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Abstract: This lecture is about organizing public debates and using the internet (website, electronic newsletters, action calls by email, skype meetings) to influence the decision making process concerning local issues.

Background info:

Organizing the community in a quarter of Rotterdam

I live in Rotterdam (the Netherlands) and I am active in my own neighborhood. During several years we built a grass root movement that is now for the largest part dormant most of the time, but can be activated when needed.

How we built that (and are building that) and what the role was and is of organizing debates and using the internet is the subject of my story.

The part of the city where I live is located at the North side (or the back) of the Central Station, at walking distance from the city center. Most of the houses are rented and only 15% of the housed are owned by the inhabitants. There are several shops, a few small hotels, but in general it is a housing quarter. About 40% till 50% of the population has an immigrant background. Many people or their parents originally are descended from Turkey and Morocco, but there are also many other nationalities.

Building a grass root movement started about ten years ago when the city of Rotterdam published plans to build a new fast tramway (a light rail system) that had to go through the neighborhood and a year later came with a plan to build a new Metro line that would destroy some of the waterways in our neighborhood – as they wanted to use that as its trace – and would come above the ground not far from our neighborhood.

After the plans were changed to a better trace for the new Metro line (party because of our pressure during public debates and organizing people), the national government together with the city decided to renovate and enlarge the Central Station. That means a building process that lasts many years and certainly influences the living conditions in our neighborhood. Thereby they have plans to build several large new schools and expensive houses at the outskirts of the neighborhood, with severe consequences for it. All together enough reason for public action.

When the first plans for the light rail system and later the new Metro line became public, some active people in the neighborhood (in the community center, but also in a home owners organization) got together to discuss what it all would mean for us. At that time there were no more than 10 people, of in total 4.500 inhabitants. They were not pleased by the plans and organized an information meeting about the plans in the community center. Therefore they asked neighbors and friends to come and they spread some leaflets around their neighbors. I was at that first meeting where we were with about thirty people.

The (electronic) media

Email

At the start, to keep contact, we exchanged email addresses. Most people had email or started with email by that time and we helped several people to get on the internet. Everybody who thought he or she got some useful new information would send that to all the others. That worked fine for about two months but then most of the people who participated in that email network lost the overview of all the information sent around. So we decided to structure it.

Email newsletter

Within the group of active neighbors (about 15 people by then) 3 people became the “communication workgroup”, and one of them was in charge of producing an infrequent email newsletter. Everybody who got some new information would inform her and she produced (with the others from the communication workgroup) from that material an electronic newsletter one or two times a month.

That electronic news letter was primarily used to exchange policy and background information, but was also used to exchange opinions. By passing the email newsletter to neighbors, friends and all kind of neighborhood organizations AND by distributing it – printed – within the community center, churches and a home for elderly people, the list of email addresses that got the newsletter grew in six month till about 150.

Website

With the growing information about all the plans it became more and more difficult for everyone who wanted, to get, read (and comment on) the available information. One of the members of the group who worked at the Technical University knew how to build and maintain a website. So he built a website that should contain all the information about the plans for the neighborhood. It was an important project, but it took and takes a lot of time to keep it up to date. It was and is all volunteer work and with most people having full time jobs it was and is not easy to keep the website up to date.

On the other hand we also published the electronic newsletter on the website so that also people who did not get it directly could read it AND subscribe to it. At the height of the debates about several plans we had more than 50 subscribers from outside the neighborhood, mostly politicians and civil servants who were somehow involved in the plans.

Other news outlets

Besides the email newsletter and website we also used more traditional media to inform people and influence the debate about the plans.

There is a printed newsletter for the neighborhood, published every two month by the community center, and distributed among all households in the neighborhood. The local government for our part of the city gives a subsidy to publish it, but does not control the content. We used that printed newsletter to inform others in the neighborhood about plans of the city government and our reactions to it and informed them about our electronic newsletter and the website. As several people of the neighborhood action group were also active in the community center it was easy to get information in the printed newsletter. But as it was only publishes every two month it was not a medium to organize, but to inform people.

Besides that there are two commercial newspapers that are spread free of charge – as they are financed by advertisements – house to house and these sometimes also wanted to publish critical information about plans of the local government. Here it took considerable time to build good relations with journalists and publishers and give them reliable (and critical) information. We even sometimes write draft articles, that they can decide on to publish.

Building an active neighborhood group

The actual active group has never been larger than 6 till 10 people, with a group of around 10 people close to it that easily could be asked to participate in (the preparation of) activities.

Leadership is necessary in these kinds of advocacy activities, but we could only survive as an active group and show our strength by organizing a good number of people to come to a public debate, by keeping in close contact with the other (concerned) inhabitants of the neighborhood. Therefore we organize(d) (at least) twice a year a public meeting in the community center open to all inhabitants where we talk about strategy and outcome and invite new people in the active group. At some very tense moments we had sometimes more than a hundred people at those meetings. Now we have most of the time thirty till forty people at those meetings.

