Community Submissions

I think we should open a space for our community/audience to voice their own opinions, thoughts, and ideas. YPC wouldn’t be “sponsoring” them or anything, but we would provide a platform for our community to grow and thrive. This would also foster community outreach and help push forth our advocacy, partnerships, and even fundraising.

We can host online (and even in-person, if the circumstances allow) open mics; even a simple platform or call for submissions from all New Yorkers, students, and adult allies (accomplices in our movement) can submit writing, art, or music that expresses their being as a New Yorker facing systemic/systematic injustice. We can even give the mic to other organizations that we’re working with in tandem!

The possibilities are endless and creative. This is something we totally need to explore if we want to really create some form of web that connects us and organization, our audience, and our community — our movement.

With the right planning and coordination, we can totally get this up and running to help support advocacy’s current work!

Yes! I’ve been having similar thoughts of wanting a space that’s open, that’s co-created, that’s not about having an agenda set from the beginning but rather a space for people to bring their own stories.

@saf What’s your capacity now? Could you contribute again to a working circle? I ask because I’m thinking this could actually fit in with the leadership development work! We’re having our kick-off meeting January 12th at 5 PM Eastern Time.

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Yes, Yes, Yes!!! What should I prepare for the leadership development meeting? There’s not really a guarantee I can attend at 5, but I would still love to flesh out a proposal!

To try and center it with leadership development, I’d need some clarification about the circle’s goals. If that’s what the Jan. 12th meeting is about, I can hold off on a proposal.

I want this live community platform to be something for ALL New Yorkers and for all young people, sponsored by YPC. It can be an Instagram account that’s a subsidiary/partner of YPC, it can be online Zooms, a Zine, anything, really.

@saf The January 12th meeting is a kick-off meeting, so that’s where we’ll be clarifying the circle’s goals.

I see the Hub as a community platform, too! Ideally we can build it out to be a place where people all around can come to collaborate with one another.

I don’t know/I don’t think the Hub is a place for something like this, though. I don’t think it’s as accessible as a platform for the public as it could be

I want to make this as something really accessible and open for everyone, so I’m going to keep brainstorming with this idea!

Yay! I look forward to your brainstorm!!

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@saf Here’s an organization hosting Open Mics!

We’ve started using Discord, and I’m adjusting! But I’m wondering if there’s the potential for a community-submissions forum channel? I think this is a great way to utilize Discord and it can finally put into action a forum structure for community submissions.

However, there’s concern over the spots not lasting forever, or at least for an extended period of time? From what I’ve heard from friends and read online, the posts only last for 24 hours to a range of different period of times, with 3 weeks at the most. Is there a choice to make it last for longer?

With that in mind, can we archive them in a channel? Or should we just use a channel?

I was looking for a forum structure but I’m not opposed to a channel at all. I am just wary of responses becoming their own post (instead of being a reply to a thread) and it kind of clogging the flow of posts.

Thoughts on this? @deborahchang @erinac4163

@saf Yup! It’s super easy to set up a Discord forum channel. The most important thing though is to be able to define what goes in this channel and to make sure there’s a need for it.

The posts last forever. They’re just not listed in the channel list sidebar unless it’s been active for the past week (the maximum we can get with a non-boosted server).

Here’s an example.

We have a project-planning forum channel in the Support Network category.
The “Example Post for Community Submissions Idea” post is new - I just created it.
The “Using Discord as Our Communications Hub” post is older

Now look to the left under Support Network. Notice that Example Post is in the channel list but Using Discord is not.

@saf Maybe you could explore Discord Forum Channels by posting a question in #member-questions about this idea.