The Sisterhood model of community organizing is built upon my personal experiences in community organizing and the knowledge I gained from a study of theoretical community organizing frameworks and online activism. 4.1 Design Philosophy I took three basic steps in formulating the model. First I revisited my personal experiences as a community organizer. I asked myself, “What worked? What did not? Why?” Second, I studied Alinsky and identity-based community organizing frameworks. I compared and contrasted them to current practices in online activism. “Could I accurately describe or categorize my experiences with these theories?” Third, I shared my thoughts and experiences with community organizers and members of my thesis committee. They challenged the assumptions and goals of my theoretical model. As a result, the Sisterhood model represents an ideal informed by theory and practice of community organizing. 4.1.1 Assumptions Implemented in San Jose, California for the purpose of promoting gender equity during a time of technological revolution, the Sisterhood model is built on five assumptions:
- A balance in Alinsky and identity-based practices is ideal.
- People must remain the catalyst for social change.
- The digital divide has real consequences.
- Organizations interested in testing the model may have little or no funding.
- Key features of the model should be replicable.
An ideal community organizing model strives to balance practices of Alinsky and identity-based frameworks. Specifically, Sisterhood values maintaining a strong organizational infrastructure for the purpose of winning public policy change. The organization must simultaneously remain ideologically flexible so members and the greater community are afforded an opportunity to explore and challenge gender relations. This assumption was made in recognition of the fact that traditional community organizing methods are not obsolete. Instead, they have become the building blocks of online activism.2 People, not machines, should remain the catalyst for social change. While early internet activists advocated the replacement of traditional community organizing with complete virtual solutions, I do not believe this is viable or desirable. There are important philosophical and psychological questions to substituting all (or most) in-person interactions with virtual ones. Most people have not been engaged in serious debate over the topic. Rather than speculating on the nature of a mostly-virtual society, I ground my model in what is familiar. Computing technology should enhance the quality of communication amongst people. Computing devices should remain tools for – not replacements of – community activists The digital divide is real. Many people have little or no access to computing technology. If community activists are interested in using computing technologies to advance social change agendas, they must be aware that these tools may exclude some people. It is an important reason that the Sisterhood model does not desire to achieve a completely virtual solution to community organizing. The incorporation of technology into community organizing must be an equal attempt at bridging the digital divide. The science of computing must be made accessible and relevant to those in the greatest need. If they are given an opportunity to understand the potential computing, it may result in them having greater opportunities in proactively shaping a future that brings greater justice and freedom to the world. Organizations interested in testing the model may have little or no funding. Many promising organizing initiatives suffer a common problem: a lack of funding. Many community groups that work outside of the 501c(3) and 501c(4) tax status are simply dedicated networks of people. They contribute whatever cash they can. Groups that achieve a tax-sheltered status are eligible for philanthropic funding. However, they often do not raise sufficient funds to support their organizing effort. Because some computing technologies can be expensive to implement and maintain, the Sisterhood model assumes that community groups that could benefit from the use of online activism may have little or no funding available to them. Without sufficient funding, they cannot implement or sustain online strategies. Key features of the model should be replicable. Behind closed doors community activists often debate how to go beyond organization building and one-time mobilizations. Inherent in the nature and culture of organizing is the goal of movement building. How can community groups create and sustain long-term social and political change? How can they radically shift power to marginalized groups? The civil rights and women’s movements won many freedoms, but will they be lost over time because institutionalized powers continue to discriminate? Although these questions are difficult (or impossible) to answer definitively, there is a critical amount of agreement amongst professional organizers that a key in movement building is being able take principles and practices from successful initiatives, generalize those lesson-learned, and then encourage other community groups to do the same. Activist and philanthropic funders refer to this process of replication. Sisterhood assumes replicable practices are a highly desirable outcome as it contributes to movement building. 4.1.2 Design Goals The assumptions I made about what constitutes an ideal organizing model informed the goals of the project. Sisterhood was designed to:
- Be grounded in traditional community organizing.
- Encourage offline interactions amongst activists.
- Bridge the digital divide.
- Be cost efficient and replicable.
