Online Tools to Promote Community Action

During the 1960s the United States witnessed a social upheaval as citizen response to the Vietnam War grew in vehement opposition, but that response wasn't witnessed overnight. It took several years before the opposition took hold of the American mainstream. Despite seeing young soldiers die daily on the TV screen, the call to action was slow in appearance. The communication tools of the day were mainly relegated to flyers and telephone campaigns to seek the support of anti-war demonstrators around the country. Though effective once the campaign ball began to roll it took an enormous amount of effort to build up the necessary momentum to carry it nationwide. Though the citizen action organized by these various methods worked it took longer than many would have hoped.
In light of the relatively recent advances in technology new tools in the attempt to create strong community organization have emerged. Tools like e-mail list-serves, message boards, chat and instant messengers, visual and audio data transfer, all of which add a new dimension to the work of connecting people around issues. Within the last 5 years we have seen an explosion in electronic tools being utilized for the purpose of community organizing. This sudden race to jump on the band wagon has come about because these tools work well. The most notable and apparent outcomes of this kind of organizing can be seen in the "No-Iraq War" protests that were held world wide. Millions of people conversed through electronic methods to reach their goals, much of which was done mainly through e-mail. People were able to enhance there connections and mobilize quickly in the face of the impending war, rather than being in the dark for months, even years before the citizens response could be heard. If these tools had not been utilized in the ways they were during the months preceding the protests most of us would have still been in the dark.