June 3-4: Personal Democracy Forum, New York City. This is one of my favorite conferences all year because it’s one of the few that blend many worlds well together: Technology, electoral politics, advocacy politics and cultural analysis. I’m giving a 10-minute talk on Thursday, June 3, that will (definitively!) answer the question: “Can the Internet fix politics?” Muwahaha. Other luminaries on the speaking roster include Howard Rheingold, Clay Shirky, Cheryl Contee, Jane Hamsher, Arianna Huffington, Esther Dyson, Anil Dash and many, many more. Register today — I’ve got a code to give you $100 off the registration; just email me and ask for it.

June 7-9: America’s Future Now, Washington DC. A yearly pilgramage to DC for progressives, where we talk strategy and tactics for challenging the right-wing agenda. I’ll be moderating a workshop on Tuesday morning, June 8, on social networking with Toby Chaudhuri, and we’ve actually turned it into a gameshow format: Social Media Jeopardy! Contestants will be Lizz Winstead, Garlin Gilchrist II, Scott Goodstein and Heather Holdridge. Also, Monday night, June 7, will see the DC launch of my book, thanks to Toby and Scott of Revolution Messaging, who are throwing me a killer party. Wooooo! Register today for all the goods.

June 9-11: Making Media Connections, Chicago, IL. I’m thrilled to be keynoting this gathering of non-profit communicators, put together by the Community Media Workshop. This year’s theme is “Storytelling and Strategy in the Digital Age,” which hits home strong for me– it’s through our stories that we have always made change, and our shiny new digital tools give us unprecedented capabilities to tell them. Register today for this amazing conference. (PS — That Friday night, June 11, I’ll be reading at Women & Children First, and having a party afterwards nearby.)

Park officials aren’t super responsive (besides saying that closed dumps on a holiday mean that the park gets trashed, oh well), and no one’s sure what to do. At the very least, to start with, we can document it when we see it:

• Email or text pictures (or video!) of garbage in the park to pics@respectprospect.com
• Have a look at the Respect Prospect blog, where photos will be posted
• Follow @respectprospect on Twitter, and tag tweets about the problem with #respectprospect
• Check out the Respect Prospect Flickr stream.
• New! Download this PDF and print out little cards to hand out at the park. These print onto any biz cards using the #8371 Avery template. I used this clean-edge version from Avery, #8871.
• Questions and other inquiries can be sent to info@respectprospect.com

Update, 7/13/09: Two things. There’s a post on my progress and thoughts here, and also, to reflect the offline donations I’m getting, I’m now gradually lowering the goal of the ChipIn.

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Friends, colleagues, clients! Lend me your ears…

I’m writing you with some exciting news that makes me very happy. I just signed a contract from Berrett-Koehler publishers to write a book I’ve been imagining for a long time. But it’s going to take some very hard work on my part, and I hope you can help me succeed.

The book I’m writing is on the topic that has been all the rage in the media — social networking and all that implies with Twitter, Facebook, and much more. Here’s the purpose of the book: how do we ensure that these tools are in being used most effectively by those who have too often been on the sidelines of technology advances– women, people of color, queer folk, and more?

This is a fabulous opportunity for many social change advocates to jump into the new tech conversations and help shape the future, and I want to make sure that happens. Specific topics I want to cover about women’s experiences online include privacy and security, as well as shifting cultural values through organizing and action. I’m also going to be highlighting the voices of experts working in with social media in communities of color and more– voices you don’t hear when tech is being talked about.

Here’s my challenge and why I need your help: Berrett-Koehler is an incredible publisher — supportive, collaborative, and incredibly innovative– and I’m thrilled to be working with them. But they don’t pay advances. So, to do this book (and it is incredibly fast-tracked), I need to stop working as a consultant for the next three months and do nothing but write the book. Thus, I need investors. I need you to help me raise $15,000 to cover my expenses, travel, and research. Please toss some money into a “Feed Deanna” pot!

I’m off to a good start: the Hightower Lowdown (Jim Hightower’s monthly newsletter), where I’ve worked for 4 years, is covering my rent through the summer. And Don Hazen, editor of AlterNet.org (where I also have worked) and Doug Kreeger (AlterNet’s board chair) will put the first $2,000 in if people will match it. All donations of $250 and over can be made through the Independent Media Institute, so they’ll be tax-deductible.

So, here I am, hat in hand for a good cause. I’ll make you proud. You can donate via PayPal at http://www.deannazandt.com/chipin or send a check to me (address below).

