lotusmedia 2.0

Thanks to Sara Donnelly (a.k.a. Sara Susa in Second Life) of the Portland (ME) Phoenix for her coverage of the Avatars Against the War protest. Sara attended many of our meetings as well as the protest and I appreciate her taking the time to learn about what we were/are doing.

(Speaking of what we are doing, we are still holding meetups weekly on Thursdays at 3pm EST. However, I won’t be there this week as I am going to see Cory Doctorow speak at UNC. My co-organizer Andrew Hoppin/Drew Frobozz will be facilitating today’s meeting.)

“We had envisioned doing something small and symbolic until . . . we realized that we had clearly touched a nerve in the Second Life community,” said Ruby Sinreich, a/k/a “Ruby Glitter,” a real-world activist who helped organize the virtual-world rally. “Although we can’t vote in Second Life, we can raise awareness and connect people and show our strength.”
- The Phoenix - Out-of-body politic, 2/7/07

However I have two corrections to Sarah’s article:

First, she writes that RootsCampSL has 19 members. I’m not sure sure what she based that on. I count membership as the number of people subscribed to our “SL Netroots” group (which owns the RootsCamp space on Progressive Island and through which we announce our weekly meetings) in Second Life. At the time when she published this story we probably had about 50 or 60 members, and we currently have 126 members.

Secondly, Sarah claims the the march “failed” because it didn’t get the message to “outsider ears.” This misses the point of the event entirely and is also incorrect. Many bloggers and journalists covered the event (herself included!) which certainly brought it to the attention of people outside SL. But more importantly, we are building a progressive political community a basis for future activism inside Second Life. At that, I think it was very successful, but only time will tell…