LIFE AFTER TROY DAVIS

The Egyptians’ effective use of Facebook should give us added energy in our new consciousness movement spurred by the State sponsored murder of Troy Davis. This makes sense: Facebook, when combined with our collective message, the right environment, and our dedicated brothers and sisters, can indeed help to spark the awareness, energy, and the massive crowds we will need. Unfortunately, the quicker we mobilize, the less time there is for us to plan. It’s more important than ever for us to prepare for the day after. While it’s essential to reach our goals of full employment, renewed investment in our communities, more educational opportunities, and inclusiveness, it’s even more important to build on Troy Davis’ legacy and regroup. We need to act fast, capitalizing on increased visibility and heightened awareness to get more resources to our campaign. We need to solicit strategic advice from outsiders with more experience at civil protest, and bring in more foot soldiers and thousands of volunteers. We will need massive funding, so now is our time to get it. Troy’s state sponsored murder agitated lots of folks that were not really agitated about anything, but that doesn’t mean they’re organized. It’s up to us to organize them. We should start getting in touch with everybody we can. Whenever possible, we should collect emails, mobile phone numbers, Twitter handles, and Facebook URLs, and save them in documents that are stored in a few different places only known to us. We have to remember; why’d this thing start anyway? We should reconcile our original goals of full employment, renewed investment in our communities, more educational opportunities, and inclusiveness with Troy’s murder and identify a new long-term vision for the change we want. Our new campaign will succeed only if we involve all of the people. That’s why it’s so important to ask the people who got involved with Troy’s protests, what the next step should be. We should take a cue from Wael Ghonim, one of the administrators of the We Are All Khaled Said Facebook Page, who, when asked what was next for a post-Mubarak Egypt, said: “Ask Facebook.” This is easier said than done, but the attitude is right on. As the Egyptian demonstrators have shown us, it’s a lot easier to complete the first day of a revolution than the second. Holding together a large coalition is simpler when everyone is on board and our goals are obvious. If we build support with a strong strategy, and long-term thinking, then the chances are a lot higher that all of our demands will be met — and will stay met.