Many here have heard of www.Meetup.com
You type in your local zip code and you find out what other groups exist: Dean in 2004, Environment, Vegetarian, NRA too I'm sure, etc, in YOUR zip code. (Dean 2004, Witches, and Pagans seem the most organized so far!)
So you can go to
http://www.meetup.com/locale/us/md/salisbury/ or http://www.meetup.com/locale/us/md/baltimore etc
(you don't have to type that in, you first use the zip code to find your city...)
there is also vegetarian.meetup.com and vegan.meetup.com etc.
That is background. Now the question is how to a) in the short term use something like this towards our ends despite its limitations and for-profit nature (the Default meeting places are pizza places etc that have a deal with meetup.com though you can after meeting in person set up another place..)
b) What in the long term can we create as a similar online tool?
I would suggest minimally a similar program and website that is open source ("free software", ie, "Free as in free speech not as in free beer" though it will be cost free too)
This will make it noncorporate controlled, and we can , must as importantly, add "modules" to implement new "features" that we want it to have, as time goes on. We won't need to convince the corporate owners to implement them; and we can implement them much faster even if the corporate owners would have approved a similar change to meetup.com
c) Here is something to pique the imagination..
Just think of how one little thing, getting (at a later, more advanced stage of the project) getting zip+4 rather than zip codes, imagine what that could do...for example...for tenants organizing.
I'm a lifelong renter, and individual family landlords are often not bad, sometimes quite nice...then there are the large corporate land lords...
You are of course NOT allowed to go from door to door to try to organize a tenant's organization.. or if you are, there is enough fuzzy language in the lease that they can find a reason not to renew you.. of course some people do organize door to door anyway...but imagine the immense new expanded organizing power this would allow.
Right now I haven't got the SLIGHTEST faintest idea if there are in this complex of mine of several hundred people, I don't know if there are any other vegans...and it would be great to meet them...imagine 100 other topics like peace, justice, etc..
But now, on top of all of those, imagine knowing fellow progressives...and imagine we find that there are on this system, already 4 in my own apartment complex, who are fellow progressives.. how we can start to coordinate a way to increase tenants' say over the place (maybe a bit LESS pesticides on the grounds? Maybe a little LESS money on useless things to makeover the appearance for new prospective tenants, and more money on critical things missing (but not obvious to someone looking quickly at an apartment they are considering renting)) etc...
It gets better...just the 4 of us "finding each other" would be a huge step forward...but there are, (in this thought experiment) others who are not progressives, just mainstream folks, but say 20 others on the online system have the same zip+4 suggesting they are in the same apartment complex or the one nextdoor...later, maybe a full 25% of the tenants are there on the system (because they are on the basketball or knitting or other such part)
Now the system will have tools for sending email to all (these tools let you carefully customize which such emails you are willing to receive how often from which people etc) so we can email to all the 25% of the tenants in this apartment complex
Of course we won't have to resort to the email because there will be a forum (in addition to the forums on soccer, veganism, etc) that is just a forum for "14850-1423" that is the zip+4 in question..And we can post there "my kid got asthma..I am worried about the environmental things in out complex that might have contributed to that attack..." or "there is a meeting in [place] next tuesday for tenants..."
So, that is one tool worth exploring...