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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>Greetings to you all. My name is Frank Kashner. I am a collaborative, critical, labor<span style='color:#1F497D'>,</span> and community oriented social worker - psychotherapist in Salem, MA, USA. In 2007, I was fired from a social services agency for acting like a union steward. I was supporting fellow employees who were being threatened for under-productivity. The agency had no union. Here is an article from 2012 entitled <a href="http://www.rankandfiler.net/can-unions-help/">Can Unions Help with Problems Faced by Agency Therapists?</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I am also helping to organize Massachusetts independent mental health workers who do not have the right to negotiate collectively with insurance companies, through <a href="http://cliniciansunited.org/" target="_blank" title="clinicians united">Clinicians United – SEIU Local 509</a> . <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>In the 1960’s, I was part of the Wisconsin Draft Resistance Union, Students for a Democratic Society, and the (successful) Cambridge MA Rent Control Referendum Campaign. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>In the 1970’s I became a machinist at General Electric in Lynn, MA, and an activist in IUE Local 201 where I participated in successful efforts to end General Electric practices of open racism, to win greater worker safety, and to make the union leadership more democratic. For a story about those times from 1978, please <a href="https://libcom.org/files/Rad%20America%20V12%20I6.pdf" target="_blank" title="Radical America article 1978">See “A Rank & File Strike at GE” in the 1978 issue of Radical America.</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The following 19 years was spent in Massachusetts software engineering organizations, most of the time as a manager, allowed me to learn and practice good leadership within a corporate setting, participate in the development of technology, and witness its liberatory potential. I practiced collaborative leadership, which was appreciated by those who worked for me.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>In 2002, I went back to school to become a social worker where I got to see the underbelly of social services. In 2010, while researching why there were so many problems with social service organizations, I was directed to <a href="http://says-us.net/jobvent/" target="_blank" title=Jobvent>jobvent.com</a> (link to story of jobvent’s demise)<span style='color:#1F497D'> </span>by an unhappy employee of <a href="http://says-us.net/southbay/" target="_blank" title=SouthBay>South Bay Mental Health</a><span style='color:#1F497D'> </span>(link to some of the actual complaints). <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>On jobvent, I saw the passionate complaints of almost 100,000 employees about almost 10,000 companies. Glassdoor’s subsequently betrayed those employees by buying jobvent, deleting the critical complaints, and not telling people that they had done that. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The use and then abuse of jobvent, my activist history, the stories of my clients, and my belief in the liberatory potential of individual stories and organizing on the web, led me to conceptualizing and promoting says-us.net. Says-us is designed to create a site useful for expression, struggle and change, while avoiding the many problems of commercial social media sites, like FB, some of which have been described on this email list.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="http://www.says-us.net/">Says-us.net</a> is a proposal to create a peoples’ web-mobile utility. Says-us advocates building a describing + whistle blowing + rating + organizing + action system. In addition to labour, it will encompass other important domains of human need. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Informed by the Foucauldian notion that institutions are born through problematization, says-us will be a vehicle for self-expression, problematization, and action. It will facilitate subsequent abolition, modification, or creation of institutions, from the smallest, to the largest, including governments. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>It will always bring to the fore the questions, “whose problem?” and “whose solution?” by giving voice and power to everyone with web / mobile access, either anonymously, or with attribution. Here is a link to the <a href="http://says-us.net/proposal/" target="_blank" title=Proposal>Says-Us project proposal</a> which I am working on with Orsan Senalp, who has already<span style='color:#1F497D'> introduced himself</span>.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>We will be giving a presentation at DL14. Says-us has particular relevance to digital labor by providing a platform for complaints and a vehicle for funneling those doing digital labor to activist organizations. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal>If you have any questions or desire to help with says-us, please contact me<span style='color:#1F497D'> at <a href="mailto:info@says-us.net">info@says-us.net</a></span>. I look forward to meeting all of you in November. - Frank<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></body></html>