Working off Division

08/16/2010 Moon in Scorpio First Quarter

Today was interesting. It started out with a text conference with Cyd, where we talked about some of the things that we’d like to develop next for the project. My work is to figure out Blogs, to make the receipts a little better, and to look into leads for sharing the screen-printer that City Repair used for the VBC shirts! That’s some damn fun work to be doing. After our conference, I had to get ready to go out to meet my wife at Alma Midwifery, as we’re going to monthly prenatal check-ups. This particular check up was a little scary, as the midwives had trouble finding our little baby’s heartbeat, but we researched it and found out that it’s a pretty common occurrence.

The streets were pretty great today. I met up with Cyd, who had been going through a kind of rough day. It was hot out today, I saw it hit at least 99 degrees in Portland, but it could have been higher in places. Then we canvassed together. The first people we talked to invited us into their house, and actually were interested in going through the process of thinking about what their needs and assets are. That was refreshing, to see real participation and thought applied to the project from a participant. They talked about having a dork block party, which I thought was one of the better ideas that I’ve heard. Have a party, where people play the games and watch the shows that they love but they keep in the closet. Bring your inner dork out of the closet!

We talked to a union organizer that is willing to volunteer next, and connected to him about the fact that instead of the major media focusing on the big pictures, they’re working to divide us. We used the mosque at ground zero as an example of the little things that divide us. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but some issues are just used to divide us and inflame our sensibilities. Then those fires are stoked over and over again to focus us on what divides us from each other. These kinds of processes create vast gulfs between us and our neighbors. This kind of division that’s manufactured through the media echo chambers is actually bad for us as humans.

Then we talked to a RAD couple, that were excited about us stopping by and were in fact waiting for us. That was amazing. I’ll let Cyd tell that story. Suffice to say, it was amazing and reminded me of the reason that I wanted to do this. It’s not about the people that don’t want to participate, it’s about the people that are willing to participate, and even more about the people that are excited to participate. We found some of those people today and it was amazing.