war

From the Chicago Tribune, July 26, 2003:

Greening of the Iron Curtain
Gorbachev backs proposal to make border a preserve

“Mikhail Gorbachev, who as Soviet leader presided over the troops and tanks that guarded the Iron Curtain, now wants a nature reserve along the full length of the former Cold War border, from Finland to the Adriatic.

German and other European environmental groups have devised a plan to create nature parks out of the no man’s land that separated the Soviet bloc from the West.

Kept forcibly free of people during more than 40 years of the Cold War, the border between Eastern and Western Europe became a refuge for plants and animals. Construction in the region now threatens these unintentional but important nature reserves, environmentalists fear.

‘Ecology isn’t something we can only leave to politicians,’ Gorbachev, who is president of the environmental organization Green Cross International, said when lending his support to the project at a recent conference in Bonn, Germany.

Although the idea of making parks along former Cold War borders has been around since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the conference was the first time that representatives of all the border countries had met to discuss the feasibility of having parkland run the length of what was the Iron Curtain.

Plans for the park are furthest along in Germany, where the border between East and West Germany once stretched for 870 miles. A recent study found that 85 percent of the land is still undeveloped enough to be included in a national park.

Plans were delayed while courts determined the status of the land, but most claims are now settled, and the German Finance Ministry recently announced it might be able to donate the 65 percent of former border land still in government possession.

Environmentalists emphasize that the reserve would not simply be the area it covered or the number of endangered species it contained but also that it would link many groups of organisms, known as biotopes, in the longest continuous stretch of undeveloped land left in Central Europe.

In the other former border countries, plans for a park are in only their early phases. The most likely route would be around the eastern half of Austria to the Adriatic, while another area would encompass Albania, whose border with Yugoslavia was always heavily guarded, and would then pass along the northern border of Greece.

Several speakers at the conference observed that Gorbachev — who could have rolled back Eastern Europe’s anti-Communist revolutions by force as his predecessors did — was on hand and had, in effect, made the border park possible.

Steffen Flath, the environment minister of what is now the German state of Saxony, once part of Communist East Germany, turned to Mr. Gorbachev and said, ‘I remember July 1989 when things were starting to bubble, and our government said, “Send us tanks,” and you, Mr. Gorbachev, you didn’t send those tanks.’

With the congratulatory words about vanishing borders in central Europe, however, some of those who follow events in this part of the world feared that events farther east were being ignored. Tamas Marghescu, European director of the World Conservation Union, said nervous states about to join the European Union were creating new divides. He cited what he said was a new impenetrable fence along the border between Poland and Belarus, which he said split an important park that straddles the border. ‘It’s the new Iron Curtain,’ he said.”

The Thayatal National Park, in Austria, and the Podyji National Park in the Czech Republic already exist along the river known in Austria as the Thaya, and in Czech as the Dyje, a former boundary of the Iron Curtain. [more]

via Planetizen

In 1986, Guinea Worm Disease infected an estimated 3.5 million people living in rural agricultural communities in 16 African countries, parts of India, Pakistan, and Yemen. The disease is extremely painful and debilitating, contracted by drinking water containing larvae of the parasite Dracunculus medinensis. The disease has plagued humanity for thousands of years. Today, after a decade’s campaign of education and the design and distribution of a special fabric, the disease has been virtually eliminated.

“Dracunculus medinensis has been traced to calcified worms in the stomachs of Egyptian mummies during the first millenium. Records of infection and treatment have been found dating back to 1530 BC. The Guinea worm is believed to be the ‘fiery serpent’ mentioned in the Bible, that infected the Hebrews during their exodus from Egypt. The medical symbol ‘Caduceus’ is believed to represent two coiled Guinea worms.” [source]

A Sanskrit poem from the 14th century B.C. includes the plea, “Let not the sinuous worm strike me nor wound my foot.” [source]

“Victims must endure the worm’s painful emergence for as long as three months, and are usually incapacitated not only by the pain but by fever, fatigue, and nausea as well. To speed things along, people carefully wind the worm around a stick as it emerges [as depcted in the ‘Caduceus’], being careful not to pull too hard. If the worm breaks, it will retract into the body, causing severe inflammation. Over half of all worm-emergence sites become infected, and the worst cases can result in permanent crippling or even death from tetanus.” [source]

There is no preventive or curative drug. However, the disease is relatively easy to prevent — drinking contaminated water is the only way to acquire the disease.

