My message was that an open internet is necessary for the political participation of all people of all shapes, sizes, races and income in the future. My full opening statement with references is below.

One Love. One II.

I am an engineer by training. As a young person growing up in the city of Detroit and later its suburbs, I witnessed the challenges and promises of technology. The challenges of living in a place singularly dependent on a particular brand of manufacturing is visible to the entire nation in ways that were visible to me, my friends and my family years ago. But the promise of technology as a pathway to empowerment inspired my pursuit of computer engineering and computer science.

As I came of age I sought out ways to connect my passion for technology with my passion for improving the lives of others. As an intern at General Motors, I created a computer learning and coaching manual to help the homeless and impoverished learn the basic computing skills needed for most entry-level employment. I also managed two websites (which have since been retired) that were the foundation of my experience using the Internet for social change:

1. webhands.org – a site developed to connect volunteers and donors to nonprofits in their vicinity
2. patentdonors.org – a site developed to connect owners of unused patents to companies and universities interested in putting them to use

These projects opened my eyes to the use of open networks as tools for encouraging participation, empowerment and social change. Building on this foundation, I have been working as a student, community political organizer armed with technology and infused with passion and inspired by open gates.

Open Gates

Democracy’s defining characteristic is participation. In both its direct & representative flavors, participatory democracy presupposes interest, understanding and action as the means toward a peaceful, organized society.

Participation comes in many forms. Discourse. Voting. Volunteering. Public service. Advocacy. To achieve legitimacy and ultimately impact the democratic process, these methods of participation must be equally accessible to everyone. Democracy with restrictions on participation goes by many names.

Openness is a defining characteristic of democracy. Openness means available, visible, and flexible, like an open gate. If the gate is open, anyone can walk through and enjoy what’s on the other side.

(The question of who can access the Internet is a separate but important one. It’s not the focus of today’s discussion, but it is worth noting that openness minus access equals invisibility. Invisible power is inaccessible power.)

In the context of political engagement, the “open gates” metaphor presents itself repeatedly. The walled and gated cities that characterized the kingdoms of ancient history were physical reminders of closed political systems. Growth, evolution, commerce and improvement could only happen when the gates were opened. Open gates are prerequisites for value to be exchanged.

Gates have been opened, or torn down, by choice and by force throughout history. The French peasantry rose in revolution against totalitarian rule. Tibetan monks designed an open and inclusive culture from its inception. These all share a common characteristic: when the gates open, the game changes. More and different voices can be heard. More people can access the table of discourse. Equality can be introduced, debated, and achieved.

History has taught us that such openness has political ramifications. If all are equal, all are influential. If everyone can get anywhere, than anyone can reach everything. Ideas can travel and flourish unencumbered. Controversy can ensue.

This historical lineage laid the foundation for today’s Internet. It was a system designed with no gates, no gatekeepers. Access to one part of the Internet implied access to all parts of the Internet. Never before has history seen such an egalitarian utopia.

Over the past decade, use of the Internet for political and community organizing has moved from the fringe to above the fold. It has supplemented, even supplanted many traditional forms of sociopolitical mobilization. This is thanks to the Internet’s inherent openness, transparency, flexibility and disruptive potential.

These characteristics give the Internet its empowering quality. Individuals can communicate with strangers, friends and family without hindrance. This flexibility and freedom from fear of retribution inevitably leads to political change.

I can illustrate this point using a few examples that involve video, authentic storytelling, and marginalized people organizing and scaling their influence.

Web video

There are entire film production houses dedicated to such videos like Brave New Films in Culver City, CA. Web users sharing videos they watch online with friends and family is one of the most organic ways that political movements grow online. This happens for people with all political persuasions: conservative, progressive, everywhere in between.

Video is revolutionary medium because the human brain is a machine driven by what it sees. The ability to present the views and voices of people with any and every background is enabled by truly open networks. They, like democracy, enable every man, woman, child and idea to have a chance to have an impact.

