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Activism is a difficult sort of outreach; there are multiple types of target audiences that are drastically different, and all need to be touched by the same story or idea. Often times, it is even more difficult because the people to be reached comprise of those with authority, who are on the opposing end of those with the desire for change. This creates a very dynamic kind of activist - someone who is capable of navigating those different group by crafting special approaches for each group while engaging with them all physically.
But does the digital activist have the same skill?
Activism through social media and other web-based tools are the product of a necessity to reach and mobilize a large amount of persons quickly and easily, which is something we see now that the internet does best. However, those messages don't change from computer to computer. The student and single mother, politician and preacher all see the same thing.
While face-to-face activism allows for the...
Right now, different groups from the workshop are tackling three questions posed by the day´s first presentator, Juan Manuel Casanueva (Mexico) which -he suggests- every person interested in social change should ask about themselves.
1. Why do you work for/in social change?
2. What is incidence (influence)?
Through conversation, six of the participants (from Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Costa Rica and Venezuela), along their facilitator (Pedro Markun, from Brazil) came up with several conclusions related to the questions.
The participants´ personal experiences with Latin America´s inequalities are a main factor in their personal motivations in their work in social change. "We cannot stand aside and do nothing", said Diego Fino (Colombia).
"But would you work in change if there inequalities (or the reason you´re working for) did not exist?", commented Pedro Markun. "If it makes you happy, first and foremostly, you should not quit your activity, suggested Roberto Bustamante, from Peru....
Recently, with the help of some friends I started a small online campaign called 'Doh Do Death'. In Trinidadian creole English it means 'don't do death'. It's a digital death penalty abolition campaign, in response to the T&T Government's desire to create additional laws that would allow them to resume sentences of hanging of convicted murderers.
The context is somewhat complicated; the last time the country carried out a death sentence was in 1999, the year that the Notorious 'Dole Chadee' and his 8 accomplices were hanged. In total, 10 people were executed that year, and since then the penalty has not been carried out. Even still, the penalty still exists as a legal option, and Trinidad & Tobago makes it a note to say that the twin-island state is not abolitionist-in-practice like other countries who have not carried out the penalty in 10 years. T&T's current Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has repeatly stated "The...
The chicken & egg story this time goes to tree levels before reaching many loops...
Phase I: Collaboration - Colaboration
What can two LATAM collaborators discuss about? Will we actually collaborate? Do collaborators collaborate or do they want to be the only collaborators around to help others exchange and share?
And heading in to a more LATAM collaborative discussion ... Are there collaborators within societies mainly driven by selfish protagonists (we used Venezuela as a not-so-random contextual example).
Phase II: Educatión - Collaboration
The discussion started with a challenging question: Do educators collaborate? ... and quickly arrived to a "new" pedagogical line of thought that reflects on 'connectivism' in which people learn under environments that are driven by their personal relationships and exchanges. Taking HiperBarrio project as a practical observation case, it was noted how the project's assumptions of digital education have...
It's amazing how much one word can actually say.
Our first mission on Day 1 was to use one word to describe ourselves and the reason why we do the work that we do. After we find our own word, we were asked to pair off and find other words that match well with ours, and talk to the people who wrote them.
Usually, describing myself is pretty hard, but I know what I do and why I do it; my word was rights. Human rights, civil rights, legal rights...rights. And I knew that there would be people who used digital technology for the same reason - to rally together those who have similar concerns about their rights and the rights of others in their countries, and to arm them with the knowledge and tools necessary to defend those rights. And I was absolutely right.
Karl Jean-Jeune's word was the first to get my attention - justice. I make a beeline in his direction and ask him about the injustices that he fights for in his country of Haiti. Turns out, he's a lot like me. He...
During the 2nd day of the "Digital Natives with a Cause?" workshop in Santiago, we had a bar camp and Andres Azpura proposed talking about digital rights. I joined the conversation a bit late, but I was able to learn a lot about how Luis Carlos and Roberto from Peru, Joan from the Dominican Republic and Brendon from Trinidad and Tobago see questions about digital rights.
What was most interesting to me was the lack of conversation on the modern state. I think that whenever one enters into a discussion about rights, the concept of the state must be talked about. Rights, after all, exist only in the discourse of states, they are recognized by states and safeguarded by states. I talked a bit about this with Brendon more on the connection between rights and justice. For some reason, our conversation centered around ISPs, private corporations, and companies. And I am not too sure corporations formally recognize or even care about rights.
Private corporations have customers, and they have...
We have now been around the world, talking to Digital Natives in three continents. It was only yesterday, when we ere sitting at the Patio Bellavista, sipping on drinks that shall not be named, that we realised, that with this workshop we literally have stretched ourselves from one end of the world to the other.
The first workshop started in Taipei, in the far east, and now we find ourselves in the laps of Latin America, for the third workshop. The locales, the scenes, the shapes, sizes and colours of people have changed as we moved across continents. Each one brings with it unique vibrancy and culture, context and experience, and yet, we have realised that there are also things that are starlingly same, in their difference.
Gandhi had once said, ‘You must be the change you want to see in the world’ and this idea of change, of transformation, of dreams, and the desire to do something more than the individual and the personal is at the core of the conversations we seek to start with...
The word that best represents what I do is "Accessibility". Why? Because in my opinion, accessibility is one of the biggest challenges now in my country, Paraguay. Not only is internet accessibility still a main issue (although it is rapidly expanding), but access to information in general is difficult. As a Paraguayan, in order to obtain government-owned information, which is mine as a citizen and a taxpayer, I have to go through a true obstacle course to get it.
So in this last activity, I got the chance to find which words are "accessibility's" partners in crime :)
With Roberto, we analyzed the relationship between "accessibility" and "appropriation". First, we said that accessibility had to be guaranteed in order to ensure appropriation of information. However, once I have this information, it depends on me, and my own will, to make it accessible to others. For example, I could have chosen to make this blog entry "private" and accessible only to myself, or only to the "members...