“Measures to prevent [Guinea Worm Disease] are community-based and inexpensive. Control methods include health education, providing safe drinking water, using filters to remove infected copepods from drinking water, boiling water or treating it with small doses of temephos, a colorless, odorless chemical that, kills copepods but is harmless to people.” [source]

“The cycle of transmission can easily be broken by filtering drinking water and preventing infected people from entering drinking water sources. [The worm] has no reservoir other than humans. When the worm’s one-year life cycle is broken for two years, the disease is permanently eliminated from the area. This is the only disease that can be eradicated by providing clean drinking water....

Water contaminated with guinea worm is safe for drinking (as far as this disease is concerned) if the water is filtered through a tightly woven cloth.

Inexpensive, effective cloth is available in most local African markets, and 1 million square meters of special synthetic fabric, for more rapid water filtration, has been donated by DuPont, with additional synthetic cloth donated by the Danish government and others.

Agricultural and school projects, along with company advertising, can teach people about guinea worm and how to protect themselves. Farmers who drink from ponds during the day should have a filter with them.” [source]

The filter must always be used with the same side up, usually marked with a printed symbol or instructions.

Since 1986, local, national, and international campaigns have had dramatic success. The disease has been virtually eliminated.

“The Carter Center joined the fight against Guinea worm in 1986, when it helped Ghana and Pakistan launch their eradication programs. Since then, it has spearheaded the World Health Organization’s global eradication effort, aimed at making Guinea worm only the second disease, after smallpox, to be wiped out completely. Under the leadership of the Carters and Dr. Donald Hopkins, the Carter Center has raised money, provided technical expertise, forged partnerships, and mustered the political will necessary to achieve this ambitious goal. They have distributed portable filters and initiated education programs to help break the cycle of the worm.

Transmission has been stopped in seven countries, and Asia is now free of the disease. In 2001, fewer than 65,000 cases remained in thirteen African countries, a 98 percent reduction since the beginning of the effort. Experts are confident that total eradication is just around the corner.

In 2001, it was estimated that 80 percent of the remaining cases were in the Sudan, where civil war has prevented a major eradication effort. That same year, courageous Carter Center volunteers distributed 8.5 million pipe filters, enough for every man, woman and child in the endemic areas of the Sudan. These hard plastic straws with nylon filters at one end can be carried around the neck and allow nomadic peoples to strain their water before drinking.” [source]

At the request of President Carter in 1990, DuPont developed a nylon monofilament filtration fabric to filter water infested with the Guinea worm parasite. The fabric is manufactured by Precision Fabrics:

“This fabric was unique. It had never been produced in this country. It is woven using a very fine monofilament nylon yarn. The fabric is washed, stabilized and finished to control the pore size of the fabric. It is precision slit into 12-inch wide rolls for export to the countries plagued by the disease. The fabric is then used in villages to filter water sources.”

DuPont and Precision Fabrics donated millions of square yards of the fabric from 1990 to 1997. Other countries have also produced similar fabric filters.

...

The Guinea Worm Filter is my suggestion to “100 ‘Cubes of Good Ideas’”, an exhibition of “objects that change people’s lives.” Design for the World is organizing the exhibition, which takes place during the Universal Forum of Cultures in Barcelona in the summer of 2004.

A U.S. reservist in Iraq emails a photo to a friend back home. Friend posts it on his blog. The image is widely circulated by email, and ultimately finds mention in The New York Times a month later.

