I'm a city boy by nature. I grew up in New York City, went to college in Philadelphia, and in the years since have lived in either the downtown or inner suburbs of Washington D.C., Brighton (England), Portland, ME, Nice (France), Louisville, KY, Charlotte Amalie (St. Thomas, USVI) and Columbus, OH. Making cities more livable, safer, and greener has always been a passion, as has studying settlement patterns by immigrants in our great urban centers and learning the history of these cultural melting pots.
So I am pleased to be consulting with IBM to help urban-dwellers benefit from their Smarter Cities Challenge, which is a project through which IBM will grant $50 million in technology & consulting services to 100 cities around the world--50 of which will be in North America. From finding ways to use technology to improve municipal services to using innovation to ease congestion, this program could be a boon to many urban centers looking for the resources to improve the quality of living and attract business as well as residents.
We speak readily of cyberspace; a 'place' that sprang into being because cyberpunk author William Gibson had trouble writing dialog involving moving characters. He confessed this in No Map For These Territories, a somewhat rambling 88 minute interview stitched together from clips taken while he was driven in a limousine in a complete circuit of the United States.
This is a convenient metaphor, but the multifaceted reality envisioned by the adept is far different ...
At the Rural Development Foundation's (RDF) primary school in Kalleda, a small village in the Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh, India, students carry gardening tools, along with their notebooks and pencils.
All of the students work in the school's garden, cultivating and harvesting rice, lentils, corn, and cotton that is used to make the daily meals or sold to the village and to other schools. Students also take turns tending a field of marigolds and selling them in Kalleda. All of the profit goes back to the school.
And the students carry another important tool-a camera.
Cameras were provided by Bridges to Understanding (Bridges), a Seattle-based non-profit that uses digital technology to empower and connect children around the world. Students participating in the Bridges curriculum are taught to use cameras and editing software to develop stories about their community and culture. These videos, comprised of a photo slide show with a running narration, are then shared with the Bridges online community which is made up of schools in seven countries: Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Guatemala, India, Peru, South Africa, and the U.S.
For many students, it's the first time they have ever even held a camera. "When I first asked my students if they thought they could ever design, shoot and edit their own film they just shook their heads and said, 'there's no way," said Elizabeth Sewell, Bridges program coordinator at the RDF school in Kalleda.
But not only did her students successfully develop a concept for, shoot and edit a video about local water pollution, they are also participating in an online discussion about their school garden with another group of students at the Aki Kurose school in Seattle. Students at Aki Kurose are learning to grow corn, squash, and beans using traditional Native American practices. And they volunteer at a local food bank, a completely new concept to the students at Kalleda. "Thank you for your post about your school garden and information about your food bank," wrote Sewell's students. "We had never heard of a food bank before your post. We like the idea of a place where people can get free food."
Sewell explains that having a conversation about farming with students in Seattle helps students at Kelleda "realize what makes their community unique but also that there are other kids out there dealing with similar issues, providing a model or inspiration for alternatives and creating a global sense of solidarity in facing these problems."
And, according to Sewell, the Bridges video project gives students a concrete and achievable goal to strive towards as they grapple with larger questions about their role as "agents of change" in their community and the world.
"At first, the prospect of designing, shooting and editing a movie seems insurmountable but then they produce these beautiful films," says Sewell. "And then you knock down that barrier, you show them what they are capable of doing. And then they can start to approach other, larger and more institutional, problems the same way. Suddenly, in their own eyes, there are no limits to what they can achieve."
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This is the first of a two-part series to Africa Harvest, in Johannesburg, South Africa. Cross posted fromNourishing the Planet.
In our Nourishing the Planet project we're looking at how farmers and researchers all over the world are combining high-tech and low-tech agricultural practices to help alleviate hunger and poverty. One place they're trying to do this is at Africa Harvest/Biotech Foundation International. The organization's mission is "to use science and technology, especially biotechnology, to help the poor in Africa achieve food security, economic well-being and sustainable rural development."
And while the biotechnology component of their mission may be controversial to some, Africa Harvest is determined that Africa will not be left behind when it comes to the development-and use- of the technology by African researchers and farmers. As a result, the organization is focusing on breeding African crops for Africans. "If you want to make a difference on this continent," says Daniel Kamanga, communications director for Africa Harvest, "you have to look at African crops." These include staples such as banana, cassava, and sorghum, which are all important sources of nutrients for millions of Africans.
