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Catherine Bracy: Why good hackers make good citizens
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Hacking is about more than mischief-making or political subversion. As Catherine Bracy describes in this spirited talk, it can be just as much a force for good as it is for evil. She spins through some inspiring civically-minded projects in Honolulu, Oakland and Mexico City — and makes a compelling case that we all have what it takes to get involved.
Catherine Bracy - Hacker, community manager
Catherine Bracy is the director of community organizing at Code for America. Full bio
Catherine Bracy is the director of community organizing at Code for America. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:12
I'm going to talk about hackers.
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And the image that comes to your mind
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when I say that word is probably not
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of Benjamin Franklin,
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but I'm going to explain to you why it should be.
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The image that comes to your mind
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is probably more likely of a pasty kid
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sitting in a basement doing something mischievous,
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or of a shady criminal who is
trying to steal your identity,
trying to steal your identity,
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or of an international rogue
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with a political agenda.
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And mainstream culture has kind of fed this idea
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that hackers are people that we should be afraid of.
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But like most things in technology
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and the technology world,
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hacking has equal power for good as it has for evil.
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For every hacker that's trying to steal your identity
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there's one that's building a tool
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that will help you find your
loved ones after a disaster
loved ones after a disaster
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or to monitor environmental quality
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after an oil spill.
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Hacking is really just any amateur innovation
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on an existing system,
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and it is a deeply democratic activity.
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It's about critical thinking.
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It's about questioning existing ways of doing things.
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It's the idea that if you see a
problem, you work to fix it,
problem, you work to fix it,
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and not just complain about it.
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And in many ways, hacking is what built America.
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Betsy Ross was a hacker.
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The Underground Railroad was a brilliant hack.
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And from the Wright brothers to Steve Jobs,
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hacking has always been at the foundation
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of American democracy.
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So if there's one thing I want
to leave you here with today,
to leave you here with today,
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it's that the next time you
think about who a hacker is,
think about who a hacker is,
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you think not of this guy
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but of this guy, Benjamin Franklin,
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who was one of the greatest hackers of all time.
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He was one of America's most prolific inventors,
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though he famously never filed a patent,
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because he thought that all human knowledge
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should be freely available.
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He brought us bifocals and the lightning rod,
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and of course there was his collaboration
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on the invention of American democracy.
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And in Code For America, we really try to embody
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the spirit of Ben Franklin.
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He was a tinkerer and a statesman
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whose conception of citizenship
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was always predicated on action.
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He believed that government could be built
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by the people,
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and we call those people civic hackers.
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So it's no wonder that the values
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that underly a healthy democracy,
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like collaboration and empowerment
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and participation and enterprise,
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are the same values that underly the Internet.
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And so it's no surprise that many hackers
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are turning their attention to
the problem of government.
the problem of government.
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But before I give you a few examples
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of what civic hacking looks like,
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I want to make clear that you don't have
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to be a programmer to be a civic hacker.
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You just have to believe that you can bring
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a 21st-century tool set to bear
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on the problems that government faces.
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And we hear all the time from our community
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of civic hackers at Code for America
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that they didn't understand
how much nontechnical work
how much nontechnical work
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actually went into civic hacking projects.
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So keep that in mind.
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All of you are potential civic hackers.
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So what does civic hacking look like?
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Our team last year in Honolulu,
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which in this case was three full-time fellows
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who were doing a year of public service,
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were asked by the city to rebuild the website.
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And it's a massive thing of
tens of thousands of pages
tens of thousands of pages
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which just wasn't going to be possible
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in the few months that they had.
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So instead, they decided to build a parallel site
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that better conformed to how citizens actually
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want to interact with information on a city website.
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They're looking for answers to questions,
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and they want to take action when they're done,
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which is really hard to do from a site
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that looks like this.
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So our team built Honolulu Answers,
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which is a super-simple search interface
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where you enter a search term or a question
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and get back plain language answers
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that drive a user towards action.
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Now the site itself was easy enough to build,
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but the team was faced with the challenge
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of how they populate all of the content.
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It would have taken the three of them
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a very long time,
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especially given that none of
them are actually from Honolulu.
them are actually from Honolulu.
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And so they did something that's really radical,
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when you think about how government
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is used to working.
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They asked citizens to write the content.
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So you've heard of a hack-a-thon.
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They held a write-a-thon,
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where on one Saturday afternoon --
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("What do I do about wild pigs
being a nuisance?") (Laughter) —
being a nuisance?") (Laughter) —
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Wild pigs are a huge problem
in Honolulu, apparently.
in Honolulu, apparently.