The war drags on. Tours of duty are extended. U.S. soldiers continue to kill and be killed. Dissent among the military and military families smoulders.

And the scholarship funding? Job skills? Veteran’s benefits? One weekend a month?

See these articles about the myths and messages in military graphics and advertising sold by recruiters to high school and college students across the United States of America.

On April 11, 2003 the U.S. military released their list of most-wanted senior Iraqi government in the form of a deck of playing cards.

The cards were designed by staff of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the 3401st and 3418th Military Intelligence Detachments. One of the designers, Sergeant Scott Boehmler, 27, an Army reservist from Hazleton, Pennsylvania reports, “We understood what guys like to do on their downtime. This is an effective way of getting these images in the soldiers’ minds.”

Images can be downloaded from the Department of Defense Web site in HTML or PDF.

Production of the cards was widely covered in the U.S. mainstream media and treated as a significant event in the war. Subsequent reports of the arrest of Iraqi officials frequently refer to the list, even noting when an arrested official is not on the list. The reports are occasionally illustrated with an image of said official’s playing card.

The decks have also become enormously popular with the public. Web sites have sold hundreds of thousands of decks. As of May, one company reported $1.5 million in sales. It’s one thing to sell a war to the public. It’s whole other matter for them to buy it themselves in droves. I’ve even seen street vendors in NYC selling the decks alongside the knockoff sun glasses and watches and received a couple of unsolicited email messages offering the decks for sale.

U.S. military personnel are the world’s largest consumers of playing cards, according to Cincinnati-based United States Playing Card Company, the world’s largest playing card manufacturer. According to Time (May 12, 2003) the extreme popularity of the most-wanted cards prompted the distributor to reissue cards created for the military in earlier wars. During World War II “spotter decks” were produced for troops to distinguish between Allied and enemy aircraft. During the Vietnam War “decks containing only the ace of spades were passed out to U.S. troops, who would display a card on their helmets to scare away the Viet Cong — supposedly superstitious about the card, which fortune tellers considered a harbinger of suffering and death.”

The cards have inspired a genre of spinoffs.

GreatUSAflags.com has followed up with U.S. Military Heroes playing cards “honoring America’s servicemen and women involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom.” The deck also features images of aircraft, ships, submarines, aircraft carriers, vehicles and missiles deployed in battle.

On April 25, global justice group, the “Trade Regulation Organization,” released their U.S. Regime Change cards [image, PDF 6MB]. The group, “estimating that the U.S. governing regime is no longer consistent with world peace or prosperity, hopes that the playing cards will show the way to regime change and, eventually, large-scale war crimes proceedings.”

On May 1, Greenpeace International released a deck of “most wanted” cards depicting the nuclear powers of the world. [PDF, 96K] “This deck is designed to help delegates to the Non-proliferation Treaty meeting recognise owners of weapons of mass destruction. Packed with nuclear weapons of mass destruction facts. Fun for the whole family.” Says Tom Clements, senior campaigner with Greenpeace, “It ties the anti-war message together with the disarmament message.”

On May 7, the conservative Web site NewsMax announced the Deck of Weasels [image] which features images of anti-war celebrities and politicians includes Michael Moore, Tim Robbins, Jacques Chirac, Barbara Streisand, Teddy Kennedy, Kofi Annan, Vicente Fox, Jean Chretien, Senator Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd. Each card features a quote by the celeb opposing the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Each of the photographs has been altered so each figure wears the beret of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard.

On May 15, the Ruckus Society released America’s War Profiteers, a deck of cards identifying 53 individuals and institutions in the oil, military, government, media, and policy sectors. “The groups’ aim is to expose, ‘The links among corporations, institutions, and government officials that profit from endless war.’” The site also features a good set of links to articles and campaign pages.

