Connecticut
Post posts about what is happening in the State of Connecticut.
Representative Consensus in a Digital Age
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 10/09/2011 - 13:02A key characteristic of the #Occupy movement is the use of consensus for decision making. Some people have worked with groups governed by consensus for decades. For others, it is a new idea. For everyone, there is a new component, digital communications.
I have been peripherally involved with the Occupy Hartford group, and have watched people learn about and use the consensus process. However, because of other commitments, I have not been able to make it to the general assemblies which means in a traditional consensus process where consensus is arrived at between the people attending the meeting, my opportunities to have my voice heard have been limited.
This is by no means a new phenomenon. Our country has been based on a representative democratic form of government. I cannot go to Washington to debate every issue that Congress confronts. Instead, I have representatives. In my case, Rosa DeLauro represents me in the House and Richard Blumenthal and Joe Lieberman represent me in the Senate. I’m not always happy with the representation I receive, so I send my thoughts to my representatives and get involved in the process of trying to elect people that are more likely to represent my view points.
With Occupy Hartford, we are not electing people to take part in the consensus process. Instead, anyone who attends may participate. This is where the digital age can come in nicely.
Some of the people that represent the citizens of Connecticut in the Connecticut General Assembly, also known as the State Legislature, do a very good job of communicating via digital media while they are at the Capitol. With that, there is a great opportunity for them to hear from the people they are representing and making sure that a wide range of people are truly represented at the Connecticut General Assembly.
It is easy to find out who is at the Connecticut General Assembly. However, it can be hard to find out who is at the general assembly of Occupy Hartford and this can make it harder for the people attending to fully represent the broad base of supporters of the occupy movement in Connecticut.
Digital media can help with this. To the extent that people attending the general assembly share on social media that they are there, they can represent more people. To the extent that they share what is going on at the general assembly, real time, via social media, they can get more input.
In many ways, this is similar to a technique often used at general assemblies, called the people’s mic, where people repeat what they’ve heard through the crowd, so more people can hear it. Instead of simply repeating what is said at the general assembly to the crowd, repeating it via social media, the people’s mic becomes digitally enabled. Social media can also then become a way of getting additional feedback to the people who will be making decisions at the general assembly.
Beyond this, it is possible to discuss many of the issues that are likely to be faced at a general assembly ahead of time online. Then, attendees of the general assembly can be better versed in the issues when they are discussed at a general assembly.
It is exciting to see the occupy movement using consensus as well as to think about how digital media can help make consensus more powerful.
What do you think?
#Occupy Animal Farm
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 10/04/2011 - 18:38It is fascinating to watch the early stages of a movement take shape, before a clear agenda and a set of leaders take the stage. For traditional journalists, it must be particularly challenging. They have been trained to look for the leaders. They want a press release with an official statement. Without this, they need to think more and dig deeper, and that means more work on an already tight schedule.
Inside the movement, people discuss what the message should be and who the messengers should be. It will be interesting to see what direction the #occupy movement takes. Nature abhors a leadership vacuum, and people will feel compelled to step forward and take leadership roles. Yet this runs into the old Animal Farm story where all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others.
It happens time and time again. Some group of challengers take on the status quo. If they are successful, they take over the status quo. They become the new status quo with new leaders. It goes back to the old question, "Are you a leader? A you a follower? Are those the only two choices?"
Will this happen with the #occupy movement? Pessimistically speaking, yeah, probably. Yet since this movement seems to be about a redistribution of political power, away from the corporate political oligarchy back to the populous, let us hope that it takes a long time for such a leadership to emerge.
Instead, I hope that this will be a movement that empowers people, that gets them to speak with their own voices, and not the voices of some appointed leaders. I hope this will be a movement that will get more people involved in the political process, from voting and working on campaigns to running for office, while at the same time diminishing the corporate influence on our political system that has gotten so out of control.
Hopefully, each person will find their own voice and the venues that work best for them, whether it be social media, from Facebook and Twitter to Diaspora, Hopefully, each person will find better ways of getting information than from news outlets controlled by large corporations. Hopefully, each person will think more critically about the media they consume and then produce better media themselves.
Will it be enough to prevent another Animal Farm moment? Probably not. Vigilance is a lot of work, and people eventually get tired. But, as long as the early fervor of a movement keeps people involved and vigilant, we can, for at least a short period of time be a more democratic country.
#Occupy Your Mind with Post Broadcast Politics
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 10/03/2011 - 20:00Sunday evening, I went to a planning meeting for Occupy Hartford. (For my initial thoughts about the meeting, see my #OccupyHartford blog post.)
One of the topics discussed was about whose attention are we trying to get. Is it business leaders? Is it the politicians? Is it the traditional media? Is it the general populous? Related to that, what is the message we are trying to get across and the results we are trying to accomplish.
A mailing list has been set up, and there is incredible energy on the list, as people work together to reach consensus on some of these topics.
With this being a group drawn together by some general ideas, different people will have different opinions, and many of these opinions will overlap. For example, business leaders, politicians, and journalists are all part of the general populous. So, if we try to reach the general populous, we are trying to reach business leaders as part of that.
Likewise, as we talk, we find ideas that resonate and we can speak individually about the ones that are most important to each one of us.
