September 2, 1999
LIBRARY / POLITICAL RESOURCES
Democracy Finds Fertile Ground Online
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(June 3, 1999)
By STEVEN R. KNOWLTON
n 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.
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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Civic Participation 99