On May 23, Nitestar Productions released “The Deck of Republican Chickenhawks,” depicting the 54 Republican officials, congressmen, politicians and pundits who avoided serving their country through connections, deferments, or other excuses.” Needless to say, many of the officials vigorously supported the U.S. war on Iraq. The deck was inspired by a list maintained by the New Hampshire Gazette of Republican politicians and pundits who have never served in armed combat.

Still other decks reported in the May 18 Washington Post:

“Republicans in the Texas legislature had cards made depicting the state’s ‘most-wanted Democrats’ — the lawmakers who fled to Oklahoma to scuttle a vote on a bitterly contested Republican redistricting plan....

Inspired by the Pentagon’s cards, Frances Gomez, 23, decided to print up card sets featuring her top 55 Cuban villains. But just before the printing order was sent out, Gomez tweaked her plan in hopes of really sticking it to Fidel Castro. She decided to make the cards look like dominoes, the real king of the board games in Little Havana and just about anywhere else that Cubans gather.

So, instead of being the ace of spades — the card reserved for Saddam Hussein in the Pentagon’s deck — Fidel is the Double Nine, the domino tile that no player wants to hold at the end of a game. Gomez needed help from Cuban American groups in Miami to compile her list. She was born in the United States and says, like many Cuban Americans her age, that she knew little about the details behind the deep animosity felt toward Castro and his allies by older generations that fled the island nation.

‘It’s important to learn who these people are,’ Gomez said.”

In addition to the playing cards are recent political trading cards.

In 1991, trading card publisher Topps (coordinating with the Pentagon and Navy Department) published 3 sets of Desert Storm Trading Cards. In 2001, they published a series of Operation Enduring Freedom Trading Cards.

An article in the Guardian notes:

“90 glossy cards featuring US political and military leaders, the patriotic response to the September 11 attacks, and military hardware.... The series also features a photograph of flowers laid outside the US embassy in Pakistan in the aftermath of the September 11 atrocities. No corresponding card shows the subsequent angry demonstrations against the US bombing campaign.... Topps would not directly respond to charges that the cards promoted an unquestioning view of the war to children.”

Kingsley Barham, publisher of marijuana trading cards that cover hemp history, politics, types, and uses, developed a set of trading cards about the September 11 attacks, Heroes of the World Trade Center. Despite approval from families of victims whose portraits are on the cards, the cards were met with outrage by politicians and the media. The New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg urged lawyers to find ways to prevent the sale of the cards.

Satire decks of the U.S. “war on terrorism” include American Crusade 2001+, Unofficial Iraqi Freedom Action Cards, and the images of Playing the Hitler Card, a small collection of cards with images of dictators and links to pages were they have recently been compared to Hitler.

In September, 2002 Slate published the Flash animation Corporate Scandal Trading Cards, “the fastest guide to America’s top 10 business crackups” with names and photos of CEO’s along with some statistics and a brief description of the crimes and frauds of WorldCom, Enron, Global Crossing, Adelphia, Tyco, ImClone, Halliburton, Harken, Qwest, and Andersen Consulting.

In April 2000, Texans for Public Justice produced a set of Bush League trading cards. The 20 cards feature statistics and a profile of a Bush “Pioneer” who has raised at least $100,000 for Bush’s presidential election. The profiles are drawn from TPJ’s investigation into the 212 announced Bush “Pioneers.”

On the heels of their 1989 comic book “Brought to Light: Thirty Years of Drug Smuggling, Arms Deals, & Covert Action,” in 1990 Eclipse published the original Friendly Dictator Trading Cards. The hallucinogenic artwork of Bill Sienkiewicz illustrates “three dozen of America’s most embarrassing ‘friends’, a cunning crew of tyrants and corrupt puppet-presidents who have been rewarded handsomely for their loyalty to U.S. interests.” Other political trading card sets published by Eclipse include “Drug Wars,” “The Iran Contra Scandal,” and “Rotten to the Core - New York Political Scandal,” and “Coup D’etat,” which presents theories pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Douglas Rushkoff’s 1994 book Media Virus quotes journalist and Eclipse editor Catherine Yronwode:

“Our trading cards are designed so they read like Hypercard stacks. Each cross-references to other cards... They all connect, and you can rearrange them in chains of interconnectivity. Or chronologically. You can find out who someone’s boss was, how different people moved around, that this guy was in Vietnam at the same time as this guy, and then that they were both in Nicaragua at the same time, too.”

