BECAUSE JUSTICE DOESN'T JUST HAPPEN

Building a network, not an empire
by Kevin Jones

If you do a search on Google, the popular internet search engine, for Abortion-"Right to life" you get 40 plus sites, almost all of which refer and link to each other. If you do the same search on "Abortion-"Freedom of Choice" about 35 sites come up, almost none of which refer to each other. That’s an illustration of a basic truth that should be uncomfortable for readers of The Witness: The right literally knows what it is doing, and who else is doing it, much more than do progressives and groups working for justice.

Conservatives seem to be far better at using information as a tool for organizing movements and have the systems in place to effectively focus their energies on a cause. Meanwhile, progressives typically work as isolated islands of activists. The myopia that isolation engenders could be a significant part of the reason progressives got blindsided by the effectiveness of the forces the conservatives were able to marshal to pass anti-inclusive resolutions at the Lambeth conference of Anglican bishops in 1998.

That’s the problem that the Witness Information Network has arisen to help solve (see www.thewitness.org). Simply put, we want to help turn those isolated islands of progressives and groups focused on causes like full inclusion for gays and lesbians, economic justice, peace and the environment into groups that know what their peers and potential collaborators are doing. We want the islands to become nodes connected to a network, able to communicate, partner and make common cause together to help bring about the realm of God.

Our goal is to do it by working with movement groups and parishes to build online and physical communities that help empower the members of each group. But we want to do far more than just provide a better and more vital online presence for individual existing groups. We’re out to work on that problem exemplified by the Google search illustrated above. So our real goal is connecting the dots between the groups who join the Witness Information Network as a way to build a broad community of people working for justice. Presenting or helping sponsor conferences, seminars and training sessions will also be part of our community-building activities.

Our first partner organization, Claiming the Blessing, the coalition of Integrity, Oasis groups and Beyond Inclusion, exemplify the approach we want to take. Those organizations decided their chances of getting rites for same-sex blessings approved for inclusion in the Book of Occasional Services at General Convention next summer were greater if they joined forces. We are also in talks with the Episcopal Peace Fellowship, Integrity and other groups, as well as some progressive parishes and groups within those parishes about joining our network.

That’s our overall strategy; acting from the belief that all of us are more powerful than any one of us and that we need to learn to make common cause together, just like the conservatives already do. The Witness Information Network’s goal is to create the information infrastructure to help make that a reality. One thing we have discovered is that most of our potential partners know their issues inside and out, but the communication piece is often an afterthought, left to volunteers who have too much on their plate and too little time. That’s something we can help with. My wife, Rosa Lee Harden, vicar of Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church in San Francisco, and I have decades of media experience, including building a business that successfully created a community that met virtually on the internet and physically at conferences. We consider this our shared ministry.

Tactics will include providing a movement calendar, where everyone on the justice side of the church can find out which group is doing what, when they are doing it and with whom. We are creating a network of linked websites for partner groups. We have hired Pulitzer prize-winning journalist turned Episcopal priest, Pat McCaughan, to edit an online newsletter that will cover the news about the justice activities of the various movements, groups and active parishes and help connect people in each of those island-like groups with each other. And Susan Russell, executive director of Claiming the Blessing, will be working with us as community manager. She will be connecting people and movements to each other, in kind of a cross-pollination role, helping to grow the entire field.

Our goal is to build a network, not an empire. This is not a top down, hierarchical effort; our goal is to help everybody do better what they are already doing, not to dictate to anyone what they should do. Because of that approach, much of what the Witness Information Network will become remains to be discovered; we will be actively listening and responding and refining our approach in dialogue with our partners and interested individuals as we go along. We are excited about our vision and our opportunity. We hope you will get involved and help us make it happen.