lotusmedia 2.0

Happy Thanksgiving! I try to emphasize the gratitude part of this holiday and less of the consumption of turkey and everything else in sight. Don’t forget tomorrow is Buy Nothing Day - a great time to reconnect with your community and avoid the throngs who are beginning their yuletide season by buying lots of crap made in China.

If you are in Chapel Hill, stop by Internationalist Books who always have a fun program of skill shares, free food, swap meet, and no books for sale!

I started a new group on Change.org to defeat Elizabeth Dole in the 2008 Senate race. Please join and donate!

Also check out the nascent WhereIsLiddy.com and follow BlueNC.com/tags/dole for updates.

Note: Too bad Change won’t let me make a widget for this group or this fundraiser.

Another great online strategy from Amnesty International: to counter growing censorship and repression of Internet speech, they have created Irrepressible.info where you can sign a pledge for Internet freedom and get your own badge to dynamically display censored content on your own blog.

Por ejemplo:

They also have a public API! (They do lose points for having a typo in the code for the badge above. Good thing I know how to spell “fragments” and fixed it myself.)

As Brian said:

America is so lucky to have had a human like Dr. Martin Luther King born among us. His work reaches way into the future and teaches us still. I’m confident many many future generations will benefit from his work.

When I listen to his speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence I want to cry. Not because of the horrors that he speaks against but because of the beauty of his soul. Dr. King was RIGHT! WAR IS WRONG!

Please read a transcript or listen to his Beyond Vietnam speech. It could so easily be said today and be called Beyond Iraq.
- Beyond Iraq: King is right! at Yesh.com

We best honor the man by remembering his words and actions so that we may continue the struggle that he brought to the forefront of the American psyche. Volunteer if you like, but King’s legacy is ACTION.

Read or listen here.

I was disgusted to learn that the web site martinlutherking-dot-org is an effort to discredit the man who tried to so hard to heal this nation’s sick, racist soul. Fortunately, bloggers are fighting back! To participate in this effort to Google bomb Dr. King back to reality just copy the text suggested here, and feel free to click on the informative links below as I do the same.

Thanks to Chris Lackey for posting Dr. King’s mugshot, and reminding us of the real, radical leader who was treated like a criminal by US government for protesting its racist policies. One of my favorites of his writing is the Letter from Birmingham Jail in which he explained to a group of well-meaning white religious leaders why we can’t wait. This is the man I will remember on Monday.

Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King

Thanks to Greensboro blogger Sean Coon for the heads up about this.

I know I can’t be the only one. Following on the success of BarCamps around the world, where geeks get together to share information and build community in a collaborative “unconference” format, folks are organizing RootsCamps for progressive organizers to debrief the 2006 election and talk about next steps. My colleague Andrew Hoppin and I are taking it one step further, to the new(ish) frontier of Second Life!

We are organizing RootsCampSL which will be a series of daily meetings with different discussion topics and speakers that will also address the brand new field of virtual campaigning in Second Life. i will post more details as they become available. For now, here’s how you can get involved:

1. Join our in-world meeting today at 5pm eastern, at the Tech Soup office on Information Island.
2. Visit the wiki page for RootsCampSL, where you can make suggestions and add yourself to the attendee list
3. Join our Google Group and help us organize the event(s).
4. If you are already a member of SecondLife, join our group “SL Netroots”.
5. Spread the word by sending this link to your friends: rootscamp.org/RootsCampSL

What better place for such a protest than the city where the Greensboro Four sparked a nationwide sit-in movement for integration?

Four openly gay college students wouldn’t take no for an answer Thursday morning when they were refused enlistment into the Army.

The students conducted a sit-in at the Greensboro Army Recruitment Center.

Three of the four, Matthew Comer, Jessica Arvidson and Alexandria Nini, were arrested and charged with second-degree trespassing.
Students protest military’s gay ban - Daily Tar Heel

Inspired the by the latest Yes Men actions - see their parody websites for Haliiburton and the WTO - Alexandra Samuel has decided to release the full text of her PhD disseration on Hacktivism and the Future of Political Participation.

Is this ever timely! The paper’s conclusion “pulls it all back together and reflects on how hacktivism has been wrongly conflated with cyberterrorism as part of of the post 9/11 age of anxiety.”

I can’t wait to read it. But at 284 pages, I might be better off reading the chapter summaries on her web site. Thanks so much for publishing this and reminding us of it’s continuing relevance, Alex!

They’re taking a survey to see what should be top priorities for ‘08. They’re asking about social networks, so this is a good opportunity to point them in the right direction…

Chapel Hill-area label Yep Roc is offerring free downloads of a new anti-war song by Billy Bragg. It’s 165 seconds of raw blues, good humor, and great politics.

Being a man of action, Billy ducked into Big Sky Recordings in Ann Arbor, Mich., on March 22 and laid down “Bush War Blues,” with lyrics adapted to express his condemnation of the war in Iraq. His voice husky from his hefty touring schedule, Billy originally attributed the song to a newly-created alter ego, Johnny Clash.
- Yep Roc Records

Thanks to Paul for the link.