Eclipse’s “Crime and Punishment” and “True Crime” cards, which present information about serial killers and gangsters, prompted the Board of Supervisors of Nassau County to pass Local Law 11-1992 which made it illegal to disseminate “indecent crime material to minors.” From the Friendly Dictators site:

“In 1997... a U.S. federal appeals court struck down a Nassau County, New York law banning the sale of trading cards depicting ‘any heinous crime". The court found for Eclipse who had challenged the law on First Amendment grounds - cf: Eclipse Enterprises, Inc. v. Gulotta (U.S. Federal Court of Appeal, 2nd Circuit, December 1997). The expense of this court case seems to have bankrupted them - at any rate, for whatever reason, Eclipse appears to have folded. There are no web entries for the company, no listing in any of the Publishing Indexes I’ve been able to find, and all its products are out of print, as far as the big web booksellers are concerned.”

Details of the case and proceedings can be found here.

This entry has been updated and incorporated into An Introduction to Activism on the Internet.

I’ve been searching for a list of excellent examples of Internet activism. I couldn’t find one, so I made my own.

I’ve structured much of this list around categories outlined by Sasha Costanza-Chock in “Mapping the Repertoire of Electronic Contention,” in Representing Resistance: Media, Civil Disobedience and the Global Justice Movement, eds. Andrew Opel and Donnalyn Pompper. Greenwood, in press. Unless otherwise indicated, the quoted text below has been taken from him.

Though I’ve added some of my own commentary, this is not intended to be a full analysis of the campaigns and organizations mentioned. I disagree with the politics of many of the examples listed, but think there is something to be learned from each of the them.

Many of the projects listed here also cross multiple categories, but have been organized here for the sake of demonstration. The categories are as follows:

• Representation
• Information Distribution and Independent Media
• Research
• Cultural Production
• Outreach
• Solidarity
• Lobbying
• Fundraising
• Tactical Communication

[ Because it’s taken so long for me to finish this list, I’m posting what I’ve written thus far. The second half will cover online collaboration, tech tools, and more oppositional tactics. I’ll post it as soon as I get a chance. In the meantime, do please your comments and feedback. ]

Representation

“It would be impossible to catalog the hundreds of thousands of sites devoted to social movements, but these generally present organizations in terms of mission, projects, history, membership, and links to affiliated groups, and usually include contact information. One function of such sites is to establish a kind of ongoing presence for organizations and other movement actors. In contexts of extreme repression, websites may be the only way for organizations that operate entirely underground to have a persistent visible presence at all. For example, this is the case for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, who have spoken of how their website (www.rawa.org) has served as kind of ‘virtual base’ from which they are able to represent themselves to the world as well as engage in all the other forms of conventional electronic contention described below.”

The armed uprising of the Zapatista National Liberation Army in the Mexican state of Chiapas was one of the first social movements to use Internet effectively. On January 1, 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army took over 5 towns and over 500 ranches in Chiapas, one of the poorest states in Mexico. The Zapatistas say they chose this date because it marked the first day of the North Amercian Free Trade Agreement. During the long war between the Mexican Army and the Zapatistas, the Zapatista’s sent out periodic email communiques through journalists and sympathizers that described the situation on the ground and the ideals behind the movement and its critique of neoliberalism. Despite limited mainstream media coverage of the struggle, the communiques were distributed throughout Mexico and around the world, published on the Web and on gopher sites. As national and international support and solidarity for the movement grew, the actions of Mexican government were increasingly scrutinized. Protests were held around the world, meetings were organized in Chiapas and across South America, and the Mexican government was eventually pushed to accept mediation and negotiations instead of military repression. This page has a list of information resources in English.

