Jacob Shwartz-Lucas, Social Media Community Manager for the Council of Georgist Organizations, reports:
The following are ways you can help promote LVT by collaborating with others on the LVT Task Force page. Click on the the links to email the named individuals.
1. Lindy Davies via The Henry George Institute offers college credit for their courses…well, sort of. HGI offers courses that are recommended for college credit. They have secured a certification that makes it very likely that thousands of colleges will offer credit for their courses but they don’t give out those credits directly. To get college credit for HGI courses, the student has to be enrolled in an accredited college and sign up via correspondence.
We have been discussing how to involve the Henry George Schools, Alanna Hartzok’s Earth Rights Institute, and other groups that may be interested in attracting those interested in gaining college credit for learning about how to end poverty. This is an opportunity to mutually benefit all organizations. You can help by expressing your thoughts on how to collaborate, going to local colleges and giving them information about the HGI program.
2. Partner with the CGO for “CGO buddies” an opportunity for older more experienced Georgists act as mentors for younger Georgists, talking with them at scheduled times on a regular basis to pass on our intellectual heritage and enliven it with fresh perspectives. To help out write to Sue at sns@swwalton.com and sign up here.
3. Erich Jacoby-Hawkins, Edward Miller, and I would like to create a tag team for wikipedia editing, in which we will track our progress and pledge 20 minutes a week to attack, with proper citations of course, various pages on wikipedia, connecting popular topics back to Georgism. This is important becuase wikipedia pages get millions of views a day. Simply having a relevant reference and link will direct an immense amount of traffic to our websites.
4. Daniel Syddall and I are very interested in creating infographics demonstrating the validity of Georgist arguments . So far, Ted Gwartney, Joshua Vincent, and Bill Batt have been very helpful in amassing our best material. We are aware that the Australian Georgists (eg Karl Fitzgerald) may have very useful stats demonstrating the positive effects of LVT. We need help finding this data as do two students doing Georgist research for their college programs: Christina Vialpando and Pádraig Lam. These two students are good candidates for the CGO buddy program, and we should actively pester them to get involved in the movement. That starts with them buddying up with those who know the ropes.
5. As a recently elected board member at the Henry George School of Chicago, I’ve been looking into creating a logo or hiring someone to create a logo for the school with the intention that this might serve as a good branding tool for the Council of Organizations in general. It’s not something that would necessarily replace the existing logos but could serve at least as an add on for branding purposes. Something abstract may serve our interests best since the point is just to establish a symbol that makes people think of a body of ideas related to LVT. Different Georgists prefer different symbolism. We may be able to get around this problem by picking a logo that has no inherent meaning as a shape. However it will acquire a meaning of its own depending on how we continue to shape our movement.
Another idea is to offer a cash prize which will inspire interest in the underlying ideals in order to create a fitting logo, this may or may not be an abstract logo.
You can help by finding someone with graphic design capabilities or who is just generally artistic, and by weighing in on the discussion about how to craft such an image.
6. If you are interested in the idea of self perpetuating land trusts: Dan Sullivan, Ed Miller, Daniel Syddal, Nate Blair, and others have been partnering to lay down a written plan for doing so. Dan’s article on land trusts is a link at the top of the document. We are planning to integrate it with the rest of the constitution. Remember this is an overall plan that seeks to give colonies broad abilities to run themselves according to what they think will work. The precise rules of each community are detailed in the colonies’ charters.
7. Random 5: Hold weekly online meetings between randomized groups of five in which each participant explains to the group what they are doing to support LVT, and the ways in which they can help and be helped by others. This is a way to involve newcomers to the pages and seek new routes of collaboration. Sign up using this link.
8. Quotes from illustrious people: We are trying to find all the sources of the quotes floating around the internet from famous people endorsing LVT. This is very important for establishing legitimacy. Please help us cite all of these quotes by filling in this excel sheet.
9. Jonathan Pendelton, Ed Miller, Daniel Syddal, Nate Blair, Martin Adams, myself and others are laying down a plan for a very sleek new website we hope to use to aggregate all or most of the Georgist material from around the Internet in a coherent and easy to find manner. We have been meeting weekly via Google Hangout, a video conference website—the prototype of “Random 5”. We have hopes of giving all LVT proponents a stake in it so that we can present a very polished product to the public. The website will seek to integrate well with all of our individual websites and social networking opportunities.. We need to open a line of communication with all those interested in combining materials so that we can take some pressure off those with comparative advantages in other important aspects of promoting LVT, to liberate their energies for the activities they are best at. We have the aim of using the logo (item 5) for this website as well. .
For further information, please contact Jake at jacobshwartzlucas@gmail.com or via his facebook page.
