With 36 days until the presidential election, I'm delighted to introduce Firsthand, a project that uses all the tools at our disposal to expand the conversation and put the spotlight on what really matters most in people's lives. Firsthand will be all about engaging our community, allowing you to share the ideas and images that tell the story of our country during this campaign season, as you see it.
Every month, drawing on reader input, we will ask you, our Firsthand contributors, a broad question -- for example, how a certain challenge or trend is affecting your community. Using HuffPost's platform, you'll then be able to share your response. It might be an Instagram photo with two sentences of explanatory text; a brief video clip; or a scan of a flyer that is landing on car windshields in your neighborhood. The result will be a vivid multimedia mosaic that captures the everyday events that are a testament to the changes underway in American communities -- the stories that define our lives but rarely show up on the news.
When it comes to these stories, nothing is too small. They may not make the evening news, or stir debate on the political talk shows, but that's exactly the point. They have emotional resonance, and the potential to cultivate empathy, one of the qualities that is so abundant in our daily lives yet so lacking in our political discussions. Part of what's so exciting about Firsthand is its potential to reflect the full range of experiences in our country. I won't try to list all the possibilities here, but here are the kind of glimpses we imagine Firsthand will provide: the neighbors loading their furniture into a rented moving van and riding away, surrendering their house to foreclosure; the local retailer shutting down, succumbing to the pressures of big box competition; the neighborhood opening a community garden; neighbors coming together to launch their own local library to replace the official branch shuttered by budget cuts.
To tell these stories -- or more accurately, to enable you to tell them -- we're launching a mobile app for the iPhone and Droid, in partnership with Ushahidi, the open source platform that uses crowdsourcing to map crises around the world, from the earthquake in Japan to election violence in Kenya. You can use the app to send photo and video "reports," which will appear on a map on our Firsthand page.
This page will be monitored and curated, but it will be both organic and immediate, displaying submissions in real time. At HuffPost, it has always been our goal to put flesh and blood on all the poll data that are out there. We see this as a powerful way of putting storytelling in the hands of the real experts -- not the journalists helicoptering in to cover a story, but the people who are living those stories every day.
So please check out Firsthand and help tell the story of your community. And as always, use the comments section to let us know what you think.
Add your voice to the conversation on Twitter: twitter.com/ariannahuff
I have used much better web sites with far superior tools and technology.
HP tools and technology is average at best.
What HP has that keeps me coming back to read and comment is the community.
I hope in 2013 that HP improves the technology and tools.
I salute those who began the grassroots effort. Heading to Florida next, " Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere". Keep the dream alive vote.
But my friend was just removed from her professional position and forced to be civil service and join the seiu. Meanwhile she lost all her seniority in this rush to unionize everything. Zero seniority in the very same institution.
The intelligentsia in this country, the boomers who aren't working have very mythical views of the working class. And their fascist ideology will hurt real people like me, like my friend.
Would be helpful to have a question more obviously displayed, love this idea.
Over the years, Detroit hit bottom and has little left to retrofit, making it economically feasible to take advantage of both vacant land and disenfranchised population. Location on the Great Lakes plus a wealth of both professionals and skilled workers with a family history in the Rust Belt could bring the city back. This is not what corporations intended to do for the area but if the will of the people can actually bring change, the future looks much more promising.
All we need now is a government that does not stand in the way. I think (and hope) that the Republicans have outed themselves into a corner and may well be forced into extinction. This should open the way for a third party and could bring us back to a two-party system. Debates are coming up. Romney's initial debate performance may well seal his fate.
Detroit 2025: After the Recession, a City Reimagined,
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/rebuilding-america/detroit-2025-after-the-recession-a-city-reimagined-13108807
Thanks, and hope to see you over there, especially as we are collecting stories in October about houses in everyone's neighborhoods.
1.) In Michigan they highly restricted the sale of cars out of your own driveway.
2.) No fresh farm products like milk or cheese
3.) If you have a flex plan for health care and you wrongly overestimate the need for a year they get to keep the overage. (I don't know who "they" are, I just know, we the consumer, the worker and maker of all goods gets screwed.)
4.)You cannot watch your neighbors children for a few minutes before school without a day care license. Which was a great way to make a few bucks every morning in the neighborhood.
5.) 1099's are a huge burden to small business. Let the government do government work and let us do small business.
6.) Li censure has become a tool of the government and not an improvement on skills. For builders the test consists of tax and regulatory questions and not about the skill of building houses. It is also used to push out the older highly skilled worker who is not licensed and quite frankly has not read anything technical in years so the gov test is overwhelming.
Get the idea...join me....
Second thoughts. In view of letters allegedly being sent by a banking institution, to home owners who have already been granted title ownership in the courts. Gifting them debt forgiveness, which they don’t need. So that the institution can then obtain advantage from the government. Shouldn’t someone train a community cannon these latter-day pirates, and blow them and their treasure map mentality clean out of the mortgage waters for good?
Genius idea.