Beginning at the Blog: Moving from Kitchen-Table Plans to National Political Activism Using Digital Narratives

Abstract

As parents and teachers with a stake in the day-to-day running of schools in Seattle, we observed the privatization of our public schools in 2009 with great concern. We shared our concerns informally with each other, and the concerns coalesced into a narrative blog, Seattle Education. As people living outside of Seattle and in other states began to read our blog, our community of concerned parents, students, and teachers grew into a national movement against market-based reform. The name that we gave ourselves was Parents Across America. In this chapter, I will describe how Parents Across America formed and gathered members, and I will share how its members have used online networking to impede market-driven reform efforts in Seattle and throughout the United States.