1. Tea Party Rapper. This year there has been a movement building among people disenchanted with the current President, Congress and their policies. Marches and demonstrations have been organized in various parts of the country, including in Washington, DC, thanks in large part to word of mouth and online video. For example, a rap video (embedded below) was mad in support of this “Tea Party” movement that has been viewed on YouTube hundreds of thousands of times. The video includes a call to action for viewers to join a “Tea Party” event near them, and it has proven to be effective.
2. Every vote counts. During the final weeks of the 2008 Presidential Election, advocacy groups turned their attention to making sure the maximum amount of their supporters voted. A political science research paper called “Social Pressure and Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment,” which was published in the February 2008 issue of the American Political Science Review (APSR). The paper’s authors, who include Alan S. Gerber and Donald P. Green of Yale University, discovered that direct mailings informing people that their neighbors would find out whether they voted profoundly increased voter turnout. Mailings that urged people to perform their civic duty, in comparison, drove fewer people to the polls. Armed with this knowledge that was available to them online, the liberal group MoveOn.org chose to create an interactive video when a user could enter a person’s name and then email them a video that spoofed a newscast explaining that their candidate lost the election because they didn’t vote. These videos were viewed over 21 million times.

Authentic storytelling

Networks whose openness is proactively protected also protect the legitimacy of the ideas exchanged. When the same network is available to anyone, people can contribute without fear of being shut out. For marginalized people (people of color, immigrants, lower- and working-class people), the chance to directly share one’s own authentic story or point of view is invaluable. The Internet is a medium where this is possible. All other forms of media have barriers to entry that exceed those on the Internet by orders of magnitude.

Presenting stories in authentic voices is the gift that open networks give to all who have access. Amplifying authentic voices is the role of the community organizer working for positive change. Listening to authentic voices is the role of the policy maker wanting to create responsible regulation & legislation. Open networks make this all possible.

When harm is done to the openness of networks, democracy is endangered. How can openness be harmed? By erecting walls. By locking gates. By segregating participants.

The web is uniquely suited for the spread of stories. The web’s openness has changed the defining political issue of this year. During the summer of 2009, America was engaged in a nationwide dialogue about our nation’s health care system (a dialogue that continues today). My organization, the Center for Community Change, wanted to make sure that the breadth of the American health care experience was included in the discussion. So we travelled to state and county fairs in Missouri, Maine, Tennessee, Nebraska and Kentucky to interview people about their health care stories. Our “State Fair Stories” videos were posted online and viewed thousands of times, sharpened the focus of our advocacy and gave a voice to people who felt left out of the national discourse. We compiled the stories to create a documentary (embedded below) that we shared with members of Congress and their staffs to showcase how many in rural America feel about the status quo in health care. We held a Congressional briefing on rural health care issues on the Hill featuring the people who told their authentic stories online. Thanks in part to this video and these people’s authentic stories; the concerns of all Americans are being considered in the current debate.

Scale

The success traditional organizing is unquestionable, as visible as the sky is blue. It is exciting to see the ways in which it is evolving for organizers such like me. Open networks and advanced communication platforms enable today’s organizers to connect with people in ways their predecessors could never have envisioned:

More individuals are more accessible than ever before thanks to open networks. Ideas can spread like to literally every connected person that is interested. They are visible to them within a few mouse clicks and keystrokes. As such, movements can begin and scale to unprecedented levels. This is especially important to marginalized communities like people of color in the US. Using the power of the Internet, I worked with a coalition of Black online activists and bloggers to tell the story of 6 boys in Jena, LA who were on the receiving end of unfair criminal sentences following a schoolyard fight. By telling their stories and the stories of their families, we were able to explain our values-based critique of the criminal justice system in a way that empowered interested people all over the world to join our movement. To raise money, nearly $300,000. To send letters, nearly 320,000. Even to attend an old-school rally in defense of these boys (over 10,000). A movement like this, driven by people of color, started in the realm of the Internet, and supported by millions of previously unidentifiable and unreachable allies is a testament to the potential of open networks for political engagement. This was possible because the passion was present, the tools were accessible (open & low-cost), and the network was available.

Conclusion

I’ll close addressing the next frontier of the Internet, the mobile web. Openness here is critical given the mobile webs personal nature and penetration. The Pew Center notes that people of color in the United States are over-represented in terms of ownership of high-end smartphone devices that can connect to the Internet. Worldwide, there are more mobile phones than personal computers, and the gulf between those numbers will only grow.

Ensuring openness in this next iteration of the Internet is paramount. Existing models are on a collision course with political mobilization. The structure of the mobile market that puts carriers in the driver’s seat does implicit and explicit harm to free speech, expression and assembly. There are examples that foreshadow a grim future for political mobilization using mobile technology if the rules are not conscientiously designed and decisively enforced.

Openness must be maintained and protected. It’s impact free speech, free expression and free assembly for 21st century citizens is paramount.

