after many months

Haven't posted here in forever... because the website is up.

The only point of this blog for now is to give ourselves some help on Google. Hence the three different links to LtL on the right. Hehhhhhhh..... And here.

our online network of student activists.

social networking for social justice.

online tool for student activism.

Anyway, click on if you want to check it out. Not sure if we'll keep this updated at all anymore.

Congress.org Action Alerts: A Tool for Activists

Want to stay engaged on issues you care about?

Check this out. It's a wide-ranging database for action alerts organized by issue, facilitated by Congress.org. More info:

Here are "action alerts" on a wide range of topics from organizations, large and small, that span the political spectrum. These alerts let you know when your voice is needed to weigh in on votes, bills and other times when citizen input can make a difference.

I put in a search for a couple of the issues and some good stuff came up. And they're definitely not bs'ing about "spanning the political spectrum". There's stuff for everybody there.

John McCain Introduces Terrible Bill

I used to like John McCain. But he's really lost me lately. And now this... he's introduced a bill that will penalize community-based websites for the actions of their users, i.e., not only demanding the impossible, but writing it into law. This bill--if passed--could have a debilitating effect on one of the better things the country's got going for it right now: interactive Internet culture.

Some choice excerpts:

Millions of commercial Web sites and personal blogs would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000, if a new proposal in the U.S. Senate came into law.

snip

According to the proposed legislation, these types of individuals or businesses would be required to file reports: any Web site with a message board; any chat room; any social-networking site; any e-mail service; any instant-messaging service; any Internet content hosting service; any domain name registration service; any Internet search service; any electronic communication service; and any image or video-sharing service.

And so on. Part of the bill is apparently aimed at sex offenders (yeah, that's right, Senators hiding behind the tired old "OH, BUT WE'RE TRYING TO PROTECT THE CHILLLLLLDREN!!!" line... no surprise there) but the fact is that blogs and social networking sites are going to be caught up in the dragnet as well. This is simply a bad bill that will penalize community-based websites for being community-based. From Daily Kos blogger DDay:

Regarding photos and videos, I'm assuming this is why photo storage sites are limited to a select [f]ew. Still, that's no safeguard against ripping something off the Web and uploading it to Flickr, for example. The idea that blog owners would be personally responsible for that action, at a cost of $300,000, is far more punitive that what would seem a logical standard.

Uhhhhhh.... not good. So how does this affect social networking sites and the blogosphere?

We've already seen, with soon-to-be former Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick's legislation, how dangerous it is to give the federal government sway over "social networking sites," especially when they set the definition of what they are. Anything with a comment, and certainly anything with a profile, can be seen as a networking site. It appears that the burden would be on the site owner to provide criminal background checks on all of its users, many of whom are anonymous for very specific reasons.

This is an absolute intrusion into the blogosphere and makes a mockery of freedom of speech. I don't expect that such an awful measure would pass a Democratic Congress. However, once you start putting things in terms of "protecting children," anything can happen. And if this passes, I don't know how you could have anything but a top-down blog without comments. Otherwise the mass of writing on the site that is not user-generated could never be vetted.

Obviously it's impossible to keep track of all the content on user-generated sites---you know, like Lose the Label---unless the content is removed... at the expense of destroying communities.

All so a Senator and president-wannabe can make a damn headline?

No. No. No. No. NO.

Please email your Senator telling them to vote no on S. 4089, the McCain anti-blog, anti-Facebook, anti-youth, anti-freedom of speech bill.

website development well underway

Thanks so much to Sunil, James, Grant, Lizzie and Michael for getting the website moving! They've been developing it all day with the prewritten CivicSpace and Drupal code. The early results look very promising. When this thing is done we should have one hell of a tool for student activism.

Meanwhile, the new Facebook group has grown to about 60 members. Good progress.

group progress report

There's been a flurry of activity the last 24 hours, so here's a progress report.

Group Message. I sent a message to the "Students for Changing the Post-Minifeed World" group asking members to quit and instead join the "Lose the Label" group. Why? Four reasons. 1) We ditch the old name (Facebook doesn't allow name changes to groups) that was long and unappealing and actually kind of a joke and 2) we separate the active members from the inactive ones and 3) the new group can show up on peoples' Newsfeed and gain fresh exposure for the project and 4) if we're lucky, get found by some programmers who can help out with the website.

