by juliacsmith
July 2008. Jojo and I are at a Westin in San Francisco for the BlogHer conference. Specifically, we’ve joined 50 or 60 potential new friends in a meetup for twentysomething bloggers. Millennials are in the minority at this conference, and so, it seems, are folks who use their blogs to grapple with social justice issues.
At the end of the session I get up and say something like this: “If anyone wants to talk about blogging for a nonprofit or about politics or using your blog to effect social change, Joanna and I will be around after the session and we’d love to meet you. A lot of people say that our generation approaches things like community organizing really differently because we have these online tools, so if anyone wants to talk about that, that would be cool.”
And…
Crickets. I think a couple of people nodded and smiled, but that was it. The session ended and no one approached us.
At lunch the next day I shared this with Britt Bravo and Green LA Girl, who asked, “And that surprises you?”
Shouldn’t it?
I know my perspective is skewed; I’m from Washington, DC, the nonprofit-and-NGO capital of the universe. And I know my friends, with their union organizing-public health investigating-public school teaching-refugee supporting ambitions (not to mention their artmaking-bellylaughing-kayakrolling extracurriculars), are unique. Otherwise I wouldn’t count the months between our reunions or wish the clock would move more slowly when we steal time together.
I’ve been wanting for a long time to spotlight these people in some way, to give their feminist voices an outlet, to show the world how powerful they are. So…here we go.
This blog won’t have a lot of rules or structure, at least not for now. It’s for people in my life who are thinking locally and globally, people who want to relate their experiences and untangle their truths, starting somewhere in the middle of our delightful and sometimes difficult twentysomething years.
Please read more about it here, stop by often, leave constructive comments, and drop me a line if you want to contribute something.