Values aren’t everything

Unfortunately, these shared values are not convincing enough for some civil rights organizations. The Broadband Opportunity Coalition (which, ironically, has no website) consists of the National Urban League, the Asian American Justice Center, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the National Council of La Raza, and other groups that argue for fairness and equality every day.

Well, every day they’re not talking about net neutrality. On their off days, they “question” the impact of net neutrality in letters to the FCC:

If the history of civil rights in America teaches us anything, it is that facially neutral laws and regulations are not always applied neutrally to the constituencies we represent. We certainly don’t want that to happen to Internet regulation too, and we’re very concerned that, despite your very best intentions, some aspects of net neutrality might not turn out to be neutral as applied to our constituencies.

They don’t come out and say it, but this is setting the table for their rejection of fair content distribution online.

Neutral networks lead to empowered communities

The truth is network neutrality is critical to ensuring equal access to the Internet, its content, and the empowerment that comes with that. Without network neutrality protection, ISPs and telecom companies will have free reign to discriminate against the distribution of content created by minority producers. This will make the Internet just like other mass media channels in which the authentic voices of people of color have been marginalized.

Fairness, equality, and freedom must be protected on and offline.

As new tools of civic and civil protest evolve – as in Iran, where protesters are using social networks to keep the rest of the world apprised of the response to that country’s recently held elections – they present both new opportunities and new challenges for freedom of speech.

Protesting using Twitter

Twitter has been singled out as the key communication platform for protesters and those watching them since last week’s election. It has enabled people around the globe to read real time accounts of the happenings.

It has also enabled people around the globe to participate in the protest in ways some have never seen before.

Such armchair activism has included setting up proxy servers to help Iranian tweeters get around government blockades of the site.

Another example was the attempted DDOS attacks on Iranian web servers from abroad (DDoS stands for Denial of Service, a method of hacking that involves sending lots of web requests every second with the hopes of overloading a web server and rendering a website unusable/unavailable).

Principally, the inclusion of non-Iranians in these protest efforts is a good thing. To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. However, these particular actions raise serious ethical and legal questions that must be thought through.

As interested activists and citizens, we must be prudent in our actions to ensure they help more than hurt.

For instance, are we comfortable with the idea of private citizens using private networks to engage in network “warfare”?

By doing so, do we make our civilian network infrastructure a valid target to an adversary? What risks are associated with a group of private citizens sending an unintended message to a potential adversary in the form of a coordinated network disruption?

Perhaps we are, but I don’t think that’s the case.

Earlier this year, Russia basically did this to Georgia, and caught a lot of flack for it. This sets a precedent that is dangerous, especially if we don’t understand its consequences.

Another question: if the attacks were actually successful, wouldn’t we be destroying the only portals we have into the very place we’re so interested in?

After all, foreign journalists have been banned from covering the demonstration, and many have been jailed and/or beaten. To choke off an authentic supply of information would be strategically foolish.

Technology is an increasingly powerful and important part of our society and our culture. As it expands to touch more parts of our lives, we must be ever-mindful of its drawbacks as well as its benefits.

One Love. One II.

The SuperSpade is everywhere.

Just a quick note today about ways Brandon and I are making The SuperSpade available to you in as many ways as possible:

• If you’re a Twitter user, make sure you follow Garlin (@garlin), Brandon (@bqw) and The SuperSpade (@superspade).
• If you own a Kindle, you can subscribe to The SuperSpade on your Kindle for $1.99/month. (My personal blog is there too).
• If you read from your cell phone, type http://www.thesuperspade.com into your phone’s web browser. It will work on any phone with Internet access. If you’re using an iPhone, you’ll see a special, optimized version of the site. It’ll look something like this.
• If you use an RSS reader like Google Reader, make sure you add our RSS feed to your list.
• And as always, you can put http://www.thesuperspade.com into any web browser and get to the main site.

Last but not least, we’ll soon be rolling out an email newsletter where subscribers will receive great insider benefits like:

• Tips on how you can be an effective activist and get involved at the local and national level
• Additional in-depth analysis on issues and events
• Connections to other online activists and bloggers working on issues impacting people of color
• A chance to have your voice heard on The SuperSpade
• Much more…

There will be another announcement when the email newsletter is up and running.

Stay tuned and stay connected.

One Love. One II.

Photo Credit: lennbob on Flickr

I’m looking forward to talking with Jeff again about Politics and Technology soon.

Enjoy.

One Love. One II.

