- The Face of a Revolution: Debating Privacy in the Digital Age You probably know a 26-year-old woman. Is she your sister? Friend, or daughter? Perhaps she’s fiery and stubborn. Perhaps she takes singing lessons. Perhaps she’s engaged to be married.
- Colombian Filmmaker Flees After Video of Violent Eviction Goes Viral A video depicting the violent forced eviction of nearly 600 people on the banks of Colombia’s Magdalena River has gone viral, eliciting a huge response from viewers around the world, including the President of Colombia (who was obliged to respond to the video publicly and defend the actions of the police force).
- Judges in Five States Will Hear Climate Change Cases Filed by Youth Over the course of the last year WITNESS has partnered with Our Children’s Trust (OCT) and the iMatter Campaign to elevate the voices of youth from across the country who are defending their right to a healthy atmosphere and sustainable future. The youth are taking their case to judges across the country and asking that the courts order the adoption and implementation of scientifically sound Climate Recovery Plans.
- New Twitter Settings Activists Need To Be Aware Of Recently, I logged into my Twitter.com account. Twitter users know, this is not a frequent occurrence because most of us use third-party applications like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck or any of the mobile apps. But it is a necessity, especially as an activist, in order to help keep the information on your account safe and secure.
- Cameras, Livestreaming and Activism at Occupy Wall Street Walking through the city of tents at Liberty Plaza, home of Occupy Wall Street, it is immediately striking how many cameras there are floating about. Pointing this out, filmmaker and member of the media working group, who goes by the name of Fix, jokes with me that it sometimes feels like Liberty Plaza is an “occupied surveillance machine.”
- Threats Increase Against Monk Fighting Forced Evictions in Cambodia Since 2009, our partner organization in Cambodia, LICADHO, has been using video to document forced evictions and land-grabbing. We met the Venerable Loun Sovath, a Buddhist monk, through our work with LICADHO. His tireless campaigning for those at risk of forced eviction in Cambodia, has repeatedly put him at risk.
- Sharing Truth Two weeks ago I participated in a remarkable event, called Sharing Truth, an international forum convened in Vancouver under the auspices of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada.
- Dams and Human Rights: Using Video to Resist Evictions It's International Day of Action Against Dams and, as we kick off our global forced evictions campaign supporting dam-affected communities at risk of eviction in Mexico, this post looks at how video and visual imagery have helped propel campaigns to protect human rights in different dam-resistance struggles around the world.
- Video Dispatch from All Out, a New Global LGBT Campaign At no other time have global LGBT issues been making headline news so frequently—from the continuing controversy over the proposed “Anti-Gay” bill in Uganda, to the marriage equality law recently passed in Argentina, to the historic repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the United States. The struggle for LGBT equality is the civil rights movement of our time—a movement that is increasingly global.
- The Documentation Affinity Group: Embedding Archive in Activism The Documentation Affinity Group (DAG) is a small international peer-to-peer network of local action groups originally established by six NGOs in 2005 to consider the role of documentation in protecting and promoting human rights worldwide.
- Kate Doyle: “Archivists Can Be At the Heart of Accountability and Justice” On October 27, the UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, I spoke with Kate Doyle, Senior Analyst of U.S. policy in Latin America at the National Security Archive (NSA), about the Guatemala Project, the notion of the activist archivist and how archives can advocate for open societies.
- Guest blog: Brian Fitzgerald – Greenpeace International Brian Fitzgerald is Communications Manager for Greenpeace International – below he shares his reflections on the power of video to prod power and mobilise action. Naturally, his views do not represent the views of WITNESS (but we think they’re pretty interesting). I remember the first time I saw video of whales being hunted. It was […]
- At WeMedia: Nonprofits and media; activism online and off; telling our own stories I’m in unnaturally chilly Miami (its projected to get down to the 40s tonight) at the WeMedia Conference and am currently sitting in an afternoon session about “advocacy groups who once relied on journalists are now making the news themselves”. The session is being moderated by John Bracken of the MacArthur Foundation and the discussion […]
