People-Powered Rochester

Back in 2013, for a little while, there existed a site with a lot of passion: PeoplePoweredRochester.com.

It was going to be a hub for left-wing organizing in Rochester and rebirth of the blogging scene (vs that dastardly enemy, Facebook). I missed writing for RochesterTurning, and wanted to also prove to my new radical friends that electoral, institutional, and radical leftist politics could play nice together. So I founded this project.

It lasted for about two months before I left town. Oops!

Thanks to the Wayback Machine, I just recovered every post, and archived them on this site.

I’m most proud of this one:

The kickoff post (and also the about page) give a sense of my ambitions at the time:

There’s a flourishing ecosystem of different grassroots groups in our neighborhoods. Dedicated and smart people are experimenting with new tactics and organizing models every day. However, these groups often aren’t aware of each other, can’t learn from each other, and don’t work together. There’s a real lack of movement communication and movement consciousness. We’ll need much more of both if we want to succeed.

We’re going to build a community online that consists of the broad left in Monroe County. Organizers and onlookers, center-left and radical left, electoral and direct action. As the community grows in numbers and coherence, so will our power. Specifically, as the community grows, we’ll draw more people to get involved in “meatspace”, connect disparate parts of the movement together, and push existing organizations towards excellence and accountability.

You can see them all at: sahar.io/tag/rochester

Enjoy!