PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Americorp Computer Labs Open to the Public
by Philip Shropshire Thursday, Feb. 27, 2003 at 6:42 PM
pshropshire@yahoo.com (email address validated) 4123715335

I just wanted to remind Indy Media and all other Pittsburgh groups that the Americorps computer labs, with decent computers and DSL lines, are open to the public for meetings and activities.

I just wanted to let your readers know that Americorps is offering a number of free computer training classes to the public. The classes are being offered in churches and community centers. I work out of the Penn Hills computer lab, located at 7450 Chadwick Street. We�re offering open lab times and introductory classes (they usually run six weeks) or so. Our computers are actually fairly decent and we have a pretty reliable DSL connection.

I also wanted to repeat our offers of space for any and all meetings, at least until your new digs on Penn Avenue are fully functional. By the way, the offer for space and the use of our computers is open to other community and activist groups as well. For example, if members of the Thomas Merton Center wanted to man our computers for several hours in order to aid the MoveOn organization�s Feb. 26th Virtual protest during open lab hours that would be fine. Weekly meetings are also fine. Keep in mind that it�s our job to provide social services for the public, even if President Bush has cut the Americorp budget in half--for something more pressing like bribing Turkey no doubt--just recently we shall persevere on.

We�re also in desperate need for teachers and aides. From the meeting I attended a week ago it�s clear that your resident techheads know quite a bit about Linux, which is something that we�re just starting to work with here in Americorps. In fact, we have two computers that are just sitting here that could be made whole again by someone with some expertise with Linux applications, GUIs and desktops (KDE/Gnome).

Any questions, inquiries or directions should be forwarded to:

Philip Shropshire
Penn Hills Computer Lab Director
7450 Chadwick Street
Pittsburgh, Pa. 41237
pshropshire@yahoo.com

By the way, I think you guys are doing a great job. My Tuesday class was very moved by the Uniontown protest pictures. I would hope that you would aspire to create paid staffers so that you could do this fulltime. Two ways that you can get around the commercialization problem: Try to get grant funding like the Guardian (and the website Tom Paine here in the states). You also might think about taking smaller, noncorrupting ads. If you�re interested, I�ve got a plan to raid the classified ad revenue stream from the town�s big media. It would drive traffic as well. I would need a good coder to help me though. And instead of editors use a �collective� editing process, a shortened form of what�s used at Kuro5hin. I guess you could call it editing by mod points. And of course, you should probably leave the editing process to liberals or progressives. The freepers and the warbloggers have Fox News and radio afterall. Just some honest feedback here folks.

Sincerely,

Philip Shropshire
http://www.threerivertechreview.com
http://www.majic12.com

PS: And, hey, link to me. It�s good karma and I�ve been involved in left politics and concerns as long as some of the �collective� has been alive. Be pals.

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