Information Distribution and Independent Media

“This includes, but is not limited to the distribution of information about movement goals, campaigns, actions, reports, and so on via website, email, listservs, bulletin boards, chat rooms, ftp, and other channels. Information may be designed for the general public or for specific receivers, for example press releases, academic reports, or radio programmes and video segments for rebroadcast. In some cases the same information may be repackaged differently for various intended audiences.”

Radio B-92 broadcasts music and news promoting “free speech, objective reporting, social tolerance and solidarity, minority cultures, cosmopolitan values and alternative culture” in the struggle for a free and democratic Serbia. After two brief closures by the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, Radio B92 was permanently taken over on April 2, 1999. Within months, Free B92 managed to resume almost all its former activities. In cooperation with Studio B, the radio program B2-92 began broadcasting on 99.1 MHz FM on August 9, 1999. Despite constant jamming by the regime this program quickly became the highest-rated in Belgrade as had been Radio B92 before the shutdown. The government took over Studio B on May 16, 2000, terminating the FM broadcast. Despite this, the station continued to broadcast on satellite (six hours a day) as well as on the Internet (24 hours). The shift to underground, Internet broadcasting enabled the opposition to be heard throughout the war. The station continues to the use of the Internet in the fight against repression and as focus of an on-line community concerned with the struggle for democratization of Serbia.

Indymedia is many things to many people: a collection of autonomous independent media organizations; an open publishing system; a global, grassroots infrastructure for free speech, dissent, and activism; a network for solidarity and technology exchange; a movement for truth and social justice, both local and international. Indymedia rose to prominence during the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in November 1999. Since then, the global justice movement and Indymedia have grown along side each other, often intersecting and mutually supporting one another. Over 120 Indymedia Web sites provide an online forum for independent journalism. Check the Indymedia FAQ or contact a local Independent Media Center near you.

Much has been made of the rise of Blogs in Iran, particularly as a place for women in Iran to talk freely about subjects they can not otherwise discuss in public. The debate online is an extension of the overall intellectual and democratic transformation taking place.

Blogs also played a role in the resignation of Senate majority leader Trent Lott. When the mainstream media ignored the racist remarks of the incoming Senate Minority Leader, bloggers kept the story going.

Tokyo Alien Eyes is a tiny organization that fights racism against foreign residents in Japan, particularly students. The director maintains a blog (in Japanese) of his activities which creates a level of transparency that is unique among Japanese community based organizations.

Geek buys a new computer with a built-in DVD player. Geek runs the Linux operating system and is unable to play the DVD’s he owns. So he cracks the DVD encryption scheme and shares the recipe with other Linux users. Hilarity ensues. So what’s the best way to spread a piece of code? Ban it and then sue a bunch of geeks to remove the code and links to it from their Web pages. The debate over DeCSS, subsequent lawsuits and massive civil disobedience have broad implications: Is code software or speech? Are digital media, movies, videos, software, or speech? Can you really make hyperlinks illegal? And what about our freedom to tinker? The continued redistribution of the code has made a mockery of the MPAA, their tactics, and security model. (Particularly when the DeCSS code was briefly entered into the public record in the course of the trial.)

And then there are your solid campaign sites like Circuses.com. Run by the organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the campaign targets cruelty against animals by circuses. The site provides a concise overview of the issue, a list of actions you can take, and materials for kids to download and print. The site navigation is clear, and the overall design is bright and circusy with stars and photos of circus tents... and animals in chains. The domain name is also a great Google hack. When a user searches for info on “circuses,” Circuses.com comes up first.

Research

“Many social movement organizations use the Internet as a resource for gathering specific information relevant to their cause, including information about opponents or targets, information produced by other movement actors, case studies of parallel situations, historical background, theory, economic data, environmental data, media analysis, and so on.”