But these are also crops that are heavily impacted by diseases and pests. Bananas, for example, are susceptible to sigatoka virus, fusarium, weevils, nematodes, and others. To combat these problems, Florence Wambugu, the CEO of Africa Harvest and a scientist who formerly worked with Monsanto, helped develop Tissue Culture Banana (TC banana). Banana diseases are often spread through "unclean" planting material. But TC banana technology allows scientists to use biotechnology for the "rapid and large scale multiplication" of disease free bananas-a single shoot can produce 2,000 individual banana plantlets.
Africa Harvest is also working on biofortifying sorghum with Vitamin A, creating "golden sorghum."
"But of course, there remains the thorny issue of control-among the biggest stumbling blocks for sharing any technology across countries and regions. Biotechnology has so far been largely owned by the private sector." So, in addition to researching crop production, Africa Harvest is also working to improve capacity building for scientists all over Africa. "If we're going to have GMOs on the continent," says Kamanga, "we want scientists who know how to do it." Along with that, Africa Harvest is working to strengthen regulatory systems for biotechnology.
And how does Africa Harvest respond to criticism about the development and use of biotechnology in agriculture? According to Kamanga, it's an "old debate" and one that takes place in 5-star hotels, not in farmers' fields. The issue now, he says, is how we make the best use of this technology.
When it comes to getting around, Americans love to consider the question of "what if...?"
As a result, our cars have evolved into "land yachts", our trucks have become "monster trucks", and the desire to drag our living spaces around with us has morphed into converted busses with rooms that pop out of the side, a Mini-Cooper hidden under the master bedroom floor, and self-tracking satellite dishes that fight for space on the roof with air conditioning equipment.
And for more than a few of us, "what if...?" has even extended to "what if my car...was a jet car?"
In today's improbable reality I'm here to tell you that Chrysler engineers asked that exact same question, for roughly a quarter of a century, and as a result they actually designed and deployed seven generations of cars with jet engines-and they came darn close to putting the eighth-generation design on sale to the general public.
It's a story of pocket protectors and slide rules and offices full of guys who look a bit like Drew Carey...but as we'll see in Part Two, it may also be a story of technology that couldn't be perfected "back then", but could be reborn in our own times.
Take a slo-mo aerial tour of Earth. Released on June 5th, over two and a half million people have already watched Home. The message is potent: it is too late for pessimism. We can redirect our use of energy, of farming, of transportation. We can and must live a different paradigm.
A lot of nonprofits are still just starting their outreach on the web. When someone from these groups needs a quick, short answer on where best to simply get started, I invariably direct them to Google for Non-Profits.
Launched approximately a year ago, Google opened up a one-stop shop featuring an array of tools. Beginners will have heard of many of the tools (e.g. YouTube) but the site serves as a reminder that these tools can be harnessed for nonprofit communications and advocacy.
The site is also replete with tutorials on how to use each of Google services. Some of the highlights are:
Last last week, the one millionth site was created on the social network Ning. For individuals and organizations (including nonprofits) for whom Facebook is not giving them exactly what they need, there's Ning, which allows users to build their own social network.
For an example of how nonprofits are using Ning, take a look at the site of our friends at National CAPACD, the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development.
Ning is free, with ads. The premium version gets rid of that.
To read more from The Opportunity Agenda, visit our blog.
I have an idea, and I'm hoping the more technologically-adept among us can weigh in and expand on the possibilities.
Open Left's recently-announced Progressive Legislation Monitoring project is a landmark step forward for the Netroots, offering us the chance to begin positively influencing the legislative process, instead of simply digging in our heels against one bad law after another and wandering about in the electoral wilderness.
But to me, the bigger problem is logistical. We need to track numerous bills, in numerous committees, between two houses of Congress populated by hundreds of legislators. To effectively move bills out of committee, we need to be able to track not just bills' co-sponsors, but also the statements of legislators and their staff about whether they plan to support a bill, oppose it, or stay out of it entirely.
This is the kind of problem that deserves an elegant but efficient web technology solution - we should create an open-source web-based application that would:
*list all House and Senate Committees and their membership;
*allow folks like Chris to input key legislation to be tracked in each committee; and most importantly,
*enable groups of Netroots activists to record congresscritters' anticipated support or opposition for legislation, in a tracked wiki-style format, with documentation (links to quotes, staff spoken to, time, etc.).
