Wanted In Second Life: A Community Organizer
Sarah Palin mocked Barack Obama's credentials as a community organizer, but the US electorate made him President anyway. Like most Americans, SL Resident Chestnut Rau watched these results with renewed optimism, despite a cynicism from her many years working in "the sausage factory" of government policy. Emboldened by that real world outcome, and observing the ongoing turmoil over Openspace pricing policies, Ms. Rau makes a clarion call for what basically seems like, well, a community organizer:
I think Residents of Second Life need some way to organize ourselves. We need to find a way to represent our many divergent interests and needs to Linden Lab, in a way that makes it possible for them to hear us clearly... I do know that while LL has been ineffective in implementing policy changes that impact our lives, we have not banded together in a way that effectively moves SL forward.
And you know what I say to that? Yes we can.
But how will they? That might require reading some Saul Alinsky, who formulated principles of community organizing that appeal to a group's shared self-interest. (In other words, activism that might even unify otherwise apathetic fashionistas, furries, Goreans, blingtards and more.) Alinksy's ideas seemed to work for President Elect Obama, one of his former pupils. But what are the rules for metaverse radicals?
Photo of Chestnut Rau by GoSpeed Racer.
I am sure working for free as a community organizer will really sound appealing to the millions of people currently losing their RL job.
Posted by: Christophe Hugo | Friday, November 14, 2008 at 11:27 PM
No thanks. However well intentioned such a thing might start out, a self/buddies appointed "organizer" will support only their own interests. Just like real life.
Trust me on this...
You do not want to introduce formal politics into Secondlife. Ever.
Posted by: Ann Otoole | Friday, November 14, 2008 at 11:34 PM
get lost, mrs. otoole
Posted by: rudi dutschke | Saturday, November 15, 2008 at 04:06 AM
a) Sarah who??
b) rudi by name, rudi by nature....
c) social organising could be another step towards the disneyfication of the grid.
If I want to watch a cartoon I go to WoW.
Posted by: Unguent Whitfield | Saturday, November 15, 2008 at 05:02 PM
There's just too much injustice in the real world, even in Back of the Yards today in Chicago where Saul started. When considering the needs of avatars controlled by technologicaly literate humans sitting comfortably in front of their computers against those of the poor and uneducated and exploited in my city...gah.
Posted by: Yuvi | Sunday, November 16, 2008 at 09:02 AM
I respect where you're coming from, Yuvi, but SL does have a lot of social good features that make it more complicated than that. For starters, many SLers are not sitting at home "comfortably"-- they're housebound in wheelchairs and other disabled states, and this is their portal to a larger community.
Posted by: Hamlet Au | Sunday, November 16, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Um...I hadn't noticed there was a shortage of rabble-rousers in-world.
"We need to find a way to represent our many divergent interests and needs to LL, in a way that makes it possible for them to hear us clearly."
Ah, I hear the mating call of the Ruffled Collectivist!
Christophe, you didn't really think those pursuing this weren't planning on monetizing their Selfless Labors On Behalf Of The Common Good, did you?
After all, it worked for Obama...
Posted by: Maggie Darwin | Friday, November 21, 2008 at 10:16 AM