Well… about that. For everything that this administration will be remembered for, and we don’t have to go down the list, the response to Hurricane Katrina will surely be near the top of the list.
There is a movement to mobilize people in support of more aggressive federal action to help the people of New Orleans who are still struggling. So a bunch of groups get together and want to get people engaged. OK, quiz time. What’s the best way to do that? Yes, video.
Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films made a 4-minute piece I have pasted below. They put it on YouTube, embedded into this landing page, and then sent emails to all their lists, all at the same time. The idea is to get enough YouTube views to push the video into the Most Viewed, which will put it in front of hundreds of thousands of people who otherwise wouldn’t see it.
Can you imagine that debris hasn’t even been cleared, two years after the hurricane? Can you imagine 80-year-olds needing to sleep in gutted homes because FEMA is starting to charge them to stay in the trailers? It is hard to imagine. But when you see it, you know it’s real.
Please check out the campaign landing page for a nice look at current best practices in microsites like this one. It has the petition right on the home page, a URL that’s easy to remember and fits the content, the video as the center of attention right next to the form, only a few links on the page, clear and concise content, a push to get bloggers like me to host the video to get more views, and a coordinated strategy with multiple organizations.
Seeing is believing… but what if it’s not. We’ve known about “Photoshopping” for a long time — you can manipulate photos. But this manipulation is going to become much more accessible. Have a look at what some Israeli academics have cooked up:
Mining is in the news a lot recently because of the terrible tragedy in Utah where six miners are presumed dead in a mine collapse and at least three more have been killed trying to rescue them. Another kind of mining made today’s news. It’s called mountaintop removal and it is the most common mining in West Virginia and Appalachia generally. It is just what the name implies. They remove the top of a mountain to expose the coal vein. In addition to destroying the trees and vegetation there is another big problem with this technique — where does the mountain top end up? The answer is in the valley, where the streams and rivers run. With an entire mountaintop in the river the river stops, or gets diverted. It is a big mess.
The news today is that the people in the Bush administration that regulate this industry — who happen to have been industry lobbyists before they joined the administration, surprise surprise — just announced new “rules” that basically interpret a law saying you can’t mine near the streams and rivers to mean that you can dump all your waste in streams and rivers. Obvious isn’t it. (And they say China is being Orwellian with language as they prepare for the Olympics.) You can read about it more in today’s New York Times.
But this is all very abstract and if you were an organization trying to mobilize people against this practice, the most powerful weapon is video. Show people what “mountaintop removal” really is and they will be shocked and surprised that we are allowing corporate profits to decimate whole areas of the country. The folks at I Love Mountains.Org have done just that. Their video was a runner up in the See3 – NTEN video contest this year. Their video is too long, and there are other production quality issues with it, but they don’t really matter. Just look and see what it means to SHOW people something versus just telling them about it. How are you showing your issue?
I just watched a nice presentation from Alec Ross from One Economy who makes a strong case that giving low income people access to technology is simply a requirement for allowing people to participate in the greater economy. You can watch it on Google Video. One example he used: McDonald’s announced that they will begin only taking job applications online. So imagine that, even hamburger flipping is now tied to the digital economy. Another example he used: College applications. If you are a high-school senior and you want to go to college you upload everything electronically – no more big envelopes and hand-written essays. Go to a low-income community in the Spring and try to get on a computer in the library – it is full of high-school seniors with no access at home. One more example… there is lots of data that says a 30-something white guy like him is most likely to use the web for entertainment and pornography while low-income people are more likely to use internet access for asset building activities and education.
Jerusalem Rocks! I used to live there and I love it, so I think so. But I am referring to a concert called Jerusalem Rocks being put on by some of my buddies. It will feature the Black Eyed Peas, Arrested Development and The Commitments. These are pretty big names to get to come to Jerusalem, even more so at the same time. So make your reservations now for the show on September 9. From their site:
Jerusalem Rocks! will bring together musicians from all over the world in support of peace and unity. Jerusalem has hundreds of thousands of students and youth, numerous universities and a total population of 725,000. The city, its population and industry strive to show the world that Jerusalem is dedicated to peace and, more, is a growing center of today’s culture and business. However, Jerusalem has not hosted a mega international musical event in many years. Jerusalem Rocks! speaks to all these issues. It is not only a gift to Jerusalem; it is a statement to the world.
When we made this recent piece for NARAL: Pro-Choice America, we needed debate footage that we could mash-up and play with. Should we have to pay a private corporation to re-use the footage of our national candidates speaking? If you were to want to grab video of President Bush speaking in order to criticize it, you would have to pay the station that ran the original story. Does that make sense?
The issue of what is Fair Use and how this specifically relates to our political life is an important one. Pressure from the right places can make a difference in the push for more openness. Responding to a complaint from the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), the Federal Trade Commission told NBC that their copyright notices were deceiving the public about the public’s right to use materials under the Fair Use doctrine.
The move drew immediate praise from CCIA President and CEO Ed Black, who said NBC’s decision “further opens the doors of the political process.
“The Internet, the great equalizer of our time, empowers people from every walk of life to make better decisions with more information,” he said in a statement. “Indeed, the political process depends on this very principle.”
Black pointed out that fair use guidelines allow others to use portions of the debates for commentary and review, but do not require the footage to be release entirely without restrictions, as the networks have agreed to do.
“Nevertheless, because the public’s fair use rights have limits, ABC and NBC are to be praised for providing the public with unrestricted use of this content, thereby ensuring that the democratic discourse will not be impeded,” he said.
As many of you know, I think the best show on TV and probably the best show ever is HBO’s The Wire. It’s great because it’s real. Last season it had a chilling look at what is happening to urban education in the face of gangs and drugs through the eyes of four middle school students. Watch it and you will never think of the problems of public school the same way.
My father told me last week that there was some traffic jam in Baltimore because they were filming the final episode. I am very sad to see it go. John from Cincinnati seems banal in comparison.
The story in the Times today talk about the person who was the inspiration for the character Omar Little. Omar is a guy who robs drug dealers. He lives on the edge in a world of violence and drugs. And somehow, he’s not a bad guy. You want him to live and to eventually find the life of peace and love and intellectual stimulation where he would seem most comfortable. The real Omar (actually, one of the people that make up the composite that is Omar) is Donnie Andrews who, after serving a long prison sentence for murder, has become one of a team of former addicts and criminals working to get kids off the streets. This is very powerful stuff.
Organizations that work with students and disasters and under served populations and almost everything else have these powerful stories of hardship and of success. They should see the power in them and dig them out and write about them and capture these people on video and in pictures and in their own words. It is these stories that make connections for people to the problems that are otherwise totally abstract. If I want to make a difference I want to make a difference for a person, not an issue. This is, of course, what we do at See3 and I sometimes feel like a broken record talking about it. But it works and it’s surprising how much the nonprofit sector still needs to hear it.