In 2008, one first-time progressive candidate in a key congressional district went through four campaign managers before losing.
Another spent $47,000 to retain a media firm that never produced a single TV ad. Another spent $40,000 on field consultants -- enough to pay 10 field staffers for two months, but which only bought a few hand-holding consultant calls. And others wasted thousands of dollars and weeks of staff time designing C-rate websites.
Every election cycle, inexperienced candidates who run on bold progressive ideas -- candidates who political insiders predict "can't win" -- come within a few points of victory. But too many lose winnable races due to the mistakes and inefficiencies of their campaigns.
Who is getting the backs of these progressive candidates? Who is helping them run competent, efficient campaigns so they can win? Right now, nobody.
...The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) will fill this void - providing needed infrastructure and strategic advice to progressive candidates so they can run first-class campaigns and win.
One thing I realized at MoveOn -- and that many folks across the blogosphere have written about in recent election cycles -- is that it makes no sense for the progressive community to raise tons of money for candidates who then spend it inefficiently, including on bloated consultant costs. We need to step up and help progressive candidates not just raise money, but run effective campaigns and win.
In an interesting development, one of the only four losing democratic incumbent congressional races in the country is speaking out. Second Congressional District Rep. Nancy Boyda's campaign manager Chad Manspeaker has posted a blog on the Kansas blog Everyday Citizen calling for a greater need for youth outreach and leadership development for youth in the state.
After a tough year in Kansas that made only a net gain of one state house seat and lost a US Congressional seat, democrats in Kansas are bitter sweet. Inspiration for hometown favorite Barack Obama came out in force with a gain of 4% over Kerry's loss in Kansas in 2004. Obama also garnered a 65,000 vote gain since 2004. Yet even with those benefits, Kansas was unable to create any local benefits for itself.
This morning's Topeka Capitol Journal says democrats in the state have no bench of candidates ready to step up and run for any statewide seats much less to seriously oppose the now 3 members of Congress in Kansas.
Part of Living Liberally's mission has been to promote engagement and collaboration among progressive organizations. To fulfill this goal we at Living Liberally have decided to feature interviews with people involved in different parts of the progressive movement. Hopefully, through these interviews, we can learn about what progressives are working on today, and get a little more in depth about what its like to be a part of the progressive movement.
Our first interviewee, Daniel Mintz, is in Research and Development at progressive powerhouse MoveOn.org Political Action. He currently lives in Brooklyn and every once in a while shows up at the Original Drinking Liberally. Enjoy!
Seth Pearce: So, what did your parents say when your organization was condemned by the US congress? Daniel Mintz: I think, they, like a lot of people, were just blown away that with so many huge problems to tackle, the US Congress decided to spend so much time talking about a newspaper ad. Just like, whether you agreed or disagreed with the ad, what a manufactured controversy.
SP: What exactly do you do at MoveOn? DM: Officially, I'm in charge of Research and Development, which is to say that I'm the R&D dept. (we're a pretty tiny shop). What that means in practice is that I get to have my hands in lots of cool stuff that we're trying out.
SP: Stuff John McCain would know how to use? DM: Not so much.
SP: People think of MoveOn as this big shadowy progressive organization, running some kind of secret progressive world order- what are some specific things that MoveOn is working on right now? DM: Ha. What are we working on right now?...Let's see...We're getting ready to run a massive get out the vote operation in the fall, hundreds of paid organizers working with tens of thousands of volunteers. We'll be essentially combining our 2004 program, Leave No Voter Behind, where people in swing states canvassed their neighbors, with our 2006 program, Call for Change, where MoveOn members across the country made more than 7 million calls to voters in key House and Senate races.
We're also working on FISA: Right now, we're asking thousands of MoveOn members to call their senators every day to tell them not to cave on the FISA "compromise".
And we're running a National Day of Action for an Oil-Free President at gas stations across the country in a few weeks. McCain is pretty darn tight with Big Oil. Many of the more than 100 lobbyists associated with his campaign are lobbyists for Big Oil. We wanted to highlight those ties and push for our next president to free himself and us of our dependence on foreign oil. So we're holding hundreds of gas station rallies where thousands of MoveOn members will show up at local gas stations to rally and call for a real, progressive solutions to the energy crisis.
A key plank of Barack Obama's candidacy platform has been civic engagement. His plan for creating an open and connected government is one of the most refreshing and detailed elements of his entire campaign.
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