Last week, I had a conversation with a thoughtful business owner about the Potluck for Democracy. We discussed the impact of social media on our society and how machine learning programs have learned to exploit our outrage, feeding us more of it to keep us on their platforms and generate more ad revenue. These platforms prioritize outrage, they do not promote positive news. Even more traditional journalism mostly operates according to the motto, “If it bleeds, it leads.” These media won’t be of much help in promoting our work because they don’t profit from positive news.
“So, how are you going to get the word out about the Potluck?” he asked.
“Person-to-person and group-to-group networking,” I replied. “Just like we would have done fifteen years ago. Yes, we’ll use some digital tools, but we’re largely going back to the way we did things fifteen years ago.”
Reflecting on the past fifteen years, it’s clear we’ve allowed our idea of person-to-person and group-to-group networking to weaken. We’ve come to assume that digital social networks are the only way to connect.
PTU, along with our founding Potluck for Democracy co-sponsors at the Center for Ecumenical and Interreligious Engagement at Seattle University, are leveraging our personal contacts across the nation to spread the word about the Potluck. We’re also asking partner organizations, like the Shoulder to Shoulder Campaign, to help get the word out to their networks. Recently, we recorded an episode of our TV show, Challenge 2.0, about Potlucks for Democracy to inform our TV and YouTube audience about this initiative.
Our outreach strategy seems to be working. So far, 125 people have downloaded the Potluck Toolkit that provides guidance for Potluck hosts. People from Washington, Kentucky, Vermont, California, and elsewhere, are planning Potlucks to bring their neighbors together.
The word will continue to spread through each of them.