September 2, 1999

LIBRARY / POLITICAL RESOURCES

Democracy Finds Fertile Ground Online


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    By STEVEN R. KNOWLTON

    On a recent sweltering Monday evening, nearly 50 residents of the Bay Ridge neighborhood in Brooklyn jammed into the living room of a two-story brick row house to talk about problems like erosion and rats in Owl's Head Park, 27 acres of trees and grass on the Brooklyn waterfront. It was classic grass-roots organizing, more or less the way it has been done for generations.



    James Estrin/The New York Times
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    But with every passing month, as more people go online, community organizers are finding new ways to harness the power of the Internet. The basics of organization -- using communication to start a group or keep it together, and finding information that will arm community organizers with data -- are, one by one, moving into cyberspace. And individuals can also turn to those same sources of information when they want to make their voices heard.

    ""The whole notion of the Web is to try to get people involved,"" said William Revelle, a psychology professor at Northwestern University who says he maintains a page of links to civic groups (pmc.psych.nwu.edu/civicpart99.html) because, well, people with computers and civic interests should do that sort of thing.

    Group members can stay in touch through a Web site or a listserv, a kind of mass mailing possible through e-mail. Both technologies have their advocates, but Web sites are indispensable for gathering information.

    E-mail has also made it vastly easier to get in touch with elected officials and civil servants.

    And because the Web shrinks both time and space, concerned residents in places like Bay Ridge can turn to it for help, regardless of whether they want a fenced dog run or Rudy Giuliani or Hillary Clinton to be their next United States Senator.


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