Local Digital Social Networks

If democracy is this challenge of people coming together to figure out the kind of shared lives they want to forge, then the behaviors that they use to negotiate difference are going to flow from the commitments they have to each other. So when my husband and I fight, we fight like we want to stay married. We may deeply disagree about things, but... See more

What was really powerful about Undivided is it made me recognize the ways in which the faith that a lot of the people brought to the work meant that grace manifested as their respect for the core dignity of people around them. This commitment to other people’s dignity was true regardless of what race or background others might have. And there was a... See more

Marshall Ganz is someone that we've both worked with in different ways. He says that social change always begins with people who have “both a critical eye and a hopeful heart.” That quote is exactly right. And this is why young people are so often at the forefront of social change: because they have the critical eye and they have no choice but to... See more

The transformative potential of civil society institutions is core to that Skocpolian transition that you're talking about from membership to management. These historical membership-based institutions that Theda Skocpol studies were built on the idea that they matter because they equip us with the habits and skills that we need in order to forge a... See more

On day one, they define a political institution as “a socially created constraint on human action.” That definition has always stuck with me. This means that we can make them and remake them. But it also means that whatever institution we create, people are going to use those institutions strategically to try to achieve whatever ends they're trying... See more

To me, the real promise of democracy and the promise of politics is this question of, “How do we build a world in which people don't feel like they're pawns in a game that other people are controlling?” Ultimately, that’s what organizing is about.

The core conceptual questions at the heart of my work are: “How do we equip people to become architects of their own future? How do people do that individually? And then how do people come together to forge a common life in which we can all realize a shared vision of the world that we want?” That's what drew me into studying politics: it’s the... See more

Infrastructure can be defined as "the stuff you don't notice until it breaks." The key property of infrastructure is that it can be easily and reliably used by anyone for their own purposes. It makes our lives easier and us more productive. It can be deployed and used by many for many purposes at about the same cost as one. The more people who use... See more

Instead of asking whether or not a platform optimizes for engagement, it can be more helpful to ask how explicit or implicit these engagement signals are, and provide users with more controls to allow them to tweak their online experience.