I know it is a tough time to be asking for money with many people out of work and struggling. I hope you’ll forgive my chutzpah. Yet I want this all to happen so badly I can taste it; it’s more than anything I’ve wanted in a very long time. It’s a dream come true in many ways, and I hope even if you can’t give at this time, you’ll join me in celebrating the moment.

much love,
deanna

P.S. — For anyone who donates $100 or more, I will give you a copy of the book with an inscription of my heartfelt thanks. One more time, that donation link is:

http://www.deannazandt.com/chipin

P.P.S. — Thanks in advance for anything and everything that you can do to support this wildly excited, somewhat humbled first-time author. Here’s more info about the book: http://www.deannazandt.com/bookannounce , and I’ll be blogging as much of the book’s content as possible at http://www.deannazandt.com/ throughout the summer.

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For donations over $250, checks can be made payable to:

Independent Media Institute
77 Federal St
San Francisco, CA 94107

Memo: Deanna Zandt Project

What do I want to do, I hear you asking yourself? In short — I do want you to buy the book, after all — I’m going to be describing the social media moment as a huge opportunity for social change and action. If you’ve read some of what I’ve written about Twitter and other services, and my ideas about the giant gene pool and the desperate need for diversity, you have an idea of where the book will go. Plus, it’ll be stunningly entertaining to boot!

It was interesting to go from “I don’t think I ever want to write a book” at the end of February to looking at what I’ve got to sign for the deal in the middle of May. I wanted to share this part of the story as both a testament to Johanna’s powerful skillz of persuasion, as well as a revelatory moment about how these things can work– especially for women who think they have to know every detail of everything before they set off on sharing their expertise. Not that I know anything about that.

In the beginning, I couldn’t identify what topic (of the myriad of things I’m interested in) I’d have enough passion, expertise and attention span to write an entire book about. Johanna asked me to complete an exercise as homework after our first official call, where I was to answer three questions:

• What community do I identify with, am affiliated with or otherwise care about?
• What is that community’s point of pain? What’s preventing them from getting to the next level?
• What book could I write to address that point of pain?

Well, jeez, that was easy. My community, through my work in feminism over the years, is women; their point of pain is an intimidation and/or distrust of new technologies, and yeah, I’m pretty sure I could write a book helping them get over that hump. As Johanna and I fleshed out my ideas, we both realized that what I’m talking about is larger than just women needing to take advantage of this moment. I’m going to be talking about and bringing in experts from the fields of racial justice, LGBTQQI organizing, the front lines of the class warfare… yeah. It’s going to be one big party in my book.

So, there you have it. We’re attempting to do this on a strikingly fast timetable, and I’m going to be looking to my community for help in a few areas. One of them is fundraising, but that’s a separate story that I’ll blog later this week. For now, I’ll be over here just bouncin’ off the walls.

PS– A big, big, big shoutout to Christine Cupaiuolo, the most fabulous editor ever, without whose help I seriously would not have been able to put together a proposal that knocked it out of the park as hard as it did. Can’t wait to move on to the book work with you, CMC!

Since I love all-things-WordPress, I decided to use this as a test case to run all kinds of flexibility tests. People need to be able to find available dogs, for example, using loads of parameters like location, sex, whether or not they were good with dogs/cats/kids, etc.. The site also had to be easy enough for staff to post dog profiles and stories. I ended up choosing WordPress’ categories structure to handle most of the taxonomic work, with a fairly extensive set of parent & child categories. The query_post fucntion became my best friend. I tried to avoid using custom fields (I think they can be confusing to the end user making the profiles), but ultimately gave in and implemented them for the thumbnails for the Featured Dog in the sidebar, the city each dog is in, and the extra information for dogs needing sponsors.

It was a fabulous challenge that really got my gears going. But besides all that, I know it’s going to help a lot more dogs find homes, and for that I couldn’t be happier. As they say at ResQ, “To one dog, you may just be the world.”

PS– Be sure to check out the Happy Endings page for Izzy Louise’s harrowing story of near death, rescue and coming home.

Bonus: I also played superfangrrl and got my picture taken with Jane Fonda.

• My supremely awesome brother sent me a task list of things to do after you’ve been a victim of fraud, and there’s a similar list provided by the FTC. Check it out– very, very helpful.
• On the preventative side of things, I’ve learned:
  • from a woman at Citibank: don’t put your address on your checks. I’m not sure why, but it’s better.
  • from my brother: schedule getting your annual free credit reports throughout the year — i.e., Experian in January, TransUnion in April, and Equifax in October.

Okay, now for the update. I went back to Citibank in Park Slope earlier today, and since there was no one at the little info desk, the security guard had me sit in a row of seats to wait for someone to be free to help me. After a few minutes, a woman who worked there walked by and asked, “Are you being helped?”

Funny she she pose the question that way, eh? “Why, no,” I replied. “No, I’m not being helped at all.”

