Tag: protest

Categories
Activism

What happens to activism after Twitter?

Bookmarked

For all its failings, one space where Twitter has excelled is empowering activism: calling out injustice, community organizing, and on-the-ground reporting from dozens of protests at once. Conservatives bitch about their fascist tweets getting deleted and “misinformation” because they can’t tell you about “the ivermectin cure,” but what actually seems to be censored and misrepresented in mainstream press is disruptions to power: protesters are painted as looters, police spray children with tear gas at nonviolent protests, journalists get black-bagged and shot despite their press badges. I watched all this happening from afar in BLM protests around the country – these three particular instances were in Bellevue, Seattle and Portland. And the “terrifying” Capital Hill Autonomous Zone or whatever they called themselves planted a community garden in a public park — oh the atrocity! 😱 I could read and see accounts from multiple people at various protests, photos and videos from multiple angles, and read accounts from journalists at protests, and real community members could dispel fear mongering and scapegoating.

If Twitter collapses, where do we go for that kind of information?

If we didn’t have Twitter, would any of us have heard about George Floyd or Breonna Taylor?

Activism has adapted to make use of online platforms and advocate to a larger audience. I haven’t been going to protests in person, so I don’t know how essential that link is.

If Twitter collapses, what happens to the women of Iran right now?

Can federated / distributed spaces allow the kind of real-time information spread that has made Twitter invaluable for activism?

Mastodon only searches hashtags within your (an?) instance from my understanding. You need to already know who to follow or be in an instance where people are sharing that kind of information.

(☝️ I do not know this to be true first-hand but wouldn’t be surprised given the model)

And the IndieWeb already struggles with discoverability.

I don’t think TikTok can serve the same function — too easy in their algorithmic model to keep anything from spreading, and video is so much slower to produce and consume than text that you can’t follow as many separate accounts to get an understanding of what’s happening.

Facebook gave us genocide in Myanmar. They’re not going to be a help here. Instagram doesn’t seem built in a way that’s easy to follow trending topics. Their ephemeral posts (stories) aren’t easy to find or follow. I haven’t used it lately so I don’t know how Reels work.

Categories
Activism Memoir

Read Run: Book One

Read Run

To John Lewis, the civil rights movement came to an end with the signing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. But that was after more than five years as one of the preeminent figures of the movement, leading sit–in protests and fighting segregation on interstate busways as an original Freedom Rider. It was after becoming chairman of SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and being the youngest speaker at the March on Washington. It was after helping organize the Mississippi Freedom Summer and the ensuing delegate challenge at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. And after coleading the march from Selma to Montgomery on what became known as “Bloody Sunday.” All too often, the depiction of history ends with a great victory. But John Lewis knew that victories are just the beginning.

It’s upsetting how relevant this is in 2021, 57 years after the start of the book. The barrage on equal voting rights is relentless and endless.

Meticulously researched and reconstructed. I’m less familiar with this time period than I was with the events in March, so I appreciated the context setting and big picture.

The thruline on this one isn’t as clear as in March, but focuses on the change in the movement away from non-violence as Black people are murdered needlessly and ruthlessly, while John Lewis remains committed to peaceful protest and resistance.

Categories
Activism Comics History

Read Banned Book Club

Read Banned Book Club

When Kim Hyun Sook started college in 1983 she was ready for her world to open up. After acing her exams and sort-of convincing her traditional mother that it was a good idea for a woman to go to college, she looked forward to soaking up the ideas of Western Literature far from the drudgery she was promised at her family’s restaurant. But literature class would prove to be just the start of a massive turning point, still focused on reading but with life-or-death stakes she never could have imagined.

This was during South Korea’s Fifth Republic, a military regime that entrenched its power through censorship, torture, and the murder of protestors. In this charged political climate, with Molotov cocktails flying and fellow students disappearing for hours and returning with bruises, Hyun Sook sought refuge in the comfort of books. When the handsome young editor of the school newspaper invited her to his reading group, she expected to pop into the cafeteria to talk about Moby Dick, Hamlet, and The Scarlet Letter. Instead she found herself hiding in a basement as the youngest member of an underground banned book club. And as Hyun Sook soon discovered, in a totalitarian regime, the delights of discovering great works of illicit literature are quickly overshadowed by fear and violence as the walls close in.

I’m embarrassed to admit I knew next to nothing about South Korea’s coups and regimes, just vaguely that one of their recent presidents was removed – I didn’t realize she was the daughter of a previous totalitarian president. Political dynasties are so dangerous, I fully expect to be dealing with Ivanka Trump running for president in 15 years.

Though the particulars of this story were new to me, the story itself is sadly familiar. Totalitarians and dictators follow the same playbook, banning books and movies, arresting artists, disappearing their opponents. I hope we don’t get to that point. I still feel comfortable criticizing the government and reading whatever the hell I want… but with populism on the rise I won’t be surprised if the next ten years turn truly ugly. We got a taste this summer – journalists attacked, civilians black-bagged, police using chemicals banned in warfare on their own people. Protestors painted as rioters, never mind they were defending themselves against military-esque police forces, even here in liberal Seattle and Portland.

“Surprisingly, [communist] is not defined as ‘anyone who disagrees with you.'”

The first few pages of artwork felt a little chunky, and the exposition clunky, but settled into a style after that. All of the characters were visually distinctive, which I appreciate.

The main character gets sucked into the underground quickly, seemingly more than she wants, but she takes steps to remain part. I loved her confrontation at the end, which gave her a character epiphany while protecting herself and her friends.

Categories
Entrepreneurship

Work Mode as Protest

Quoted A Big Walk, Book Success, Work as Protest — Roden Explorers Archive by Craig Mod (craigmod.com)

“One of the big fumbles (sort of) of my 30s was concocting a false narrative that went something like: We need someone on the outside (read: in a position of “power”) to bestow upon us the permission to be or be able to do X…”

“It was only once I hit a few dozen walls and failed to “publish” in the “way” I thought I “had” to publish, that I then — finally! — began to think more creatively around engaging with and owning my work and the space within which I was working.”

“…A certain kind of work, lifestyle, mode of living — in and of itself — is protest. That is, work that is curious and rigorous is implicitly an antipode to didactic, shallow bombastity. It is inherently an archetype against bullshit.”

— Craig Mod

I feel like Craig’s got a point here that syncs with my feelings about just going for self-publishing and trying to build my own thing. Where I have such strong feelings about work and worker’s rights and capitalism, it’s pushing me towards an older mode of work, a more creator-centric approach to trade.