There are many people in downtown Vancouver who I have not yet met but whom I know of. They’re people that I am aware that I should meet and I know that it’s only a matter of time ’till I do. Brady is one of those guys. I went to a benefit concert for Brady a few months ago that was hosted by the same Anni that hosted my fundraiser last week. At the event I was never actually able to meet Brady, but I’ve seen his face often since then around downtown. I’ve heard amazing things about him both as a person and as a musician and it was at the fundraiser hosted for us last week Brady introduced himself to me and we had a great (though brief) conversation.
I say all of that to get to this, he wrote the piece below last week and I thought it really interesting so I thought I’d repost it for you.
Social media websites like Facebook can be an extraordinary tool when spreading awareness or organizing interested minds for an important and worthwhile cause. However, in our community today, even without Facebook, fundraisers and donation charities are largely successful because of word of mouth.
I’ve often wondered how our community events, especially fundraisers, would be different if Facebook were not an element.
I recently heard that a neighborhood pub, Shannahans, hosted a successful fundraiser, Saturday July 16th, for the family of Jim Schiefelbein. I never saw a “Facebook event” created for it, and there was no advertising on the wall of the Facebook page for the restaurant. To my knowledge, the only public electronic acknowledgement of the fundraiser event was a comment posted on their wall the following morning, by the restaurant, thanking everyone for their contributions, including the hard working staff, and noting that over eight thousand dollars was raised.
Most recently, I have observed that Facebook has been an excellent channel for communicating to online communities the details of a benefit event, such as the fundraisers hosted by Pop Culture for Ryan Woods and by The Brickhouse for myself. The advent of “Facebook events” seems to be a game-changer. It is genius in that all of the important information is collected in one place within the online community and available electronically, which of course also means smart phone users can access it instantaneously. It beats the hell out of a paper flier in so many ways. And also, as is the case with the technology of social media websites, promoting the fundraiser is as easy as clicking “share,” and immediately the information has been made available to new potentially interested minds. It seems almost effortless in comparison to what we did before Facebook.
What did we do before Facebook?
We did what we still do today; we talk to people. A real fundraiser event is like a chain letter; You tell one person and that person tells two people. It’s a chain of events put in motion by one action, and not a one-on-one. Spreading awareness can be done in so many ways including using the telephone, writing to the local newspaper(s), writing to local officials, sending emails to an ever growing list and using other local advertising channels such as radio in addition to using online social media websites. It just seems like the latter is so much easier right? I suppose the term smart advocate could be used to describe the individual who is likely to advocate through the easiest and most instantaneous method, such as “clicking.” I truly don’t mean any cruel judgement by that statement, it just seems fitting. It still gets the word out but I believe some methods seem to reach farther than others. It takes a village to save a villager. In my eyes it is apparent that in the end the real difference comes with the real communities; the Families, the Life-Long Friends, the gathering of Long Lost Families and Associations, as well as the gathering of New Friends and Associations, and the Church Communities.
* What I appreciate the most about a Facebook event page is that all of the information needed for an individual to get involved is collected and made available in one central location, so that it is easy to find, and because of this, it is easier for someone who may want to get involved to do so.
I love that both Brady and I attended fundraisers for someone we didn’t know! I love that we did so because of the nature of the nature of the community forming in downtown Vancouver. People do this, they invite, they spread messages and ideas and opportunities, people make things happen.
A good friend of mine started saying the phrase “we’re trying to create the new normal” a lot lately. I like that. I think it’s a good summary of what we’re trying to do with the Grassroots Conspiracy here in downtown ‘Couve. Normal often sounds appealing. Teenagers spend most of their time and energy chasing after this illusive idea of being normal…But as Dave Ramsey would say, you don’t want to be normal ’cause normal is broke. While I’m not necessarily talking about money (though how we use our money to bless the world is a part of it) it is true that we don’t want to be normal! With regard to community and how we do life, normal is to be lonely. Normal is to busy. Normal is to spend every afternoon and evening watching TV. Normal is to idealize self sufficiency. Normal is to eat unhealthy and to eat on the run. Normal is broke (I mean this both financially and with regard to how life is lived). Normal sucks and does not produce the kind of life we were intended for.
It’s funny how one of the first places we all went when the tumor stuff started was cause. Why in the world would a tumor pop up in the middle of my spinal cord in the middle of my back? (clearly and soberly the hope is that it didn’t metastasize from some other place. If this ends up being true then the jokes just aren’t quite as funny! Which makes me want to write this blog sooner than later! Ah!) I’ve been joking about how I never should have started taping my cell phone to my back as I walked around. Damn celular radiation! Then we had some who have questioned the 1920’s community home that we live in. Are we living in a mold-infested and toxic laden home that is causing both my son and I to have negative and surprising health concerns?! We’re all trying to figure out the why question and so I’ve decided to make a list of some of the things that changed 4-5 months ago. These things are potentially directly correlated to the emergence of the tumor in my spine and Jones’ swollen lymph nodes and must be treated as so:
I was reminded yet again last night the incredible power and importance in staking your flag into the ground and proclaiming “I am here now“. The willingness to be present where you are at has not only become counter cultural but it has become, what I would consider, a dangerously ignored way of living. Too often the geographical disparity between where we live, work, and play is such that we are left as scattered people living in five different relational and geographical spheres in a scatter-brained sort of way that does not cultivate a soil that is fertile for rootedness and growth both for individuals and as a community.