Greetings CLICK4HP list,

For the past two months the co-facilitators of this list have been
fairly quiet.
        I [Alison Stirling] have been at home with a a broken leg and
intermittent access to a working computer. It has been a useful lesson
in what most people experience when trying to use electronic
communications technology and facing numerous barriers. I have a greater
appreciation of the supports needed to effectively move about on the
Internet. At long last, I'm about to return to being a more active
facilitator.  And just in time, as my co-facilitator Liz Rykert is
overwhelmingly busy with other Internet activities as a community
organizer and facilitator-extraordinaire.
        The following column appeared in today's Globe & Mail newspaper,
distributed across Canada. Michael Valpy describes the work that Liz is
doing on only one of her many electronic conferences and lists that she
facilitates. I have benefitted enormously from working with Liz, and I
believe that her work is an excellent example of health promotion
advocacy work in the community and electronic worlds. At last Liz's work
is getting the attention and praise it deserves.

Alison Stirling <[log in to unmask]> or <[log in to unmask]>
---------------------------------
What she catches in the Net

Friday, February 7, 1997
By Michael Valpy

THE political future is Liz Rykert's laptop computer, a couple of pounds
of electronic circuitry at the hub of an exercise in
community organizing and grassroots democracy the likes of which I have
never seen before.

Ms. Rykert, a Toronto social worker (which is like describing Mel Hurtig
as an Edmonton book publisher; it leaves a lot
unsaid), is the key person behind the Web site and Internet forum of
Toronto's Citizens for Local Democracy. C4LD (as
it is known) is the amorphous organization fighting the Ontario
government's intention to force amalgamation on the six
constituent municipalities of Metropolitan Toronto.

Ontario's governing Conservatives and Toronto's media are slowly waking
up to what she has created: a fascinating,
powerful instrument of interactive information that has given shape
across Metro to the amalgamation opposition.

In the hands of Ms. Rykert and the small team of people working with
her, the Internet is delivering on the promises of its
most ardent advocates. Through my computer, I've been watching what she
has been doing the past few weeks.

You've got to visualize newspapers, television, organizational
newsletters, government information bureaus, utility-pole
leaflets, telephone conference calls, research libraries and public
meetings all rolled into one vehicle of communications.

She and her group operate a Web site and three somewhat overlapping
subscribed E-mail lists--one for discussion, one
for posted notices and one that can be called a workspace. The group
handles the technical work on the Web site and
the subscribed lists, helps focus and animate the discussions, and
assists people to participate and submit their comments.

The amount, wealth and variety of information the system is transmitting
is stunning.

On any given day, anyone with access to the Internet can tap into a
schedule of the scores of community meetings on
amalgamation, read the full text of the government's amalgamation
legislation, read the full-text presentations by people
such as the famed urban thinker Jane Jacobs to the Ontario legislature
committee studying the legislation.

There are biographical sketches of members of the committee, an icily
critical profile of Municipal Affairs Minister Al
Leach, an assessment of which Conservative MPPs may be soft on the
legislation, and juicy notes on what cabinet
ministers have said in the past about their local municipalities now
under the amalgamation gun.

Government House Leader Dave Johnson, for example, is quoted (when he
was mayor of the Metro municipality of East
York) as describing East York as "the Garden of Eden--a community with a
special identity, a unique pride, a strong will
for independence and a capacity to care for its own. The survival of
this municipality has been questioned for years,
perhaps decades--but survived it has and survive it will."

Mr. Johnson moved the motion in the legislature limiting debate on the
amalgamation bill, which abolishes East York.

THERE are advertisements for interested musicians--"especially brass
players, trumpets, trombones, tubas etc."--to
play in the Six Cities Preservation Band that will lead the Feb. 15
anti-amalgamation parade down Toronto's Yonge
Street, re-enacting the 1837 march of rebel William Lyon Mackenzie,
Toronto's first mayor (whose likeness appears on
the C4LD Web site).

There is information about the municipal democracy protests in Belgrade,
and electronic links to local-democracy groups
in England, the United States and elsewhere in Canada. There are full
accounts of each day's legislature hearings, reports
on major community meetings, lists of telephone and fax numbers and the
names of executive assistants for every Metro
municipal council member.

The E-mail discussion forum is a full-blown electronic conversation
among citizens about how to make presentations to
the legislature committee and what to expect when one makes that
presentation. It is an exchange of ideas on
amalgamation and other changes the Conservatives are planning to make to
municipal governance.

It is all going into people's homes and into their offices, a torrent of
information and exchange of ideas and citizen
participation. "I leave my computer for five hours," Ms. Rykert said in
a conversation the other day, "and when I come
back there's 150 messages."

This is an exciting new political form. A Toronto Star article yesterday
implied that it was some kind of electronic
cookbook masterminded by former Toronto mayor John Sewell, the driving
force behind C4LD, to direct
anti-government lobbying.

Hardly. Ms. Rykert gave Mr. Sewell his first "tour" of the operation
three days ago. The system is muscularly democratic;
the information being fed into it comes from ordinary people in Metro
Toronto engaged with the amalgamation debate.

Ms. Rykert's job with Toronto's Family Services Agency has been to
create an electronic workspace for eight
community agencies involved in a program for inner-city children called
Growing Up Healthy Downtown Children.

C4LD's Web site is http://community.web.net/citizens/

E-mail: [log in to unmask]