Michiana Social Forum: Follow up meeting to move forward

by Karl Hardy

On Saturday Feb 23 more than 40 people attended a follow-up meeting to the Michiana Call to Action week (this past January 19-26).

The meeting began with a recap of work that break-out groups did on January 26th at the "Michiana and the World Social Forums" event held at the downtown South Bend public library. That afternoon meeting attendees broke into small groups to tackle questions of

• "What Unites Us?"
• "What Divides Us?"
• "Where Do We Go From Here?"

Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick put together a brief presentation that included the
responses the small groups came up with to help provide background for this weekend's follow up meeting.

Based on the responses to "What Unites/Divides Us? and "Where Do We Go From Here?" an informal organizing group identified 3 general areas to discuss.

1. Building Bridges/Engaging With All Parts of Our Community
2. Creating "Open Spaces" and "Open Space" Resources
3. Standing in Solidarity
   

Elonda Wilder-Hamilton spoke to the group about her thoughts on the challenges for people to relate to one another as part of going beyond our own comfort zones.

Waldo Mikels-Carrasco talked about how we can work to develop a "social forum process" and bring the idea of "public and open spaces" out of libraries and classrooms and out into the community.

Tom Brown gave a presentation about the possibilities of creating a local/regional media hub that could serve as an electronic commons or "open space" for public dialogue and sharing information.

Joe Carbone described Jobs with Justice's model of Standing in Solidarity, specifically the idea that each of us should commit to actively supporting one another including showing up at each other's events and actions.

Sofia Javed presented the idea of a Human Rights City campaign including a brief history and outline of how a South Bend Human Rights City campaign might take shape.

Jessica Mikels-Carrasco concluded the meeting's formal presentations with an update on the various sustainability initiatives that are underway around Michiana.


In between each speaker there was time for some discussion and, from my point of view, there was a lot of energy towards supporting upcoming actions to take place in the Michiana area. We had hoped to save enough time at the end of the meeting to do break-out groups around various topics but, for better or worse, we ran too long.

Many of the day's attendees were able to stick around after the end of the official meeting time and network informally. Plans for a future meeting will be forthcoming as another organizing group forms.

For more information and/or to get involved with the Michiana Social Forum project, please visit michianasocialforum.org.

Or email michianaforum (at) sbcglobal (dot) net