Become a Personally
Green One Minute Advocate:
Become a Personally Green One Minute
Advocate - Each year thousands of bills
are considered by elected officials in the US. Our state and
federal representatives must vote on thousands more. Many
of these measures go from proposal to law without little citizen
input. And if an elected official hears from more than a half-dozen
people on a particular bill, then that's thought to reflect
widespread public concern. So your letter, phone call, or
e-mail can have a big impact. And we're always looking for
people who will allow us to send them a message when a critical
piece of environmental legislation is up for a vote. Here's
how it works. You join the one minute advocate newsletter,
every so often usually once a month. We
send you a brief summary of the issue, which takes about a
minute to read. Accompanying the summary is a clear, concise
description of how to contact the officials who will be deciding
on the issue and suggestions about what to say. We also explain
how you can obtain additional information on the issue and
how to take a more active role, which can include helping
us to make future decisions on the issue. To become a One-Minute
Advocate go here.
Become a smart boycotter -
Join a smart mob - Organising
people who don't know each other to work in concert is the
concept underlying "smart mobs," a principle defined
by computing icon Howard Rheingold. Electronic hubs that gather
together activists are appearing worldwide. In the US, The
League of Pissed Off Voters is using its indyvoter.org site
to co-ordinate political actions. Meanwhile, Taylor uses text
messaging to quickly organise large groups of people. While
supporting the Green Party candidate for the Mayor of San
Francisco, he built an emergency list to help co-ordinate
volunteers. "We had maybe 400 people on the list and
we'd get 80 people coming to a certain place within the hour,"
he says. "It's really useful for last-minute political
organising."
Companies that rely on sales growth to fuel the stock price
tend to be most affected by boycotts, says Max Keiser, the
founder of KarmaBanque. "If an activist boycotts company
A rather than company B, they're having more of a financial
impact by focusing their attention on the company with the
greatest vulnerability," he says. "This alone gives
them greater financial leverage, and the internet's a great
way to organise all this data." The Ill-Will rating is
driven by the number of people who sign up to boycott a company
at the KarmaBanque site. If the Ill-Will rating and the Boycott
Vulnerability rating are high, the company moves up the Karmabanque
index.
Keiser, an arch-capitalist with more than 20 years of experience
in the City, argues that activists must embrace the market,
as it is the only thing that companies understand. "The
markets are, at their core, irrational and immoral, and activists
should embrace that and use it to their advantage," he
says.
How-to become a audio Citizen Journalism.
It is the first in a series of what I call Citizen
Journalism Tech Kits. The future how-tos will included
more advanced methods. My dream is to edit these how-tos,
with your help, train people in person, and share info about
public resources to make your own media.
Become a video activist - Just
as e-mail and websites can be used to organise communities,
they can also be used to publish messages that "big"
media may not be interested in covering. The Indymedia network
started in 1999 to document the World Trade Organisation protests
in Seattle. There are now more than 100 Indymedia centres
across the world, including one in the UK.
"It was started by a group of activists who had been
involved in community newspapers and media reform movements
in the US," says Evan Henshaw-Plath, the founder of activist
community website protest.net, who is involved with the group.
"They knew that CNN, ABC and Fox were going to provide
a pro-corporate view of the protest, and they didn't want
to let them do that. They wanted to create an opposite of
the corporate newsroom." The group organised ad hoc television
and radio channels to complement news on its website, and
other groups began copying the event, using the model to cover
local protests and bring issues to the public's attention.
One of them was Indymedia UK (www.indymedia.org.uk), which
started in 2000 to document the Mayday protests, explains
Martin, a member of the group who wishes to remain anonymous.
The organisation works using a combination of the website
and the e-mailing lists that enable individuals to communicate
locally. Its structure is decentralised and, other than some
people who must have access to the servers to make technical
changes, everything is democratic and decided by consensus.
This makes getting involved very easy and members of the public
can simply submit their own media online.
Jam some culture - Culture jamming
takes the independent media idea one stage further by co-opting
corporate messages and modifying them for activist purposes.
Andy Bichlbaum is one half of the Yes Men (www.theyesmen.org),
an activist duo that makes websites mimicking those of target
organisations, but with altered messages. Bichlbaum develops
sites, like www.gatt.org and www.dowethics.com, to present
an alternative viewpoint to the targets that host the "real"
sites (www.wto.org and www.dow.com.) "The Gatt site makes
it a lot more obvious what the WTO is really about,"
he says.
Give it away - Rather than voicing
dissent by using the technology that you have, why not further
social change by giving it away? Environmentalists were shocked
by a United Nations research group report in March that revealed
heavier-than-expected environmental impact caused by personal
computers. Giving away computers to worthy causes is an act
of high-tech activism that carries an environmental and social
benefit. Tony Roberts, the CEO of UK-based charity Computer
Aid, explains that PCs donated to his organisation go to schools
or non-governmental organisations. "We're supplying computers
into the meteorological office in Kenya, so that, at the district
level, farmers can come in and analyse information for forecasting
and planning their crops," he says.
Or you could keep your computer and use it to connect to
Freecycle (www.freecycle.org), the donation and gifting network
that Deron Beal started in Arizona in 2003. The network, which
uses Yahoo groups to unite local communities, focuses on donating
second-hand goods.
Instead of throwing out old junk, Freecycle members list
it on the local group. If another group member needs it, they
come and pick it up - for free. "Why throw something
in the landfill that you can reuse?" he asks, adding
that assuming each gift donated on the network weighs a pound,
Freecycle is saving 33 tons of junk from the landfills each
day. There are 38 UK Freecycle groups.
All of our digital activism suggestions are legal, but what
of Downhill Battle's less-than-lawful attempt to distribute
the Eyes on the Prize documentary - "the most important
documentary ever made about the Civil Rights Movement"?
At the end of last month, it was forced to remove the file
from its site (www.downhillbattle.org) to comply with a cease
and desist letter. But its laboratory is working on some other
ideas, including a laptop PC that would be hidden at the top
of a tree, complete with solar panels and a wireless router,
to be used as a community file-sharing system.
Blog activist
- 5
Steps to Building Relationships with Key Bloggers
Forum activist
It seems to me that the new understanding that has emerged
in our times has 3 steps: 1) realize everything is connected,
2) notice that the connecting starts with the smallest pieces,
3) know networks rule.
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