Social Media Makes Pepper Pike a Hub of Activism

Several months ago, when the movie version of Sex and the City was opening around the country, women activists I knew through an online listserv recognized an opportunity: lines and lines and lines of women would be waiting to get into opening night showings of the movie—and be a ripe audience for voter registration.

Through the listserv, Twitter, email lists, texting and our own blogs, tens of women connected across the country. A group called Mobilize.org helped set up people and procedures on the ground and, by the end of the day, we were able to tell people that there would be real, not virtual, humans at the movie theaters, ready and waiting to register one of the most sought after voting demographics in 2008: women, many of whom would be single and young.

I had a window into this experience—and got to contribute to making it happen—because of other online social networking with which I had engaged for several months prior to this event. I became a member of BlogHer.com—a community of more than 10 million men and women worldwide, according to the founders, and, as a result of posting comments and blog entries there (often linking back to my own blog), my ideas were noticed by a contributing editor who, eventually, had been contacted by a CNN booking agent for new names. And the BlogHer contact gave the agent my name.

As a result of my appearance on CNN, the BBC and other outlets started contacting me for commentary on the elections and other political issues in 2008. Simultaneously, I was invited into the previously mentioned listserv by the woman who had referred me to CNN in the first place. The listserv includes very exclusive political and technologically savvy women, many of whom are either in the federal government or in other branches of Washington, D.C. activism, all incredibly supportive of each other, and, in turn, me.

I have now met many of them in person—at conferences where we further scheme about how to turn our passions—women, leadership, progress, change—into action. But we continue to use Twitter, ning and other online organizational tools to take action on the issues that matter to us, whenever, wherever they happen.

And I can contribute from my kitchen in Pepper Pike. Social media can turn any place into a hub of activism. All I had to do was participate and make my interests known, and put my energy into it when the opportunity arose.

Jill Miller Zimon blogs at Writes Like She Talks and co-blogs at The Moderate Voice. She provided 2008 election coverage for Newseek’s The Ruckus, BlogHer.com and from NPR’s election night blogger war room. WE Magazine named Zimon one of 101 Women Bloggers to Watch (Fall ‘08). She is the first blogger to be named Women’s eNews Journalist of the Month (3/09). Zimon has provided commentary for CNN, C-SPAN, BBC, Cleveland public radio and television and other outlets. Her writing has appeared in and she has been quoted by The Washington Post, The Plain Dealer, Campaigns & Elections, Quill, The Writer and The Jewish Weekly among other online and print publications. Zimon has a dual degree in government and sociology from Georgetown University and a joint degree in law and social work from Case Western Reserve University.

Welcome to Social Media

An Educational Project of the
Cleveland Social Media Club

Welcome to Social Media, Volume 1

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