! The Democratic Party is both capable and interested in implementing a well thought out plan to make us serve their interests!“

Speaking as an occupier most active in the Tech Ops Working Group of the NYC General Assembly, my first response to the 99%Spring was envy. Why aren’t we initiating, leading or participating in this kind of serious coalition work? But that’s unfair. We are working on May First actions, which in New York include a march carried out together with labor and the immigrants’ rights movements. What we aren’t doing is training 100,000 activists and organizers in nonviolent direct action. So why not welcome an effort that is doing that?

The T4T Training
I’m just back from two days of training for trainers, and this is my verdict: the Training for Trainers was fantastic. Hundreds of people in attended the same training as me in New York, and thousands more took part across the country.

The folks attending the training represented a cross section of our country’s progressive, 99% movement. I met community organizers, peace activists, union members, occupiers, and many more. The group was inter-generational, racially diverse, gender balanced, and included folks from all NYC boroughs, Long Island, CT, NJ, and upstate. My impression is that most are experienced organizers, but from many different traditions and organizational homes.

The curriculum had three parts:

  1. The first is your basic Marshall Ganz story of self/us. This is training delivered for years now at countless political and organizational homes, including my old synagogue. For those who don’t know, Ganz started his career at the United Farm Workers, working with Cesar Chavez.
  2. The second is your basic nonviolent direct action training, with roots in Gene Sharp, Training for Change, and the Direct Action Network that emerged post-Seattle in the anti-globalization movement. It wasn’t out of step with anything that say, Starhawk or Lisa Fithian or the Ruckus society would have done.
  3. The third part was the story of the 1% vs. the 99%. It’s basic training in understanding the economic crisis and our collective crisis as a country. This is more or less the kind of training being used by unions and community organizing groups around the country for the last 2-3 years.

There was zero, none, nada discussion of the Obama campaign, electoral politics, the Democratic Party, or MoveOn. To sum up then, the critiques against the 99% Spring are false. Those who lobbed uninformed critiques are now in a position of having to apologize and take back their words or lose credibility. They ‘proved’ that MoveOn provided  support for an amazing, collaborative effort resting on teachings used widely inside the Occupy movement.

The Larger Context
Questions might still be asked about the ultimate purpose of MoveOn, unions, and the long list of community organizing groups that make up the 99%Spring effort. One of the most important is: Where is this coming from? What might it be going?

The information I have is based in part on conversations with folks who know better than me. Sorry about no sources, but here goes:

  • Liz Butler of the Movement Strategy Center is one of the prime movers and shakers of this effort. (And the New Organizing Institute.)
  • The overall strategy seems to be similar or based on what Stephen Lerner (formerly of SEIU) was articulating in a series of talks about “creating a crisis for the rich.” In a nutshell, it proposes mass direct action aimed broadly at the 1% in order to force them to make concessions.
  • When we talk about ‘demands’ or ‘goals’ there are laundry lists galore. Winning strikes, raising taxes, winning elections, targeting specific corporations, etc. But behind all those disparate goals lies a framework: increasing the share of wealth that flows to the 99% and reducing the portion controlled by the 1%. That’s the prize. And large parts of the power structure (i.e., Democrats and even some corporations) think it’s a good thing too.
  • Getting MoveOn to be part of this coalition isn’t as simple as it looks. MoveOn is large enough to do whatever it wants without local partners, and for a long time that’s what it did. But the last few years have seen greater efforts to partner, with Van Jones’ Rebuild the Dream representing a real break with past practice. But the 99% Spring is an example of a large powerful organization placing resources in the service of a fairly radical agenda and allowing others to take the lead.
  • Like who? Like Domestic Workers United, a labor rights organization representing working class women of color. One of their staff members, Harmony Goldberg, was a lead trainer this weekend. If you think Goldberg is a MoveOn/DemParty dupe, please shoot yourself right now. Whew! You’re still here! Thank god.

Where Does That Leave Us?
Based on my experiences this weekend, all I can say is – sign up for the trainings to take place on April 9-16. Help organize more trainings. Invite as many occupiers to attend as possible. Consider the advantage of influencing all those moderate, not radical enough people likely to attend and how our superior political praxis will surely attract them to let go of their electoral illusions.

And then, after considering such a vision, let it go, because it’s bullshit. The training is quite good. Go because it’s great to be on the same page for a moment with eager, enthusiastic 99 percenters who want to make this great land of ours a better one. Drop your defenses (if you have any) and rest assured no one is talking about elections. Let’s focus on the original OWS vision: mass, creative, effective direct action against the banks, Wall Streeters and political forces that drove our economy off a cliff and want to charge us for getting back on the precipice again.

Sign up already.

Occupy, FLOSS, and a new world business model

Michel Bauwens: ‘Occupy’ as a business model: The emerging open-source civilisation

In the title of this editorial, I describe Occupy as a business model and link it to the possibility of a new civilisational model. We can do this by expanding from the already-existing institutional logic of peer production in knowledge, software and hardware, to a vision of the macro-economy.

Today, we assume that value is created by for-profit companies and conceive of civil society as a “remainder” category: it’s what we do when we come home, exhausted after our paid work. This is reflected in the language we use to describe civil society, when we call them non-profits or non-governmental.