#TeamU

TEAM UTERATI WIKI PROJECT PLAN

A PROJECT OF POWR-PAC May 7, 2012

Prepared by: Imani Gandy (aka Angry Black Lady; ABL) Founder, Team Uterati Wiki Project and People Organizing for Womens Rights (POWR-PAC) Blogs: angryblacklady.rawstory.com angryblacklady.com balloon-juice.com (front-pager) rhrealitycheck.org (freelance) thegrio.com (freelance) Affiliated Organizations: www.powr-pac.org | People Organizing for Womens Rights (POWR-PAC)
P.O. Box 480519, Los Angeles, California 90048 | (310) 927-2508 | Skype: ABL_STM | igandy@teamuterati.com | @AngryBlackLady

TEAM UTERATI WIKI PROJECT PLAN

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
I. Introduction
Team Uterati (TeamU) was founded and conceived by Imani Gandy as a community-based organizing tool for people fighting for equal rights and reproductive justice. Frustrated that up-to-date information regarding various anti-women state policies and legislation is not readily and easily available online, Imani sought to compile information about specific anti-choice, anti-womens health, and anti-reproductive rights bills advancing through state legislatures across the country. What started as a spreadsheet on Imanis blog, Angry Black Lady Chronicles, became the TeamU Wiki, a robust database that ultimately will contain every piece of anti-choice and anti-reproductive rights legislation at the state and federal level, as well as the legislators responsible for that legislation.

II.

Mission Statement

Team Uterati (TeamU) is a broad-based online community initiative which will crowdsource and maintain a complete database of legislative and other information regarding reproductive rights and womens health issues nationwide. The Team Uterati Wiki Project (TeamU Wiki) will be a community-driven social action tool used by grassroots and netroots activists to combat the ongoing Republican infringement of womens human rights, and by the media to report upon such efforts. Together, TeamU and TeamU Wiki comprise the first major undertaking of the newly-formed People Organizing for Womens Rights (POWR), a broad-based political action committee (PAC) which leverages social media and other social action tools to combat gender discrimination and inequality at the state and federal level.

III. Objective
The objective of Team Uterati (TeamU) and the Team Uterati Wiki Project (TeamU Wiki) is to become a centralized nexus that combines blogging, original reporting, crowd-sourced data, social media, and grassroots activism in order to highlight and thwart federal and state efforts to infringe upon womens access to health care services.

2012 | All Rights Reserved

TEAM UTERATI WIKI PROJECT PLAN

The TeamU Wiki will be the nucleus of TeamU, containing a comprehensive database of federal and state officials. It will include contact information, party affiliation, and political views as they relate to womens health and reproductive freedom as well as information relating to individual legislators re-election dates, incumbency, and political positions taken with respect to the core issues that affect women. TeamU Wiki will also be a resource for a wide range of information relating to womens rights and reproductive health, including Planned Parenthood locations and state womens health clinics. The TeamU Wiki, which is both easy to use and update, will empower ordinary citizens with an unprecedented level of accessibility and government transparency relating to the issue of womens rights and reproductive justice. It will enable them to make more effective decisions in their activism and at the ballot, and create an online community space where they may meet like-minded people and organize activism efforts. Specifically, TeamU will seek to leverage the power of various popular social media platforms beyond our own website, including Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, YouTube, Pinterest, and Facebook, to mobilize activists to oppose pending legislation and to organize get out the vote efforts quickly. To that end, The TeamU Wiki will provide current information on a state-by-state basis regarding voting requirements and rules. The TeamU Wiki will also become an integral tool for researchers, journalists and other members of the media because it will maintain up-to-date information on federal and state legislation affecting women and reproductive health. The TeamU Wiki will streamline the journalistic process such that journalists and other media can more quickly obtain accurate and easy-to-understand information regarding the specific language and impact of antichoice and anti-reproductive rights legislation.

IV. Problem
There is no single website or online database that efficiently and easily serves the needs of someone seeking information about local and federal anti-reproductive rights legislation. For example, the Guttmacher Institute is the preeminent source for information about anti-choice bills. However, due to the speed with which such bills are introduced, debated, and passed, activists require a more easily navigable and up-to-date resource which the Guttmacher Institute does not currently provide. Because the Guttmacher Institute updates its state data centers on a monthly basis, it does not meet the demands of immediacy that underpin the great effectiveness of social media-based activism.

2012 | All Rights Reserved

TEAM UTERATI WIKI PROJECT PLAN

Furthermore, the reporting on the so-called War on Women is often incomplete. Many activists blogging about anti-women issues routinely find themselves frustrated that articles about a given bill often do not cite the bill or provide the bill number. Without this critical information, it is burdensome and time-consuming for bloggers and journalists to research the bill to determine whether the article covers a current or previous version of the bill. Thus, many bloggers simply rely upon colloquial names given to bills, which do not lend themselves to ease of reference, and may even inadvertently propagate inaccurate information about that bill, hampering the effectiveness of activists organizational efforts. Finally, there is no single place on the Internet that provides an online hub for activists seeking to translate social media efforts, be they petitions or Twitter campaigns, into bootson-the-ground efforts, such as rallies, sit-ins and other forms of activism. Maintaining a central community for activists and supporters is a keystone to bridging the gap between online and traditional activism, without which, movements become fragmented, distracted, and lose coherence.

V.

Solution

In the fast-paced digital world of cable news sound-bites, on-the-fly blogging, microblogging, and social media activism, TeamU will be a community-based means by which activists can bridge the information gap and organize around a common goal: gender equality and reproductive justice. Our website will resolve the problem of information access by provisioning a central resource of current, accurate information about the legislation in an easy-to-use format, readily accessible to anyone who wishes to use it with a minimal level of technical expertise necessary (for an example, see the Alabama TeamU Wiki page here). We will also offer visitors a community that encourages cooperation and provides the sense of belonging that is so crucial to the maintenance of long-term activism movements.

VI. Goals
The Team Uterati Wiki Project will become an essential media tool in order to focus the debate regarding reproductive rights and womens health. The project will be a critical component in the effort to shape political discourse in that it will ensure that citizens nationwide will be able to empower themselves through the knowledge and community which will sustain them through the uphill fight against efforts to strip women of their human rights.

2012 | All Rights Reserved

TEAM UTERATI WIKI PROJECT PLAN

TeamU will also promote pro-choice candidates throughout the country, and provide voter information, including, for example, links to registration requirements and polling place locations. Additionally, TeamU will be a resource for researchers and the media in order to enable easy, widespread, and accurate reporting on the War on Women and related womens health issues. Finally, the information compiled by the TeamU Wiki Project will form the basis of a netroots-driven get out the vote effort that will combat increasing voter suppression tactics. TeamU will provide information so that voting will be easier and more accessible to those who are being disenfranchised by stringent voter I.D. laws. TeamU is open to men and women of any race, religion, or political persuasion. Individuals can either assist with the compilation of information regarding various legislative efforts in a particular state by entering relevant information into the forms built into the wiki project, or they can simply be a member of the community and interact with other members in the forums, in order to form relationships with like-minded people and keep themselves apprised of the goings-on throughout the country.

2012 | All Rights Reserved