Verde Smoke

An MIT Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning course (that I’m auditing), entitled Media Technology and Community Building, along with progressive community members, has been meeting twice weekly with a core group of Framingham youth and community activists since April 7th, 2009. The class has been helping the youth to analyze and activate their own social networks, both through classic mechanism and using new media technologies such as websites, cell phones, and user-created audio and video. Using these newly obtained skills the youth were challenged to activate their networks, to mobilize their peers, friends, and community to participate in a game on May 9th, 2009.

Check out this video of the final presentation to the Lawrence Community Works Union Crossing Committee, describing programs devised by the graduate and undergraduate students in the Spring 2009 Lawrence practicum course in the Dept of Urban Studies and Planning (11.423 LAWRENCE PRACTICUM: Info, Assets, and the Immigrant City) where I’m the teaching assistant.

I like to describe myself as a storyteller in search of community. But I’m not always the most well spoken person in the room. Sometimes I look up and find myself up to my neck in community. Upon reflection, perhaps the biggest gap is between the way I see myself and the reality of the places I end up.

How I eased into rewriting a memo about my thesis from the comfortable spot of a reflective blog entry…

It’s February school vacation this week. I know this, because sitting across from me on my morning bus commute is a foursome of teenage girls. Even though I’m rocking tunes from my iPhone and ruminating about morning meetings, they catch my eye.

Last year, I did a presentation in the Tactical Media class, based on research I did for Fred Johnson on citizen journalism.  Here’s my notes…cleaned up considerably!

When people ask me (as they inevitably do when they find out I’m a full time volunteer) why I do VISTA, I often cite the ways it connects me to groups and people that I could have never imagined I could meet doing a regular job.