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In one Saturday afternoon,
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they were able to populate most of the content
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for most of the frequently asked questions,
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but more importantly than that,
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they created a new way for citizens
to participate in their government.
to participate in their government.
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Now, I think this is a really cool story in and of itself,
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but it gets more awesome.
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On the National Day of Civic Hacking
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this past June in Oakland, where I live,
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the Code For America team in Oakland
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took the open source code base of Honolulu Answers
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and turned it into Oakland Answers,
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and again we held a write-a-thon
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where we took the most frequently asked questions
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and had citizens write the answers to them,
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and I got into the act.
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I authored this answer, and a few others.
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And I'm trying to this day to articulate
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the sense of empowerment and responsibility
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that I feel for the place that I live
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based simply on this small act of participation.
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And by stitching together my small act
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with the thousands of other
small acts of participation
small acts of participation
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that we're enabling through civic hacking,
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we think we can reenergize citizenship
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and restore trust in government.
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At this point, you may be wondering
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what city officials think of all this.
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They actually love it.
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As most of you guys know, cities are being asked
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every day to do more with less,
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and they're always looking for innovative solutions
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to entrenched problems.
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So when you give citizens a way to participate
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beyond attending a town hall meeting,
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cities can actually capture
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the capacity in their communities
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to do the business of government.
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Now I don't want to leave the impression
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that civic hacking is just an American phenomenon.
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It's happening across the globe,
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and one of my favorite examples
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is from Mexico City, where earlier this year,
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the Mexico House of Representatives
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entered into a contract with
a software development firm
a software development firm
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to build an app that legislators would use
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to track bills.
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So this was just for the handful of legislators
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in the House.
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And the contract was a two-year contract
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for 9.3 million dollars.
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Now a lot of people were really angry about this,
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especially geeks who knew that 9.3 million dollars
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was an absolutely outrageous amount of money
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for what was a very simple app.
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But instead of taking to the streets,
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they issued a challenge.
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They asked programmers in Mexico
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to build something better and cheaper,
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and they offered a prize of 9,300 dollars --
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10,000 times cheaper
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than the government contract,
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and they gave the entrants 10 days.
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And in those 10 days,
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they submitted 173 apps,
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five of which were presented to Congress
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and are still in the app store today.
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And because of this action,
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that contract was vacated,
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and now this has sparked a movement in Mexico City
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which is home to one of our partners,
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Code for Mexico City.
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And so what you see in all three of these places,
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in Honolulu and in Oakland and in Mexico City,
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are the elements that are
at the core of civic hacking.
at the core of civic hacking.
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It's citizens who saw things
that could be working better
that could be working better
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and they decided to fix them,
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and through that work, they're creating
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a 21st-century ecosystem of participation.
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They're creating a whole new set of ways
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for citizens to be involved,
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besides voting or signing a petition or protesting.
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They can actually build government.
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So back to our friend Ben Franklin,
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who, one of his lesser-known accomplishments
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was that in 1736 he founded
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the first volunteer firefighting
company in Philadelphia,
company in Philadelphia,
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called a brigade.
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And it's because he and his friends noticed
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that the city was having trouble keeping up
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with all the fires that were happening in the city,
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so in true civic hacker fashion,
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they built a solution.
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And we have our own brigades at Code for America
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working on the projects that I've just described,
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and we want to ask you
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to follow in Ben Franklin's footsteps
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and come join us.
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We have 31 brigades in the U.S.
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We are pleased to announce today
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that we're opening up the
brigade to international cities
brigade to international cities
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for the first time,
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starting with cities in Poland and Japan and Ireland.
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You can find out if there's a brigade where you live
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at brigade.codeforamerica.org,
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and if there's not a brigade
where you live, we will help you.
where you live, we will help you.
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We've created a tool kit which also lives
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at brigade.codeforamerica.org,
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and we will support you along the way.
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Our goal is to create a global
network of civic hackers
network of civic hackers
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who are innovating on the existing system
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in order to build tools that will solve
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entrenched problems,
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that will support local government,
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and that will empower citizens.
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So please come hack with us.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Catherine Bracy - Hacker, community managerCatherine Bracy is the director of community organizing at Code for America.
Why you should listen
At Code for America, Catherine Bracy oversees the nonprofit's community network-building initiatives, including its volunteer program and international partnership program. A resident of Oakland, California, herself, she is preoccupied with bringing together local governments and technologists in a concerted effort to make better cities for everyone.
Until the end of 2012, she ran the Obama campaign's technology office in San Francisco. She also worked on outreach for Tech4Obama, the campaign's technology affinity group. Previously, she worked at the Knight Foundation where she managed the 2011 News Challenge to fund digital innovation in journalism.
Catherine Bracy | Speaker | TED.com