The Environmental Working Group Farm Subsidy Database is a database of farm program checks written by the U.S. Department of Agriculture during calendar years 1996 through 2000, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. The tens of millions of check records were compiled to obtain the total subsidy received by each recipient, in each payment category. According to the NYTimes, it has “not only caught the attention of [U.S.] lawmakers, it also helped transform the farm bill into a question about equity and whether the country’s wealthiest farmers should be paid to grow commodity crops while many smaller family farms receive nothing and are going out of business.”

Among the myths, propaganda, and disinformation bolstering the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there were a few shining beacons of clarity and truth on the Web. The Center for Cooperative Research has produced several excellent fact sheets about America’s war without end. Their breakdown of Iraqi opposition groups, and their positions on U.S. invasion, is the best that I’ve found. See also 13 Myths About the Case for War in Iraq, a collaborative research project developed by Organizers’ Collaborative. Written and produced by “The Committee to Unsell the War,” Who Dies for Bush Lies? features a summary of Bush administration lies in the case for this and the previous Gulf War, and addresses the cost of war on U.S. civilians and soldiers as well as Iraqi civilians and soldiers. It also points to carefully selected resources, links, and actions, and features photos of anti-war Americans from all walks of life rallying against the war.

Cultural Production

“Visual art, music, video, poetry, net.art, and other forms of cultural production by artists active in, associated with, or supportive of social movements are often posted, distributed, or sold online.”

Several Web sites host agit-prop images that can be freely printed out and posted around town. Subvertise is a fairly broad collection. During the invasion of Iraq, many sites hosted a number of downloadable anti-war posters. The idea is a good one, though the quality of the images is mixed. Two individual artists with some great agit-prop images and posters online are Erik Drooker and Mike Flugennock. Micah Wright’s remixed vintage propaganda posters were widely picked up by the blogging crowd.

During the invasion of Iraq, a couple of artists remixed President Bush’s State of the Union speeches to comic and chilling effect. To this, I would also add this lipsynched love song between George W. Bush and Tony Blaire.

Also under cultural production, are satire sites.

“Site parodies or replicas of target sites that subtly alter wording or images to express activist viewpoints and discredit the target have been launched against.”

Some examples: gatt.org, GWBush.com, whitehouse.org, Homeland Security Cultural Bureau.

Other examples are listed in the parody section of this blog.

Outreach

Also known as “viral marketing,” these campaigns often take the form of Flash pieces that are emailed from friend to friend promoting a cause or action. Two examples are AIDS Concern, Hong Kong, and the Amnesty International, Conflict Diamonds animation.

Less attached to any specific campaigns are two projects by Jonah Peretti that were forwarded widely around the Web: his email exchange about customizing Nike sneakers with the word “sweatshop”; and the straight-faced satire site blackpeopleloveus.com.

Somewhere between outreach and tactical communication is political use of the Web site meetup.com. The site is a “free service that organizes local gatherings about anything, anywhere.” You register your interest and city and when a critical mass of people have also registered, a date and place for the meeting is set. On April 2, over ten thousand people met across the country to discuss campaign efforts for Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean. As of this writing, Dean’s Meetup site reports that nearly 23,000 people are meeting or are interested in meeting in nearly 500 cities. Also of note, is the Howard Dean Web log, maintained by one of his campaign workers as they stump across the U.S.A. Read more about the Dean campaign and its use of the Internet. Note, too, that constituencies that are less connected to the Internet, are less likely to be reached by Internet organzing alone.

