User:John gieryn
I love exploring- ideas, places, art, music... (I play, dance, listen). I'm a community organizer- relationship building within & between networks. I believe in looking 3 generations back & fwd. /// Vision /// Transformation through collaborative investment in sovereign, autonomist, & entwined futures, together. /// Mission /// Give away my personal power; partake of diverse narratives - hold space for their narrators; co-operative, reciprocal inquiry bring my systems mindset to bear; sing the harmony of the most marginalized's majesty to serve the collective good.
I figured I'd introduce myself, as I've started to participate in some of the community meetings & to support co-ordination & facilitation of Synereo-community dialogue. I also intend to live stream some interviews I'm doing for a research project (more info below).
I'm Xander Gieryn from Indianapolis, IN; my background is in community organizing & coalition building, first both voluntarily & professionally in the labor movement for 3 yrs, in which my biggest learning experience was: • Wisconsin Uprising- general assembly-type organizing in the largest (in America) feeder occupation to OWS (2 wks in our Statehouse). • UNITEHERE - .5 years of paid internship, initiating Indianapolis's Organizing Beyond Borders program, and then 1.5 years of unpaid internship that ended when I co-lead a minority of interns into a collective bargaining with the local, which resulted in 3 interns leaving the program.
After burning out from labor due to coercive leadership behaviors taking advantage of idealistic youth, I moved into cultural programming, including: • Co-founding several (modified)consensus-based collectives - Food Not Bombs, a Housing Co-operative, and a Cultural Project that does education, events, and asset sharing of A/V tools (#iTooLL, iamcoop.org/iTooLL).
There's a lot more to those stories, obviously - but mostly to say that my vocation has been community building for 6 years now, and I entered Asset-Based Community Development-type organizing and asset sharing by way of cultural programming (/ culturally competent place-making). Last bit of mentionable background would be: • Mechanical Engineer w/ Music Minor by education; service/hospitality by work • Communicator, Coordinator, Convener, Project Manager, & Facilitator by trade • Hoping to deepen my understanding of System+Network Design, Coalition-Building, & Org. Capacity Growing, (+ build my meager coding skills)
Currently: I'm working on an independent research project (tiny.cc/distroResearch) that is in a refining of questions through interviews phase, maybe some folks here would like to participate? My rough over-arching Qs are: • Why & How do people share assets (i.e. info & resources) online? • What are the cultural & place-based obstacles (e.g. identity, norms, abilities) that prevent people from realizing the potential of digital asset-sharing? click here if you want to be interviewed; they can be interviewed or not, and by text or video
How I Hope to Contribute • Co-create a movement for Economic Freedom through Mutual Aid & Solidarity • Organizing: categorizing, outreach, facilitating, & supporting online discussions • Graphic/Video Design: getting fairly adept at Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere • Strategic Planning: Comprehensive Campaign Strategizing + Co-Design Tools/ Models That last point refers mostly to my affinity for decision matrices, and other spacial tools for Network Resource Planning and Decision-Making.
Mostly just excited to explore the ways that we might make a better world together and keep the Earth-ship running in a way that benefits the eco-collective!
Peace, Purpose, & Process, john gieryn pronouns: he/him/they/them @coopchange (Tw) @iamcoop317 (Ig) xgieryn@gmail.com (Sk) Indy Art | Media Co-op http://iamcoop.org/iTooLL ~Dream 3 gens fwd & Remember 3 gens back~