Website volunteers. It's gone pretty well so far, with Sunil, James, and Grant offering to pitch in (check this thread). Jake D has been busy this semester, so he's out, and Michael our website coordinator is busy through the next week and a half, but after he's clear he can start arranging more details. The consensus is that CivicSpace is our best option for constructing the site, since it's all premade coding and has all the features we need. (I vaguely understand what I just wrote but I'm really glad that Sunil, James and Grant are around to actually make something of it... I get lost very easily and don't know much beyond superficial details, so if it ever sounds like I'm BS'ing... yeah, I probably am.)

Group Membership. The SfCtPMW membership went from 710 before last night's message to 640 now and the LtL numbers have shot up from 10 to around 50. This is pretty solid, and a big enough core to restart with, although it indicates that a lot of people didn't read the message... a problem inherent with Facebook communication and an indication of how inactive the group's been lately, which is entirely my fault. By the way, as long as I'm on the subject, sorry about being MIA for the last two months. I could make excuses about being busy, but the fact is that I've neglected the project, which is bullshit since I started it in the first place and people were looking to me for guidance. Everyone had (has) such great ideas and causes for the group to take up, and I just hope it's not too late to revive and get active. If only we can finish the website!

The Blog. This is the third blog post in the last three days and I'm going to try to keep up with this pace for as long as I can. Delia said she'd be able to pitch in after the 11th and Lauren's been busy, so it looks like it's just me for another week. If anyone reads this and would like to post here, please contact me.

Pay it Forward

Just came across this Facebook group, Pay it Forward Facebook style. Great idea based on a great book/movie.

Whether you've seen the movie or not doesn't really matter. Here's the idea: By joining this group you're pledging to commit ONE ACT OF KINDNESS. This can be to a friend or family member, acquaintance, or a stranger. It doesn't have to be something big. It just has to be SOMETHING you wouldn't have done otherwise. I know this is asking a lot of you from an internet group, but it's really a great opportunity for us to show the world what college (or high school) students are capable of doing!

Our world tends to be not such a nice place. Watching the news or walking down the street, wouldn't you rather see people treating each other with kindness for once? YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

After you've joined the group and are waiting for an opportunity to do something nice for someone, there's just one more little thing I'm asking you to do. Please INVITE ALL YOUR FRIENDS to join this group. Just think about all the kind acts that will happen because of this group as it grows. Please share with the rest of the group your kindness stories by posting what you have done on the wall.

YOU HAVE THE POWER TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE.

Here's a bit about the movie from IMDB.

A school social studies assignment leads to social changes that spread from city-to-city. Assigned to come up with some idea that will improve mankind, a young boy (Haley Joel Osment) decides that if he can do three good deeds for someone and they in turn can "pay it forward" and so forth, positive changes can occur. What appears to initially be a failure, is indeed a success that is not immediately known but is traced backwards by a reporter who is a benefactor.

Easy to do, accessible, purely positive. Social justice rocks.

Click here to join the pact.

Darfur

Violence continues to escalate in Darfur, despite the 'ceasefire' and continuing UN talks about inserting peacekeepers.

Days of fighting between former rebels and government forces killed more than 150 people and wounded at least 400 in a southern Sudanese town, a U.N. official said Saturday.

The battle was one of the worst breaches of a January 2005 peace agreement that ended 21 years of civil war in the south, a conflict separate from the ethnic bloodletting in Sudan's western Darfur region.

Want to help?

Join STAND.

STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition is an umbrella organization of over 600 high school and college chapters dedicated to putting an end to genocide, specifically the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan.

STAND formed out of the rapidly growing student movement to protect Darfur and works to unify this anti-genocide movement under one message by providing students with informational, educational and organizing resources, empowering them through an extensive network of impassioned student activists and advocating for a change in the world’s mentality towards genocide.

Join the STAND network by contacting your Regional Outreach Coordinator today and become a part of an international network of students in the fight against the world’s most egregious human rights violations.

STAND is probably the best way for students to help with what's arguably the worst crisis in the world.

So why not start one at your campus? If not you, then who?