This video is making me so happy, I just have to share it:
I just wish I could take the f-ing Disney bug out of the corner. 🙁
Author: Ruby Sinreich
Hateful homophobes picked on the wrong guy
My good friend Mark Kleinschmidt is an anti-death penalty attorney and a twice-elected member of the Chapel Hill Town Council. He is also gay. This last fact qualified him for membership on a list that is making the rounds on hate sites called the “National List Of Openly-Homosexual Public Officials.” (And no I am not going to link to these fools, you can probably Google it.)
Mark discovered this list and posted about it on his blog: Anti-gay hate sites target gay elected officials. Since Mark linked to a couple of the sites hosting the lists, they found him and linked back, sending readers over to Mark’s blog where they are posting hateful comments and generally exposing themselves as the ignorant trolls they are.
I have a great idea about how to counter this. I have pledged to donate $5 to Mark’s re-election campaign* every single time someone posts a hateful or derogatory comment on or link to Mark’s blog. That means these creeps have already raised $25 to keep this gay man in elected office. Let’s see how much more they can raise!
Won’t you join in this campaign? You can pledge any amount you like. Just post a comment on Mark’s blog that you are taking up Ruby’s Challenge to let others know what impact they are having.
* If Mark chooses not to run for Town Council again in 2009, he can keep this money for a future campaign. I’m sure there will be one in his future. 🙂
Update: You can now donate right here or on Mark’s blog (As I did).
Abstinence-only sex ed still doesn’t work
lag4peace: Don’t Iraq Iran
Tomorrow a large coalition of activists is organizing a series of events in Second Life to raise awareness about preventing a war with Iran. I’m really excited about it and I will be there most of the day helping out as a media contact. This event also inspired me to add some Iran info to the virtual office for my organization the Fellowship of Reconciliation (seen at left).
There is a whole day of events, but if you don’t want to be there all day, please come and check out the keynote and opening rally at 11:45am EST. It will be at the Commonwealth Assembly Area which can hold over 300 avatars (a lot for SL!).
Full info about the day of events is below. Sorry to post the entire press release, but this info doesn’t seem to be online anywhere else.
Continue reading “lag4peace: Don’t Iraq Iran”
Blogs and politicians
I haven’t been blogging here much lately, but I’m still at it at work and on OrangePolitics. I’ve also been busy with lots of other things like this: Brian and I are hosting an informal gathering for local activists and bloggers to meet US Congressman Brad Miller. The main topic will be blogs and politics, but Brad also loves to talk about science and I will continue to bend his ear about peace and militarism issues.
If you’re on Facebook, get details and RSVP here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=6180362982
If not, check out the deets below:
Don’t shop tomorrow
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!
Blogging for community organizations
Thanks to The People’s Channel for inviting me and Brian to come and help lead a discussion about blogging for their Community Media Workshop Series. For folks who were there, here are some links related to our dicussion:
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Ruby’s list of what makes a blog (and some more background we didn’t discuss)
- first-person voice
blogs increasingly have more credibility than the MSM because they are more authentic and believeable. - community dialogue
either through comments on the blog, or discussion between blogs - archive & permalinks
archives by date and sometimes by category or by author as well. permalinks allow others to refer directly to a specific post, encourages inter-blog dialog. - database back-end
this may be the least important, but is essential to emerging tools like aggregators that use syndicated content
- first-person voice
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Online communication tips including 10 social media tools to check out
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So you wanna start an advocacy blog
Each of the post listed above links to tons more resources here and on other sites. Please explore…
Love the soldier, hate the war
In honor of the holiday, I want shout out to my two favorite veterans: Jonathan Kuniholm: Iraq veteran, engineer, co-founder of the Open Prosthetics Project; and Stan Goff: veteran of numerous conflicts from Vietnam to Haiti, author, blogger, founder of Insurgent American, and co-founder of Bring Them Home Now.
I don’t believe either of them shares my view of militarism, but they have both learned the high cost of war both personally and societally. I appreciate their dedication to serve not just this country, but this planet.
Hey, I’m a video blogger
I tried making some videos for election day as an experiment, and I think it went pretty well.
The first one is 16 minutes, I made it in my office with iMovie and my laptop’s built-in camera. I made 3 more with nothing but my cellphone (a $50 Treo 680) as I attended the victory celebrations of some of the candidates. They are shown here in reverse order:
I am loving http://blip.tv for how easy they make this.
What election?
Tomorrow (11/6/07) there are municipal elections all across the United States. The League of Young Voters (www.indyvoter.org) works to get young people engaged in elections so I thought that might be a good place to find information about where the local elections are going on.
To the contrary, they don’t even appear to be aware that there is an election tomorrow. Way to go, y’all.
So… anyone have suggestions for a central place to find information about local elections?