The real support is shown at critical stages of the (negotiating) process: at public meetings with politicians or civil servants, during a protest march to the town hall or a meeting with a building society or the director of a new big school that will be build.

Then there are most of the time more than a hundred people present who support our arguments in the debate with policy makers and other stakeholders

Public debate: gathering information and building opinions and commitment

There are four types of public debates we organize(d) as part of the process of community organization and trying to influence policy, politics and parties involved.

Public debates within the neighborhood. As I said before: having regular meetings with inhabitants of the neighborhood builds the basis for support of activities of the action group. Not only because the action group can get support for its plans, but also because people give their opinion, what can change the position of the active group. It is a two way debate. Sometimes the debates are held in plenary sessions, sometimes debates are held in smaller groups that report to the plenary session. Once we had people from a local theater group who played certain roles so people would find it easier to react.

When the municipality comes with new plans for the neighborhood they most of the time will organize a meeting for inhabitants of the neighborhood where public servants will present and explain the plans. Sometimes politicians are present art those meetings “to listen to the reaction of the people” but normally they don’t want to give there opinion “as these are not yet final plans”. It is important that before these plans are presented by these civil servants that you know as much as possible about it. Of course you ask the civil servants why the want to have this meeting and what plans they are going to be presented. But it is always worthwhile too to contact others in the bureaucracy or critical policymakers who might have interesting background information. We always (try to) go through the available material before the meeting, prepare our questions and critical remarks and appoint two or three people to acts as opponents in the debate with the civil servants. And of course we use the electronic newsletter to inform people about the meeting and ask the people who will be touched by the plan to be at the meeting.

The discussion with civil servants is important as they will give you most of the information you need in the further public and policy debates, but of course it are the local aldermen and politicians who take the decisions about these plans. So the active group talks to them (if they are in for that) and we invite them publicly for a debate in the neighborhood about the plans. Sometime aldermen or local politicians are reluctant to come to such a – often critical – meeting, but the local press always picks that up and in the end most of them come. It is important to prepare these debates well, but it is also important to give them enough room during the debate to “save their skin”. If they want to “rethink” certain aspects of a plan that is OK. If they have to see how much more it costs to fulfill certain wishes that is OK too. If they want to consult other parties involved before they come to a final position that is OK too. But then you also agree with them to a new meeting in a few weeks, to continue the debate. Even if you don’t like their position you have to keep an open line of communication, as you will need them to change plans and they need us if they don’t want to much open opposition to their plans.

The fourth type of public debate is with “stakeholders”. That are organizations that have an interest in the plans and often are willing to explain why the plans are good for the neighborhood. As they are often paying for an important part of the realization of the plans (building societies, a school that wants to build, the public transport authority) they don’t like a strong opposition from the neighborhood against “their” plans, as they never know how that opposition will influence the political decision making process. It is often easier to explain to them why we think that a certain part of a plan is not such a good idea, than to convince civil servants or local politicians, as they often feel that they are bound to what they agreed on with these stakeholders outside the local policy circle; while these stakeholders only wants their project realized and want to be flexible if that makes the neighborhood happy and does not cost too much. Having a public debate with them often generates pressure on policy makers and civil servants who mostly only want to defend the plans they agreed on with the stakeholders involved. Also here it is important to prepare that public debate well. Like we do that for the public debate with civil servants. And also here we mobilize citizens who will be touched by the realization of the plans to attend the public meetings and give their opinion.

The internet and influencing policy and politics

We used the internet complementary to the (small or large scale) debates we had with civil servants, local politicians and aldermen, or other stakeholders. Every time we had a discussion with someone, we informed not only the other members of active group within the neighborhood of the outcome, but also all local politicians, civil servants and stakeholders that could benefit from the outcome of the information.

And we did that in general within a few hours after the meeting. That meant that they were always informed earlier by us about the outcome of a meeting than when they were informed officially by the parties we had spoken to. And of course we also gave – besides of the facts – our own interpretation of the meeting and the outcome. That influenced all parties concerned and meant that people – like local politicians – often contacted us to get information that they had not yet received officially. That gave us an information lead that we used (and still uses) in our advantage.

Doing so also meant that we often fueled differences of opinion between different political parties or factions or differences between branches of the bureaucracy after we informed them about the position of politicians, rival organizations within the bureaucracy or other stakeholders. We often became the central point of information for many parties involved in the process and – because we always gave our opinion on it – influenced several times final decisions.

Current situation

The renovation of the Central Station is a process that takes many years. There are regular meeting with civil servants and other stakeholders who play a role in that process and we still inform our network within and outside the neighborhood about the outcome.

