Can maps change the world?

John Snow’s certainly did. In 1854, the London-based anesthesiologist used mapping techniques to solve London’s most devastating cholera outbreak.

Steven Johnson’s book, The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–And How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World, recounts Dr. Snow’s investigation in dramatic, Shelock-Holmes-like detail. Check out Johnson’s TED talk for a short and sweet summary of the London cholera saga.

Data mapping and visualization have come a long way since Dr. Snow. Architects, engineers, and urban planners regularly use geographical information systems (GIS) technology to map out complex transit, housing, infrastructure, and health-care delivery plans. On the political front, we know that the Obama campaign’s staffers meticulously mapped big, complex voter data to help them trounce Mitt Romney in the 2012 election.

Of course, it’s not maps alone that change the world. People have to know how to use them, and hopefully for good causes. Dr. Snow’s years of scientific training and refined research methods allowed him to use maps to crack the cholera mystery.

Progressives’ big-data advantage comes from more than access to the best technology: As Nancy Scola writes for the Atlantic”

The right just doesn’t have the depth of professional experience in hands-on organizing that the left does, leaving Republicans without a critical framework to map their data onto…Taking data more seriously is decent advice for any campaign — but it becomes particularly powerful when you match it to a capacity to know people as people, not numbers.

The New Organizing Institute’s Roots Camp is the top “unconference” for training progressive organizers in big-data campaign tactics.

So what about the rest of us? How can we harness the power of people and maps to solve problems in our cities, communities, and daily lives?

Luckily, you don’t have to be an epidemiologist, political strategist, or nonprofit social media intern to use mapping technology in progressive ways. Esri, a California-based GIS software company, believes that geography is at the heart of a more resilient and sustainable future. Their Story Maps app makes digital map making accessible to a wide range of users. According to the website:

[Story Maps] tell the story of a place, event, issue, trend, or pattern in a geographic context. They combine interactive maps with other rich content—text, photos, video, and audio—within user experiences that are basic and intuitive…For the most part, story maps are designed for general, non-technical audiences

Here are a few great examples of Story Maps. You can check out others in the Esri gallery)

Students in Stanford’s Sustainable Cities collaborated with the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project. The Project is a “data-visualization, data analysis, and digital collective documenting the dispossession of San Francisco Bay Area residents.” By bringing these stories center stage, the project seeks to use the stories “as a tool for collective resistance.”

The Sustainable Cities class itself is pretty cool. Students partner with Bay Area nonprofits and government agencies to complete projects. According to the class website, students have completed 23 projects over the past five years.

B’more Farm and Food Map

The B’More Farm and Food Map comes out of the Maryland Food System Map project. According to the About page:

B’More Farm and Food Map shows locations of urban farms in Baltimore City, and the restaurants and markets where their food is available. The map was created to help local residents find food grown on these farms…As more people seek out and request food grown on urban farms, more demand will be created. So far, these urban farms have responded to such demand quickly and efficiently, expanding their production and sales. By using this map you may be able to help create demand and bolster the urban agriculture movement.

Sen. Ron Wyden’s town hall story-map

Thinking of running for office? Story Maps could help you stay in contact with constituents. Oregonian Senator Ron Wyden story-mapped 11 town hall meetings he held across the state.

Tracking down the uninsured

With the Obamacare roll out, we’ve heard a lot of talk about trying to get the uninsured covered /”>Where are the uninsured helps pinpoint this population, which could help health equity workers target their outreach efforts.

Education innovation centers

Our school districts have a lot of challenges, especially in poorer districts. But educators and administrators all around the country are coming up with novel ways to fix our broken system. Where are the centers of education innovation? pulls together many of the most enterprising schools in the country.

Inspired yet?

You can make your own Story Map here.

Do you know of any other data visualizations or mapping tools? Any ideas for innovative progressive mapping projects? Let us know/

The post Story maps: Putting info into geographic context appeared first on Occasional Planet.

“…and that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength.” –Audre Lorde

The Violence Against Women Act turns 20 this year. The federal government’s first comprehensive approach to end violence against women, the VAWA starts from a clear premise: Women, children, and families should be able to live in violence-free homes and communities.

This sounds like a truly bipartisan vision. One that both “pro-family” and “pro-choice” factions could support.

But even something as basic as family violence prevention law has its detractors. In 1984, one congressman dubbed it the “Take the Fun Out of Marriage Act.” Two years ago, Congress let the VAWA lapse for the first time in over a decade (See this OP post for more on the topic).

And just this week, a New Hampshire lawmaker posted a sickening joke at the expense of domestic violence survivors.

Still, anti-violence advocates and their allies persist. They got Congress to renew the VAWA last year. Between 1993 and 2010, domestic violence against adult women has gone down by 64%. How did we get here?

In her recent TED talk, Esta Soler outlines some of the anti-domestic violence movement’s key successes. Founder of Futures Without Violence, she has been a force in the movement to end gender-based violence for the past 30 years.

Soler highlights four key steps in the movement, offering an abbreviated guide to anti-violence activism:

They organized.

We created this extraordinary underground network of amazing women who opened shelters, and if they didn’t open a shelter, they opened their home so that women and children could be safe.

They changed the law.

We had bake sales, we had car washes, and we did everything we could do to fundraise, and then at one point we said, you know, it’s time that we went to the federal government and asked them to pay for these extraordinary services that are saving people’s lives… Ten years later, after lots of hard work, we finally passed the Violence Against Women Act.

They made the invisible, visible.

I want you to imagine what a breakthrough this was for women who were victims of violence in the 1980s. They would come into the emergency room with what the police would call “a lovers’ quarrel,” and I would see a woman who was beaten, I would see a broken nose and a fractured wrist and swollen eyes. And as activists, we would take our Polaroid camera, we would take her picture, we would wait 90 seconds, and we would give her the photograph. And she would then have the evidence she needed to go to court.

Before 1980, do you have any idea how many articles were in The New York Times on domestic violence? I’ll tell you: 158. And in the 2000s, over 7,000. We were obviously making a difference.

They engaged men as allies.

National polling told us that men felt indicted, and not invited into the conversation. So we wondered, how can we include men? How can we get men to talk about violence against women and girls? And a male friend of mine pulled me aside and he said, “You want men to talk about violence against women and girls. Men don’t talk.” (Laughter) I apologize to the men in the audience. I know you do. But he said, “Do you know what they do do? They do talk to their kids. They talk to their kids as parents, as coaches.” And that’s what we did. We met men where they were at and we built a program.

 Soler’s talk struck me for a few reasons. She talks about how anti-violence advocates have used technology—from Polaroids to ad campaigns to Twitter—to organize and to tell their stories.

Most interesting, she does more than celebrate the good guys and condemn the bad guys. She talks about the strategies and concrete tactics progressives and other social change agents can use to turn great ideas into law.

This Women’s History Month, as we uplift feminist icons and celebrate accomplishments like the Violence Against Women Act, let’s also pay tribute to the savvy strategies and political moves that folks like Esta Soler have used to make change. Because wins like the VAWA are as much about good strategy as they are about good policy.

Strategy, policy, and a healthy sense of optimism. Soler says she “fundamentally” and “passionately” believes that “violence doesn’t have to be part of the human condition:”

I’m the daughter of a man who joined one club in his life, the Optimist Club,..And it is his spirit and his optimism that is in my DNA…I believe we can bend the arc of human history toward compassion and equality…

Such hope is at the heart of our movements for social change.

What other strategies are progressives using—in the women’s movement and beyond—to bring about a more equitable, compassionate future? Are there more movers-and-shakers like Esta Soler we should be talking about? Please share your thoughts. 

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