#distributedmovements

(via How We Can Use Livestreaming Apps to Promote Justice | WIRED)

From Passive Witnessing to Action: the ‘Mobil-Eyes Us’ vision

For human rights activists and citizen witnesses who Periscope, Meerkat or Bambuser the scene of violations, there are ways to move people from being passive viewers to active witnesses who see something and do something. The key here is to offer actions to viewers that go beyond watching and commenting, and simultaneously to make sure we generate empathy and connection. Within the “Mobil-Eyes Us” project we’ve been exploring how layering tech innovation in smart calendaring and task-routing on top of robust tactics and storytelling with live video enables this.

What if five frontline LGBT activists in a repressive country knew thousands were watching and willing to call their governments if violence happened at a Pride rally? What if “distant witnesses” banded together to identify abusive officers in the suppression of a peaceful protest, and called ahead to police stations to say ‘We know you’ve taken people detained to this station’? What would it be like if the authorities could literally see the number of people watching a livestream via on a counter on the front of a camera? Could that deter violence in a protest?

Beyond the power of the crowd, sometimes all that matters is that one person is watching and supporting. Using the power of smart task-routing we could match a need on the ground with the right person, available then, with a useful skill or expertise: a lawyer to provide legal guidance to a community during a forced eviction or protest, or a video editor available to turn the visceral experience of a livestream into something much more shareable on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube after the fact.

(via The revolution might be televised, but most protests won't be | ISHR)

Maina Kiai highlights that big protests get the headlines but smaller protests are forgotten: 

“2014 is shaping up to be the year of the protest, with the headlines dominated by stories of mass demonstrations in Ukraine, Venezuela and elsewhere. The extensive coverage of mass citizen movements is a good thing, but the tendency to focus on large events does leave part of the story untold.

Scores of smaller protests take place across the world each day. Few of them have revolutionary aims. Rather, they tend to be staged by people at the margins of society: the excluded, the disfavored, people whose voices have not been heard through more conventional means. Their aims are typically modest. They resort to protesting because they have to. The rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association are often their last recourse.”