The electronic newsletter is published now irregularly as there is a news bulletin about the work at the Central Station that is published about every two months by the local government and the building partners together. We are however always asked for comments before it is published. That news bulletin is spread from house to house and all parties involved know that if we don’t agree it is easy for us to get an electronic newsletter out, organize a meeting about it in the neighborhood, inform all other parties involved about our position and by doing so stir a debate about that point within the political and bureaucratic circles involved.

Of course we also take care of our support within the neighborhood by organizing a meeting twice a year about what is going on and what our position is in it and we ask at these meetings for suggestions and for support to our position.

In the ten years we are active now, about thirty people were a member of the active group, and the number of people involved at a certain time differed from four till ten over time. Because we organize regular meetings twice a year for all people who live in the neighborhood there were always “fresh people” who wanted to become active for some time. Thanks to the website we built a collective memory and thanks to the electronic newsletter and the broadly sent mails after every important meeting we kept contact and informed our base in the neighborhood.

Because we organized many public debates with a follow up on the internet (email, electronic newsletter, website) we often influenced policy debates and political debates, where it was important for us. Of course we not always realized what we wanted, but as a neighborhood we are now seen by politicians and policy makers as people you can better talk to before you make final decisions, than only tell us what plans there are developed and how they want to realize them.

Organizing debates and using the internet before and after the debates worked for us.

Abstract: We propose a presentation on how to use a popular web site material to discuss civic position of youth. We propose practical activity as follows:

• Watching video film about students’ cruelty.
• Making a graph of the reaction on the film
• Find out responsibility using a method of “corners”, that means to find out who and what for is responsible
  -  administration of You Tube
  - users or visitors of the web site, who watch the film
  - the ones who made a film and put it on the web site
  - the cruel youngsters in the film
• Summarising discussion with the help of method of “circles”
• Analysing of the comments on the web (should one take part and comment such information on the net?)

The presentation will be made in Russian.

Abstract: With the arrival of the social, participative web often referred to as Web 2.0 came talk of Learning 2.0. Learning 2.0 can be summarised as collaborative, project-based, self-directed, boundary-busting and above all connected. We discuss some national horizon scanning, and the ways Goldsmiths learners and teachers are using what the Web has to offer. We then discuss some of the challenges this poses for learners and academic teachers across higher education institutions, including issues of authority, credit, assessment, facilitation, intellectual property, data protection and support.

Up to 150 young people from around the world will attend the event. These are tomorrow’s leaders, they are highly active in their community, often work under very difficult circumstances and are trying to bring change to places often very resistant to it.

Our goal is to help them understand how the internet and communication tools in general can be used to amplify their voice, further their cause and achieve the change they seek.

The full list of speakers is being finalised but we hope to have representatives from leading global technology firms, people at the forefront of using social technologies such as Twitter and other leading lights on the UK internet scene.

If you would like to attend the Exchange, please fill in an application form – and email it to Marcin Zaleski at mzaleski@idebate.org by 15th October 2009.

If you would like to speak at the event please contact David Crane.

Abstract: The presentation includes the description of the school’s eJournal, its aims and the ways how it can be used in the activities of the debating society of the school. The presentation will be illustrated by the slides containing extracts from problematic articles, students’ opinion on different issues, ways of solving problems, giving pros and cons.

Abstract: MOSA was founded in 2001 in Amsterdam. MOSA was founded primarily to give the youngsters in Amsterdam a voice by starting a radio broadcasting for and by the youngsters of Amsterdam.

Young people of all ages, education and cultural background get the opportunity to cooperate and create something that matches the experiences of the youth in Amsterdam.

MOSA received different prizes, like the first prize for best youth radio programme in Amsterdam.

The format of Mosa is fully designed, created and completed by the youngsters themselves. The topics that are being discussed is based on the interest of the young people.

MOSA has developed an unique formula to organize debates at various locations.

At MOSA I guide the youngsters by organizing debates. We have a couple of meetings where they have to brainstorm. Then everyone is getting one or more tasks. My job is to guide them through that process and help them where needed. And off course I have to make sure that they finish their tasks on time.

The idea is one of letting the conference be formed by everyone who attends rather than the organisers themselves. It’s very Web 2.0 you know and so entirely suited to our theme.

Everyone is encouraged to participate. Even if you don’t present please ask a question or two. The more we get involved the more we benefit.

Abstract: The presentation will give insights on changes in the media landscape and the resulting influences on consumer behavior, especially through the proliferation of digital media. The shift from broadcast media, as known in the 20th century, to social media in the 21st century has lead to new forms of interactions, which will be covered in new communication policy issues. Examples on companies or organizations using social media platforms to involve customers or the publics will be shown and finally the presentation will give a critical outlook on the long-term changes of these trends.