She asked me what I needed, and when I replied that I was there for an affadavit for a fraudulent check, her eyes got wide and she said, “God, what happened?” Which made me dump out the whole story from Tuesday. The look of shock increased as the story went on, till finally she stopped me and said, “Oh my God. I am so sorry, that should not have happened to you. Come into one of the private offices and we’ll get everything taken care of right away.”

A team of three women– for the record: Ruth, Rose and Roseann, I kid you not — sprung into action. They found that another check for ~$5k was attempting to be cashed, and because Sparky the “Customer Service” Rep didn’t help me on Tuesday, it was bouncing everything out all over again. More apologies, but they also found that someone’s gone into a Citibank branch elsewhere and made a small deposit, presumably to see if the account was still open. Can I tell you the relief I felt to see people actually caring and trying to find out what was happening to my money?

Anyhoo, we squared away a bunch of stuff together, and I got the affadavits for the police reports. However, I have to wait till tomorrow now to file the police report, because I won’t have a copy of the new fraudulent check until 7am.

But wait, there’s more! Later in the day — literally right after I’d purchased a new paper shredder at Staples — I got a call from a representative of Wachovia, asking me if I was writing some big checks. Turns out that since the first one bounced, and a second one from me was coming in, Wachovia already suspected fraud and got on the ball. The woman (whose identity I verified, yes) was extremely helpful and gave me the names and addresses of the people that deposited the fraudulent checks. She doesn’t think, from her experience, that they’re the perps, but rather that they’re the victim of some sort of scam operation. Wild stuff. She’s down with helping the police investigate, and I’m taking all this info with me tomorrow.

In the meantime, I have to say that while this doesn’t compare with some of the BS that I dealt with and violation I felt after getting mugged (ah, Christine, could anything have bonded us tighter? Really?), it’s, um, getting to be right up there. It’s also completely physically taxing in an unexpected way — my body has been demanding about 10 hours of sleep per day since this all started. Apologies to clients who are reading this and wondering where the hell I’ve been, too — the bureaucratic nightmare is taking up a ton of bandwidth.

More tomorrow after I’ve visited with my (hopefully) friendly neighborhood police officers. Wish me luck.

(UPDATE, 2/19: Citibank has a total of 3 women working for them who are not like the story below.)

It’s Friday night, I’m having drinks with my comics instructor, the illustrious (pun intended) Tom Hart. I go to pay for the drinks with my Citibank debit card, hooked up to that silly li’l thing I like to refer to as my “checking account.” The bartender informed me that it wasn’t going through, which was a bit of a surprise… I have a tempestuous relationship with my dough, sure, but I should be able to eek out $20 for cocktails.

Logged into my online account, where a very bright red font did its job of getting my attention: I was overdrawn by four thousand dollars. Hmmmm. I quickly ran through the past week: yes, it’d been an insane week with lots going on, and yeah, there were a coupla fuzzy spots in my memory, but I was, um, pretty sure that I couldn’t have spent all the money in my checking and my overdraft and then still have been overdrawn by… let me repeat… four thousand dollars.

Looking through my list of transactions, it didn’t take long to pinpoint the problem: a check for $4,900. Again with the quick brain scan: did I write a $4,900 check? No, no, I didn’t. The image of the check itself showed a check that wasn’t one of mine (but had all my info on it), made out to someone I didn’t know, in handwriting that was also not mine. Fascinating. But also… Very Bad Indeed.

I picked up the phone and called Ye Olde “Customer Service.” From here on out, “customer service” will always be printed in quotes when referring to Citibank, and should be read as if I were performing finger quotes each time I say it. After a 15-minute wait for a “customer service” representative to come online, I explained what I’d discovered, and asked what we could do about it.

“You’ll have to take two forms of ID to your local branch and file a fraudulent check claim,” said the “customer service” guy on the phone.

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“No,” he said.

As it turns out, Citibank doesn’t really have a plan for this sort of thing. Electronic identity theft? They’re on it. You call ‘em, you fax them a letter, and a coupla days later, you got your cash back. Someone goes old school on your ass and makes their own checks with your info? Citibank sorta shrugs and tells you to go old school and find a branch.

The call with “customer service,” to be honest, didn’t end well. I told the representative that I wasn’t going to get off the phone until he told me that Citibank didn’t care about me and the fact that someone’s trying to steal five thousand dollars from me.

“But Citibank does care about you,” he said.

“Clearly, my friend, Citibank does not care about me,” I replied with an increasingly shaky voice, “since you can’t do anything about the fact that I’m overdrawn by four thousand dollars right now because some smartass thief has figured out your system.” (We went back and forth on this point for quite a while; I’ll spare you the complete play-by-play.)

“As I stated before–”

“No need. Keep working for your crappy company that doesn’t give a crap at all. Good luck with that.” I hung up.