In summary, the Sisterhood model enhances the known benefits of a hybrid Alinsky/identity-based model by incorporating a web-based strategy. Unlike ordinary forms of online activism that emphasize the need to influence public, the Sisterhood model utilizes a website to encourage changes in personal attitudes and behaviors. 4.2 Implementation of the Sisterhood Model The Sisterhood model was implemented in two ways: 1) through the design, development and implementation of a database-driven website entitled Equivalent: a working woman’s invoicing system (Equivalent, for short) and 2) through the Bay Area Chapter of 9to5 Working Women’s Association’s use of the site. Chapter 5 describes 9to5’s role in testing the Sisterhood model. Equivalent is a database driven website that allows women to document the nonmarket work they perform. It is designed with a clear economic, social and political purpose: to attribute value to women’s unpaid work (Section 3). The strategy of valuation championed by feminist economist Marilyn Waring promotes economic gender equity. If women’s work was equally valued to that of men:
- Men and women could share more equally in the responsibilities of family and work
- Women in traditional jobs such as housekeeping would be better paid
- More men would consider staying home with children as women pursued career goals
- Stay-at-home mothers and women on welfare would not be perceived as lazy or dumb
Concretely, the site’s goals are to raise the average user’s consciousness about the value of women’s work (an identity-based strategy), to assist community activists in moving women to action (a hybrid Alinsky & identity-based strategy), and to provide valuable baseline data for use by scholars and political decision makers (an Alinsky strategy). User type and functionality definitions were carefully designed to ensure optimal support valuation of women’s unpaid work. 4.3.1 User Definitions Equivalent is designed for four types of users: manager, organizer, activist, and interested. A manager has full administrative rights over the website. The site allows for the existence of one or more campaign managers. A manager is defined as a leader who coordinates a campaign and/or general use of the site. She also is the person primarily responsible for supporting the work of organizers. A user classified as organizer is one who has committed to participate in a campaign by actively recruiting and retaining activist users; increasing activists’ knowledge and consciousness regarding women’s nonmarket work; and generally ensuring activists’ concerns and needs are satisfied throughout the campaign. Recruitment activities may include leafleting, phone banking, and door-to-door solicitation. Retention activities include regular contact with activists in person, by phone, e-mail and/or electronic bulletin board. Activist is defined as a user that has committed to actively participate in the campaign by logging her nonmarket work into Equivalent. Ideally, the user has little or no experience as a community activist. Interested is a user who has not committed to actively participate in the campaign by logging nonmarket work, or acting as an organizer or manager. She is mostly interested in finding out more about the website and its related campaign, likely visiting the site for informational or educational purposes. The site was designed with the assumption that all users have a minimal level of technical knowledge. The user must know how to turn on a computer; use a keyboard, mouse and printer; open a browser; and navigate to a specific website. If an activist user does not possess this minimum skill set, additional assistance by a campaign organizer or manager will be provided. 4.3.2 Equivalent’s Features All users have access to the following features: general information, user registration, login, logout, personal profile, e-mail a friend, create invoice, view invoice, standard reports, and Yahoo! Groups. Organizers and managers have additional use of their respective group profiles, standard reports and an all user contact list. The figure below provides a brief description of each feature.
| Feature | Description |
| General information | Provides information needed to understand the purpose of the website and campaign |
| User registration | Collects contact information from users |
| Login | Authenticates user to ensure security and confidentiality |
| Logout | Closes session |
| Create invoice | Provides user opportunity to log nonmarket work. Two types of invoices are available: regular and past due. Regular invoices uses service catalog to assign value performed on one or more days. Past due invoices allow user to bill for services rendered in years past. |
| View invoice | View one invoice or a summary of all invoices logged to date. |
| Personal start page | A customized page that details campaign news and links to data unique to the registered user such as contact information and invoice list. |
| Group profile | Lists all users assigned to an organizer. |
| E-mail a friend | Allows registered user of to e-mail someone a link to Equivalent Service Catalog Lists services for which women can invoice. It also provides justification for assigned values. |
| Standard reports | Reports provide snap shots work logged into Equivalent Yahoo! Groups Forum for Equivalent users to communicate online |
4.3.3 Coding Equivalent is dynamically served from Java Server Pages (JSP), “a Java-based technology that simplifies the process of developing dynamic web sites [11].” JSP was selected for implementation of this project because it encourages component reusability through the separation of presentation and implementation [11]. The site could have been implemented with nearly any other dynamic web development language including Cold Fusion, Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP), or PHP: Hypertext PreProcessor (PHP). JSP is simply the language of choice for this project. What is important to note is that the Sisterhood model can rely on nearly any web programming language. Community groups wishing to replicate the model are not limited to a specific technology. They may utilize whatever programming language they have expertise in or access to. An overview of Equivalent’s implementation strategy is merely an overview of this project’s software architecture and provided for readers who are interested in gaining some technical insight. This description is not meant to be comprehensive. Equivalent’s program flow and control is structured around a model-view-control design pattern (MVC). MVC “support(s) multiple types of users with multiple types of interfaces [12].” Because HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is stateless, the model relies on JavaBeans to hold state. JavaBeans are Java classes that adhere to series of conventions. At minimum, a JavaBean must be a public class that has a no-argument constructor and provides set and get methods to access its variables. JavaBeans are put into one of four program scopes (request, page, session, application) where both the view and control components of have access to state data. Equivalent’s view is implemented through use of html tags and JavaScript, which are used for page design and user specific content delivery. Java Standard Tag Libraries (JSTL) commands ease the burden of unnecessarily complex syntax that results from mixing html and JSP code. The heart of Equivalent’s dynamic content delivery lies with its controller. A Java servlet processes HTTP requests and returns appropriate HTTP responses. Java servlets “provide web developers with a simple, consistent mechanism for extending the functionality of a web server and for accessing existing business systems [13].” Equivalent’s controller servlet acts as an intermediary between the site’s database and the HTTP requests made from a JSP. The best resource for additional information about Java Server pages can be found at Sun Microsystems (http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/).