Looking forward to hearing thoughts on this.

Social media certainly makes it easier to get things going. I got my alumni association started that way. First year, 2013, we awarded $1,000 in scholarships. This year and last $10,000. Could not have done it without.

My university has until this year conducted fund raising among alumni by personal phone calls from students benefitting from financial aid.

This year, they just wrote and I called in a (small) donation. To my surprise, I received a (nice, long) handwritten letter from such a student.

I appreciated it! (Speaking as one having benefitted from a full aid grant when I was there).

No impersonal social media solicitations or gratitude there.

(FWIW writing from a bar opposite my deprature gate at Philly airport, during my 4-hour layover. Can't believe EVERY flight gate has its own bar and terminals. Son flying from Boston reports only seeing coffee shops.)

How did they form during the Dust Bowl?

The news here, I suppose, is the use of social media to highlight areas to congregate, dates, etc. I guess I don't understand why this is news of any more than a sociological "ain't social media grand" type. It's unclear to me how crossing the border en masse is particularly more successful. Certainly, traveling to the border would be safer in a large group. But these are families, not individuals, so they may be unable to cross the border easily except at the large-scale checkpoints. And, of course, going to ba border checkpoint and requesting asylum is the only legal way to enter, despite what Trump says.

To Daniel's point, not sure if it was meant to be facetious, but folks going to California/Oregon during the Dust Bowl were driving cars or taking trains, which meant they were staying on roads/rails--a natural congregation area.