At this coming weekend’s Representative Assembly I plan to introduce a New Business Item that directs the IEA Board to create an opt-in, password protected database where members can go to contact directly other IEA members who live in their legislative districts.
This is an organizer’s NBI. It would decentralize our organizing at the grass roots level and make it less bureaucratic to mobilize members.
I have received some expressions of concern about cost and complexity.
My tech expert advisers tell me that the IFT already has a database of members sorted by legislative districts.
They say that this NBI represents a level of technology that office secretaries in the 1990s would have considered part of their job.
They assure me that I could probably find a half dozen teachers and several dozen students who would find this ridiculously easy.
“IEA already has a password protected page,” a tech expert tells me. “Any 8th grade web-savvy kid knows how to make a password protected page with a database.”
Fred Klonsky 