This blog is for anyone who wants to know what I am doing.
Activism with existing Organizations: Why me starting my own things moves faster than me working with existing organizations...
1)Saving Pools- This year, the city is out of money for all of their programs because people not working means less tax revenue for them. Thus, some of the pools are going to be closed. Who gets hurt by pool closings? The people who use the pools - poor kids (see below for explanation).
I have an idea to save the pools. Adopt-A-Pool program. Basically, create a program where P&G, GE, Bengals, Reds, Kroger, anyone can pay for the operations of a pool. In return, their logo is posted at the pool saying they "adopted" it. I think their is enough money in Cincinnati to save some pools. Who would not want to help out some poor kids?
So, to do this, I have been calling CRC (Cincinnati Recreation Commission) Aquatics weekly, sometimes bi weekly, at least since Jan 19. (5 weeks as of today). I have talked to the director, who pointed me to her bosses. It is their turn to call me, but I am going to call them tomorrow.
When I talk to any of them, they ask me why I want to do this and how much money I want. I tell them to help the children, and say that if I could get minimum wage, that would be awesome, but I will also do it for free. That response just made them more suspicious. This is why I like to start my own shit.
There is a CRC foundation that is supposed to raise money for CRC programs. I think they are hesitant to have me help because I am going to make them look bad. THis is a pretty simple idea. Why have they not been doing it? What are they doing to save the pools?
Also, they told me that they would want this fundraising to be long term. I think that is bad policy. Let the businesses help in the city's time of need, and when the economy picks back up, let the tax dollars pay for it. Also, that would force me to ask for more money, which is always less appealing.
I am committed to this. I am going to keep calling them and when it stalls, I am going to start calling city council members, then the press.
All I am asking CRC is to let me start this program!
2)Improving Bicycling- Pittsburgh has an amazing non-profit dedicated to amazing biking in their city. How did I hear about it? They had a table at the Pittsburgh orientation. http://bike-pgh.org/ They have an amazing bike map, which I used. I want to create something like that for Cincinnati.
After some research, I found out we have a organization(Queen City Bike) that has the same ideas as that, but has never heard of Bike-PHG, we have a bike map that is a good start, and we have a couple other organizations that have a lot of interest (30+ people at meetings), but less action. I went to two Queen City Bike meetings (they meet once a month) and to a Bike PAC meeting.
Queen City Bike has a ton of good ideas and follows through well on "Bike Month." Other than that, they move horribly slow and did not add me to their listserv, thus I missed one of their meetings. This is after they talked about how they need to improve on including new members. When I offer to help, they are apprehensive about letting me do anything. They have been working on a website since last April and plan to have it released by this April. He told me the board will have to approve it. When I do websites (I have done 3 from writing HTML on notepad and one forum from freeforums), they are up within a week max.
Bike PAC is worse. They had over thirty people at their meeting, but no clear easy way for people to get involved. Also, their jurisdiction is only within the city limits. I had the impression going in that they are the advocacy arm of biking in cincinnati...all of cincinnati, but really they are more of a limp wrist that brings people to city council meetings (it sounds like they do that well).
Overall for organizations that are supposed to promote systems of biking in cincinnati, I was not impressed. They move slow, some of the issues they work on are out of touch with reality of biking in cincinnati (ie riding mountain bikes through the park system is a high priority when bike theft and cars hitting bikes is a serious problem), and their version of successes are having a sign put up that says "share the road." The best part is their celebrated $200,000 bike plan. They are all happy that did not get cut in the city budget... that should have been one of the first things to get cut before firing any employee or closing a pool! Ultimately, their slowness in action combined with the amount of interest they have is sickening.
3)Conclusion - Me, starting in running my own things moves faster than going through any existing organization. All of the organizations are nervous with my willingness to get involved quickly and effectively. I have run stuff and would act the same, but I would at least let the new person try to lead something new and deemed unnecessary. Thus, giving the person a chance, and not hurting the org if the person fails. With these existing orgs, it is excruciatingly hard to even get that chance.
Related websites
http://www.cincybikepac.org/
cincinnatidiy.freeforums.org
sac.osu.edu
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