NAACP and Hurricane Ike

According to Jealous, the NAACP National Office sent 3 of its staff people to do two things:

1. Ensure fairness in the distribution of aid
2. Ensure the sins of Katrina are not repeated

They’ve got their work cut out for them, and Jealous actually told us something else disturbing about the lead-up to the storm:

Some poor communities complained to the NAACP that they were not adequately warned of the storm, its seriousness, or the voluntary/mandatory evacuations. This is because the warnings happened almost exclusively on TV, and these people had no TV.

People with questions in the state and out of state can call the NAACP Command Center, which is at their Texas State Conference, at (512) 322-9547.It is a travesty that the NAACP’s Command Center is set up before FEMA’s.

Making sure peoplve vote

While Jealous is working to make sure that folks in the wake of Ike get proper aid and electrical power, he and the NAACP are working hard to make sure that those folks’ electoral power is also fully restored and available. The rights of voters in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina was a major issue, and I actually marched in support of the re-enfranchisement of those voters. 

In what Jealous called “a sign of things to come,” he announced Upload 2 Uplift, a website that gives people the ability to do 2 things:

1. Register themselves to vote online, or print out registration forms that they can mail in
2. Register their friends and contacts to vote

#2 is very important, and it’s this “social voter registration” capability that really sets this tool apart from other online voter registration tools. Many  people know they have friends that are not registered to vote. If you know that person’s email address, you can give them a very simple way to register quickly online. Additionally, the system will send people reminders by email and/or text message to let them know when to vote and where to vote, if they want it too. Pretty cool.

A great start

This was a good meeting for Jealous, and he demonstrated a new way of thinking about the NAACP and about advocacy & civic engagement. By including Black bloggers in his first press conference, Ben Jealous showed that blogging and other forms of new and online media will be an important part of the NAACP’s strategy going forward. By creating its first real online tool, the NAACP shows that technology and the Internet will be important parts of their strategy going forward. I am looking forward to see what they do with this momentum.

One Love. One II.

• Ensure the full and free exchange of information among Americans through an open Internet and diverse media outlets.
• Create a transparent and connected democracy.
• Encourage the deployment of a modern communications infrastructure.
• Employ technology and innovation to solve our nation’s most pressing problems, including reducing the costs of health care, encouraging the development of new clean energy sources, and improving public safety.
• Improve America’s competitiveness.

The full text of the handout to be used this evening is here.

The most important piece of this is the second point of creating a “transparent and connected democracy.” Making government data and information available in standard, accessible formats is a brain-dead simple solution to the problem of not knowing how to access government information. The appointment of a US CTO is a good strategy because it would mandate someone with technical knowledge and experience actually make technology decisions [instead of people like Ted Stevens].

My hope is that other candidates will lay out thoughtful, progressive approaches to technology policy so that we can use this as another differentiator.

One Love. One II.

Not the most informed statement on the issue, but it seems like an honest promise to preserve net neutrality.

He must have listened to my podcast on Net Neutrality.

One Love. One II.

P.S. 10 Questions is hot. Big ups to Afro-Netizen and BlackProf for participating.

As I alluded to in this podcast, I see Internet-access issues as issues of rights that should be protected. I take that thinking in part from the brilliant Dr. Robert Moses who wrote this concerning math education:

“Mathematics education is a civil rights issue.” — Dr. Robert Moses

Black folks must take advantage of the Internet and broadband technology at a deeper level. It’s cool to have high-speed internet access as a way to view retarded dances on YouTube or play checkers online. It’s even more cool to use the Internet as it was intended: as a tool to share information and ideas with the world.

If anyone needs an authentic mouthpiece through which they can articulate their thoughts and a lens through which they can dictate how others see them, it Black people in this country. Using the Internet at a tool to create meaningful change is the most effective tool in the activist’s handbook since the sit-in. Don’t believe me? Ask Mychal Bell and the rest of the Jena 6, who would all have been condemned to God knows what if it had not been for Black bloggers keeping this issue at the forefront of the minds of those willing to listen and act.

One Love. One II.

Here’s the most interesting quote:

The mentality of needing to “weed out” weaker students in college majors — especially in the more quantitative disciplines — disproportionately weeds out women. This is not necessarily because women are failing. Rather, women often perceive “Bs” as inadequate grades and drop out, while men with “Cs” will persist with the class.

I agree that this weed-out mentality is complete BS and is actually anti-competitive because it eliminates diversity in total competition.

Also, am I the only one to read this and think, “Man, the perceived bar for success is much lower for boys than it is for girls.” Perhaps those C-student boys should have been weeded-out too…

One Love. One II.