Today I want to share with you an email I have received from Ricken Patel from Aavaz organization and I hope after reading it, we can exchange thoughts about Internet activism and the importance it has for our "survival" as citizens from different "worlds", if we can use such an expression in a world of globalization, where we, voluntarily and involuntarily share the good and bad of national and international events and increasingly become more similar, than we have ever been before. We are sharing the same policies, the same taste, and even the same look, as there are more Japanese people becoming blond, and more Dutch and Danish people getting brown of tanning sun beds. Which is a good thing because it shows that there is much less room for concerns regarding people discriminating others because of their hair, skin colour or origin.
On the other hand, for asylum seekers from authoritarian countries, coming to Europe or to the US, I'm afraid that they would be surprised, to find out that we Westerners, are often complaining of similar issues, such as lack of human rights awareness and other matters that would normally not fit within our democratic traditions. It seems that democracy is no longer a guarantee that our rights to free speech will be safeguarded. In other words, human rights activism is not something that only a Chinese professor or an Asian Journalist will need. In that sense, the world is becoming "smaller" as we can't run away anymore, and Giddens, already new that, when he wrote the famous "RUN AWAY WORLD" bestseller for academics and non- academics, interested to read more on what exactly does globalization mean and how does it affect us all. One might say that this is a negative side-effect of globalization. A positive effect of globalization then, would be Internet activism. Moreover, one should add: it is the greatest way to express our concerns, to make our voices heard, when no one seems to listen or care about us.
Therefore, I am sharing Avaaz letter to you, as it was a great pleasure for me to hear about their greatest accomplishments and it somehow lightened me up a bit, hopefully it will lighten up your day too:
"Dear Amazing Avaazers,
It feels like everything is happening exponentially.
In the last 30 days, our community has grown by 2.5 million people. We were already the largest political web movement ever, and yet we're growing faster than anyone has seen before! We're taking more actions, winning more victories, donating more and generating thousands more media hits in one month than we used to in a year. It's thrilling, even a little scary, especially when we see that the pace is still accelerating...
Just to give a snapshot of the last few weeks --5 million of us stood up to the ACTA and SOPA internet censorship bills, helping to put SOPA on ice, and putting ACTA under threat, with the President of the European Parliament and Germany, Poland and many other countries reconsidering their positions. we smuggled $1.8 million worth of medical supplies into Syria when no one else could, and raised $1.5 million more in donations, while our citizen journalists provided much of the world media's information and images. we generated thousands of news articles on 20 different campaigns. our sex trafficking hotline generated information that will result in a major set of arrests this week (can't say which country yet). we raised over 4 million dollars/euros/yen online to supercharge our work, and are growing our staff team like mad to keep up with the need. we ran over 40 campaigns, took over 10 million actions and told 25 million friends about campaigns we care about, on everything from deforestation in Brazil to the Murdoch scandal in the UK -- and made a serious impact on many of these. If all that wasn't enough, we're about to launch a couple of big projects (stay tuned) that will take our community to a whole NEW level!
It's a thrilling privilege to serve this amazing community, and while the challenges we face are growing, the surge of spirited people rising to meet these challenges is growing even faster and stronger. We've come together and built something special, and it's taking off. Let's shoot for the stars.
With hope and excitement,
Ricken, Stephanie, Wen, Emma, Wissam, Veronique, Heather and the entire Avaaz team
Check online for some recent features on our community in the Economist, Times and Guardian. And here's a radio piece by NPR on our work in Syria, and an LA Times article on our Internet freedom campaign."
Eliana
