Podcast on youth organizing

Posted by on May 19, 2006

[posted from Comm-Org]

A new episode is available of Battle Stories: The world’s first organizing podcast is available for download at http://www.jakelowen.com

Episode description:
Two high school students recount their first organizing campaign where, as middle school students, they convinced city hall to install a drinking fountain in their neighborhood park.

Spruce park has one of the only neighborhood basketball courts that has not been rendered unplayable by lack of maintenence. As a result, this small park draws kids from several blocks around who use it extensively, but did not have access to drinking water. Because of it’s small geographic size, the city Parks and Recreation department did not consider it necessary to have a drinking fountain installed as they assumed only those children from neighboring houses would use the park. I think this illustrates perfectly why those who live in the neighborhood knows best what it needs. You can not depend on city officials to make that determination. In fact, sometimes getting them to do the right thing is a struggle as Keynon and Austin from Hope Street Youth Development explain.

If you have an interesting or compelling community organizing story to tell, I would love to feature it as an upcoming episode. I can accept any form of video or audio recording. If you are interested contact me at [email protected] for submission instructions.

Thank you,

Jake Lowen
http://www.jakelowen.com