Using Social Media

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Social Media allows people to communicate, connect, collaborate, and form community without regard to geography.

Because of the ubiquity of inexpensive digital video, the communication can be face-to-face, across town or across the world.

Social media has powerful implications for people who are aging. When we have mobility issues, we will be still be able to maintain our connections to our communities. With social media, you can make a difference and organize from your wheelchair!

We are surrounded by people in our families and in our communities telling us they don’t know what to think anymore. They tell us they don’t know who to believe anymore. Social media helps us connect and converse in way that gives us the courage to speak up in our families and community. We hope Just Elders will focus the Voices of fifty-plus people. In our time many are so frustrated that they find themselves acting for change in the public arena for the first time in their lives.  Just Elders is a dream of people who have spent their lives organizing communities of faith to act to change their communities so that people’s needs are met by the institutions that were created to support the common good. We believe that people can act for their own good and the good of their communities. Those who dare to lead can do extraordinary things. We can bring clarity and hope to the American Narrative!

Social media can help us do extraordinary things. Its tools can be used to carry out the traditional steps of organizing. If we give ourselves to disciplined collaboration in the next few years we will prove that to each other.

We may find that the power of social media is more useful in other areas:

  • PROVIDING HONEST INFORMATION about the state of our world.
  • HOSTING FORUMS FOR ANALYSIS OF THE ISSUES WE ARE CONFRONTING.
  • PROVIDING TRAINING FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO ORGANIZE FOR THE COMMON GOOD.
  • MAINTAINING A REPOSITORY FOR THE CRAFT OF FAITH AND VALUES BASED COMMUNITY ORGANIZING.
  • IMAGINING THE FUTURE FOR ORGANIZING.
  • HOSTING FORUMS TO ADDRESS THE FAILINGS OF INSTITUTIONS THAT ARE NEEDED TO SUPPORT DEMOCRACY.
  • TRAINING FOR CIVIC PARTICIPATION AND PUBLIC OFFICE.
  • MENTORING YOUNG ORGANIZERS.
  • A FORUM FOR INTERFAITH MORAL THEOLOGY TO ADDRESS THE DANGEROUS CHURCH/POLITICAL PARTY ALLIANCES.

We are clear about what social media cannot do. Websites do not inspire! Social Media does not make relationships. The people who use websites and social media inspire and make relationships. Brene Brown inspires when she uses social media via Ted Talks to tell her story. https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability Many of you have powerful inspiring stories. We can record you from the comfort of your desk chair. We can publish you on the Just Elders YouTube Channel. Your story can be made available at www.justelder.org.

Can you imagine it? Your grand daughter or grand son running up too their friends, holding their phone saying, ‘Look what my Grandpa just said on this website”, or responding to your facebook post, “Why to go, Grandma!” What if your nieces and nephews retweet your tweets to your friends, and some of them say, “I never thought of that before!” And slowly and surely the voice of Fifty-plus people is being heard.

Everything digital is getting less expensive and more powerful. If you have an internet connection and a device that connects to the internet, you can do unbelievable things without further cost!

Social Media Content is user generated. Social media communication is like face-to-face communication. It is personal and aims to connect emotionally. That is why telling your story in a blog will be so important for our movement! Your posts and tweets will make us powerful. YOU ARE THE POWERFUL MEDIA FOR WHOM THE WORLD WAITS!

Social Media requires a collaborative leadership style. Power comes from what is shared. The more you share, the more you prosper in the world of social media. Power comes from what is learned. The more you listen, the more you learn and the more we prosper.

In our use of social media, we need to be subversive and counter-cultural. The world is full of frenetic empty media! The world does not need our “breaking news!” The content the world needs from us is like “slow food.” Carefully cultivated. Carefully prepared. Well plated. Mouthwatering. Carefully digested.

We will be powerful if we allow time for our network to emerge from our relationships. We will make our invitations and let them simmer. Others will join us. Too many people are already pushing us to act and resist!