SANE Proposal

The Social Action Network of Educators (SANE) will be an online and
in-person network of people who want to learn more about, and take action
on, socio-political issues related to education. The first phase of our
engagement with each other and with the issues will be through an online
sharing of information.

1. SANE will be open to anyone in the College of Education (at the
   beginning) and outside the college (after the first round or two of online
   communication).

2. Those who subscribe will be invited to post information, resources, and questions at any time. In addition, every 2 months, someone will post a prompt asking each member to inform the other participants online about a particular resource or event. Each "round"of information sharing will focus on a certain resource.
3. For example, we could begin the first round of SANE in November by
   sharing information about 1 ORGANIZATION (per respondent) that we support
   and that other people should know about.
4. Then, after a week or two of giving participants an opportunity to
   participate online, we could encourage people to respond to each other, to
   meet in person to discuss something they share in common, and even to start
   thinking about the implications of these organizations for our own actions.
5. In January, the next resource could be WEBSITES, again in March
   PROJECTS, and perhaps in May PEOPLE. Obviously, recommended articles, books,and other resources could be highlighted in future months during fall 2004.
   Or the participants could even decide which resources to share (after the
   first few rounds, which should be pre-organized to get things started
   without spending a lot of time debating about priorities of resources).
6. Anyone who wants to form an action-group (short term or long term) around any specific issue can use the SANE network to do so. It could be online action (email blitz of legislators on a proposed bill) or face-to-face, or a combination. We hope that SANE would be the genesis for social action projects and for increasing our understanding of each other's work.

What to do next: Let us know if you are interested in 1) being part of the SANE network (we will only set it up if there is sufficient interest), and/or 2) providing leadership in managing the listserve (this could be a faculty member, graduate student, or a combination; there is potential for research here as well).