A Resonant Purpose

Above: Two Citizen Movements Working for Social and Economic Justice. At Left, in early 2011, hundreds of thousands gathered for rallies on the grounds of the WI Capitol; At Right, in that same year, Occupy Wall Street participants maintained an ongoing presence at New York's Zucotti Park.

When massive protests sprung up at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison earlier in 2011 in response to draconian anti-worker, anti-education legislative proposals by the new governor and legislature, people across the nation and the globe reached out in solidarity. Many of them had learned about developments in Wisconsin through the Social Media. In the months since then, a massive movement for workers' rights, open government, quality education, and responsive healthcare is taking hold in the US and well beyond, most recently exemplified by the Occupy Wall Street movement. While the venue and name may change over time, this movement is here to stay, and resonant non-violent protest movements everywhere are gaining strength from the organizing power of the web.

In that same spirit of solidarity, through this blog, Wisconsin activists hope to share what we have learned through our use of on-line organizing with participants in the Dec. 17-18th Netroots New York conference at Pace University, where several Wisconsinites will be presenting. As a prelude to the conference, we share these samples of innovative organizing from the Wisconsin Uprising linked to social media. Thanks to all who have produced the contributions linked to here, and to all who shared their favorite social media examples, with special thanks to Joanie Juster. Working together, we can and will make a difference!

The blog format was the fastest and most efficient way to bring together these clips for conference goers. Nonetheless, it is a topically-arranged list of content trying to fit into a chronologically-based blog format. A couple of navigation tips: 1) If scrolling through the contents in the order postings are presented, be sure to select "Older Posts" to reach additional listings beyond the bottom of each page, and 2) an ad hoc "Table of Contents" can be found in the Blog Archive list at lower right.

WI CAPITOL PROTESTS

Happy Third Anniversary, Wisconsin Capitol Protests
Please venture further into this site to an archive of representative social media from this important social movement, which is still making its presence known three years later.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

The Ian's Pizza Story: Social Media Feed the Protest

One of the most powerful indications that people around the world were following the protests through the social media was the fact that Ian's Pizza had received calls from all 50 states and every major country of the world, footing the bill to provide free pizza for much of the protest.



From Ian's Pizza on State Youtube page

From the comments for this video:
When the orders from across the country started coming in last Tuesday, the pizzas were delivered one by one to the capitol. As more and more people heard about this, more and more orders came in, and more pizza was made. On Saturday, after the first 40 orders came in, Ian gave away the next 600 slices on the house. Now they have set a maximum daily limit for orders based on what they can produce and do not take people's money for pizza not made.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)