Resigned, I waited till today– it was President’s Day on Monday and Citibank was closed — to go to the branch in Park Slope. The “customer service” person there basically told me that because there were insufficient funds in the account for the check, everything would reverse out by Thursday-ish (she couldn’t be sure) and everything would be back to normal. Was I going to have to pay the fees for a bounced check? No, come back and she’ll reverse those for me. (Come back! To the bank! In 2009, ten years into the Age of the Information Superhighway!)

Moving along in the process was impossible without me pulling teeth. Through a series of intense questioning, I figured out that to commence an investigation into the matter, I had to file a police report. Citibank wouldn’t take any action themselves. Right. Why would they?

“What if I had had the money to clear the check?” I asked.

“It would have cleared,” she said quite plainly.

“And I’d be out $4,900?” I asked further, stunned.

“Yes. Then you’d have to file a claim with us, and we’d investigate it. If everything worked out, you’d get the money back in five to seven business days.”

“Uh-huh.” I was too floored to argue the inanity of it with her. “What about the future? Can I put some sort of filter on my account, that checks more than say, the amount of my rent every month should warrant some sort of phone call or other check in?”

“We can’t do that,” she said.

“So, wait– let me get this straight. When I bought my ticket to Hawaii on my debit card a couple of years ago, and Citibank called me within a few hours to make sure that was me doing that… that you can handle. But a piece of paper, that just completely befuddles Citibank’s systems.”

She shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Is there anything I can do to protect myself at all?”

“Well,” she sighed. “You should probably close this checking account because they have the information now, and open up a new one.”

“I think that’s an excellent idea!” I exclaimed. “In fact, I’m going to close all of my accounts with Citibank when I come back, and move everything over to a credit union where I at least stand a chance of someone giving a crap about what happens to me and my money. Thank you!”

I’m actively taking suggestions for credit unions in Brooklyn that folks are happy with. I’d always wanted to join the Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union when I lived there, but perhaps because one of my employers is still there, I might still get in. Leave thoughts, prayers, suggestions and other tidibits in the comments.

PS– Extra credit kicker: went to the precinct to file a claim, and they told me Citibank has to give me an affadavit saying that the check is indeed fraudulent. “But I don’t think Citibank either believes me or cares that it’s fraudulent,” I said to the officer. She shrugged and repeated herself. Extreme bureaucracy might be the death of me. It might end up being the number one cause of death someday soon. I can see the Times headline: “Extreme Bureaucracy Kills Nearly 13,000,000 Every Year In US.” Or maybe there’ll be a new diagnosis soon called “Customer Service Rage.” What would that headline be? “Customer Service Rage Blamed in Destruction of Local Bank.”

We are "changing the conversation" by making sure that there are plenty of qualified, authoritative, progressive women experts available to editors, reporters, producers, and bookers. For the women chosen to participate in our 2009 Progressive Women's Voices program, we provide intense media training sessions in New York, with weekly follow-up briefings and continued training, as well as support and resources for media bookings.

Not only am I thrilled to be participating myself, but I’m especially excited to work with amazing classmates — Rinku Sen, Jehmu Greene, hello! — and almuni of the program (Carmen, Courtney, I’m lookin’ at you…). Thanks to the Women’s Media Center for giving us all this fabulous program.

Here’s a permalink to the submission, too.

At the Streb Lab for Action Mechanics… this was one of the coolest feelings ever. Highly recommended!

Her story: She was rescued by the super awesome folks over at Rat Terrier ResQ from a backyard breeder in Texas. Which means, pretty much, that she spent the first three years of her life in a cage outdoors, and has had to overcome incredible obstacles. Thanks to the love and patience of her foster mom, Jacki, she’s done just that, and is slowly adjusting to life with me in Brooklyn. As I type this, she’s snoozing on the window shelf I built for her next to my desk. It’s a dog’s life!

There are a bunch of ways you can keep up with her progress online, if you’re into that sort of thing– I’ll be posting more periodic updates in my own accounts, but here are her locations online:

• Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/izzylouise/
• Updates: http://twitter.com/izzylouise
• Dogbook, on Facebook: http://apps.facebook.com/dogbook/profile/view/5218571
• Dogster: http://www.dogster.com/dogs/902462

The otherworldly-ness of last night can’t really be described, but I blogged about it over on AlterNet. More thoughts and candid observations to come here once I get some work done and have a chance to process it some more. Right now, all I remember is that I was the only one wearing jeans. Sorry, Mom!

Then a day or two of downtime with the parents while I’m in the neighborhood, which always does the soul some good. But alas, it’ll be back to the city to resume apartment hunting madness. Anyone have any leads on a dog-friendly 2 bedroom apartment in Brooklyn?