Since I am a social media person, this plays an important role in how I am looking at things. Years ago, I wrote about 'post-broadcast politics', a phrase I learned from a friend. Yet the post broadcast politics we talked about nearly a decade ago, really didn't take shape. Maybe, now, it really is.
The #Occupy movement, like the Arabic Spring, is powered by social media, where each one of us can have our say, and can say it socially as part of something bigger. It is the sort of direct involvement that has been so elusive for years, and many of us may still have problems tapping into it.
Instead of listening to the news to tell us what they think we need to hear, or even having to have the group agree on exactly what we are going to say, each one of us can say what is important, and the themes others pick up on end up getting the most focus.
This presents difficulties for people used to the older hierarchical broadcast style of involvement, but it is very liberating. #occupy your mind with post broadcast politics.
With this, let me share a few thoughts about what the #Occupy movement is really all about. I'm using #occupy extensively since it seems to be 'the brand', and it is a word that we can do a lot with.
What is it that #occupies your mind? Are you pre-occupied with what is being broadcast to you by the traditional media? By bloggers, and new media or social media? Is your mind occupied with searching for mindless entertainment, or simply getting the next meal? Are you pre-occupied with bread and circuses?
Is your career occupied with an effort to get ahead by taking advantage of others, or does the idea of working together to help one another out occupy a greater place in how you try to live your life?
What matters to me, is reaching the general populous and trying to get them to occupy their minds with post broadcast politics based on collaboratively seeking the common good That, it seems to me, is what is sorely needed today, and is the anti-thesis of the corporate greed where 1% take advantage of the other 99%
#OccupyHartford
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 10/02/2011 - 20:08I arrived at the Charter Oak Community Center in Hartford Sunday evening at 5 PM. There was a circle of chairs in the downstairs room, which was being expanded as I arrived. There were about thirty five people there and more were arriving. People were scurrying around to find more chairs, and some people started bringing cushions to put on the floor for people to sit on. I chatted with a couple people and looked around to see who else was there.
It was a mixed crowd, with kids still in college to people who had been in Haight Ashbury in the sixties. One person took the lead to act as facilitator. A note taker was selected as well as a person to keep track of whose turn it was to speak.
One of the first people to speak was from Tunisia. He was very excited to be there and was warmly welcomed. Others had been down at the demonstrations in New York and brought back various reports. There was some discussion about the goals and the near term plans.
As a very broad based group, there were many ideas expressed, from universal health care and bringing the troops home, to challenging corporate personhood and the detrimental effect it is having on our political process.
There was strong support voiced for some sort of direct action, such as occupying Bushnell Park, an abandoned building, and various other locations.
In terms of messaging, the key idea of representing the 99% that hasn't prospered while the richest 1% have received strong support.
I tweeted various parts of the meeting, and shared one picture, although from where I was sitting, the lighting wasn't all that good. I had to leave early to call into Fiona's Radio Show and to get home to wrap up the day. The meeting was only half over, so I look forward to receiving an email with additional notes from the meeting.
There was a lot of support and energy behind the meeting and it will be interesting to see how Occupy Together comes together in Hartford, and the rest of Connecticut.
#ff #hcsmct @CTHealth @ctdph @CHCConnecticut @HealthJusticeCT @cshhc @CTHealthCenters @CTVoices @WCGMemorialFund
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 09/30/2011 - 21:19Earlier today, @CTHealth tweeted about these groups being people that do #hcsmct right. It actually reflects an important discussion I’ve been in this week and I was glad to see the tweet and use it as a starting point for my follow Friday blog post.
For those who haven’t read my follow Friday blog posts, I list my suggestions for the week, and then provide some thoughts on why I’ve suggested them.
I use Twitterfeed to pull the blog post and create a tweet, so it will go up on Twitter, with a link back to the blog. Nice, easy, and automated.
For those who aren’t acquainted with the hashtag #ff, that is follow Friday, a means of sharing information about who you think is worth following.
#hcsmct is a newly concocted hashtag. There is a hashtag, #hcsm for Health Care Social Media. Different groups use variations of the #hcsm hashtag for their area, so some of us have talked about #hcsmct for people doing social media for health care issues in Connecticut.
@CTHealth is the Connecticut Health Foundation, a very important group dealing with health issues in Connecticut. @CTDPH is the Connecticut Department of Public Health. It is great to see a state agency making strong use of Twitter. They are now just a few followers away from the 2000 mark.
@CHCConnecticut is the Community Health Center, headquartered in Middletown with sites across the state. I am their social media manager. @HealthJusticeCT is a group focusing on raising awareness of and addressing health disparities in Connecticut. I’ve had some great discussions with people from @HealthJusticeCT.
@cshhc is Cornell Scott Hill Health Center in New Haven. The are a community health center, like CHC is and it is great to see them using Twitter.
@CTHealthCenters is the association of community health centers in Connecticut. I’ve spoken a little bit with people there and it is great to see them on Twitter as well.
@CTVoices is Connecticut Voices for Children, a group I’ve supported even before twitter was around.
@WCGMemorialFund is the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund works collaboratively to improve education for CT's children. This is a new group to me and I look forward to learning more about them.
Together, all of us can work find ways of addressing health issues in our state, whether it be focusing on children, health disparities, on serving the underprivileged, or focusing on public health issues.
I really look forward to seeing what #hcsmct can do together.