Solidarity

One of the first electronic advocacy campaigns was the Blue Ribbon free speech. In February 1996, President Clinton signed into law a Telecom Bill and its “Communications Decency Amendment.” The “Communications Decency Act” attempted to impose U.S. broadcast-style content regulations on the Internet. Internet users were outraged. Protests were held, lawsuits were filed, and Web authors colored their pages black for 48 hours. Subsequently, the authors posted banner graphics of blue ribbons and linked to campaign pages on the fight against the CDA and Internet censorship. In June 1997, a unanimous US Supreme Court decision struck down the CDA as an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. The blue ribbon campaign did not end, however, as Clinton signed the “Child Online Protection Act” (aka “CDA II”) in 1998. After another round of protest and lawsuits, the law was struck down in March 2003. The blue ribbon campaign continues today and has broadened to include Internet censorship around the world.

In January 2003, Sam Hamill was invited by First Lady Laura Bush to take part in a White House symposium called “Poetry and the American Voice.” Hamill, author of 13 volumes of poetry, is also ex-Marine, a Buddhist and a pacifist. He started the Web site Poets Against the War and invited a few friends to submit antiwar poems. The poems would be presented to the White House at the March 5th event. In two months, the site received over 13,000 submissions. News got around and the symposium was cancelled. The site also began listing events and readings of poetry against the war around the U.S. In March, 13,000 poems were presented to the Prime Minister of Canada. In May, 174 of the poems were published by Nation Books in an anthology titled “Poets Against the War.”

From the Link and Think site:

“Each December 1, World AIDS Day, the creative community observes A Day With(out) Art, in memory of all those the AIDS pandemic has taken from us, and in recognition of the many artists, actors, writers, dancers and others who continue to create and live with HIV and AIDS. A Day With(out) Art was created by the group Visual AIDS in New York City. For the last several years, Creative Time has organized a Day With(out) Art observance on the worldwide web, encouraging diverse website designers and administrators to darken their site and convey AIDS prevention and education information to their visitors. In 1999, more than 50 webloggers took part in a project called a Day With(out) Weblogs. In 2000, nearly 700 personal weblogs and journals of all sorts participated. In 2001, the number was over 1,000. The personal web publishing community — weblogs, journals, diaries, personal websites of every kind — has continued to grow and diversify. Once again, everyone who produces personal content on the web is invited to participate a global observance of World AIDS Day. In recognition of the variety of sites participating — E/N sites, weblogs, journals, newspages and more — and to differentiate it from other, similar endeavors, a Day With(out) Weblogs became Link and Think.”

Lobbying

“This includes electronic versions of certain kinds of collective action aimed directly at influencing the political process and legislative outcomes. Online petitions and email campaigns fall into this category. Targets may be elected officials and government bodies, multilateral institutions, transnational nongovernmental organizations or other social movement organizations.”

Corporations and non-profits, like Capital Advantage and GetActive Software, maintain online applications that make it easy to contact state and federal officials in the U.S. Non-profit organizations like NARAL (formerly The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League) can use the applications to run action driven sites like the Choice Action Network which can email customized action alerts to supporters in targeted districts so the users need only click a button to send a letter to their elected officials. The applications also integrate email list management and online fundraising, and can connect track the online actions and donations of their supporters.

Like the services mentioned above, the Web site FaxYourMP.org lets Britons send faxes their Members of Parliament. The site was instrumental in killing the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000 and the national ID card campaign. What’s notably different is that the site is run by a private citizen out of his own home. Blogger Corey Doctorow sums it up: “Some code, a good meme, DSL, and a few hundred bucks’ worth of hardware adds up to a tool that moves governments. I am agog.”

The WWF Panda Passport makes electronic advocacy into a kind of a lobbying game. The more actions you take the more stamps you get in your panda passport. The more stamps you accumulate, you higher rank and title you win. At each threshold, you are offered rewards like downloadble wallpaper graphics and screen savers. Site users are also sent action alerts by email. Though the game format seems very effective at encouraging participation, I find it trivializes the content.

Amnesty International’s Urgent Action Network existed long before the Internet. Postal mail action briefs were sent from AI’s London headquarters to national offices around the world to distribute to Amnesty International members. The briefs outlined cases of “prisoners of conscience,” often detained for non-violent expression of their political beliefs and often at risk of torture or execution. Amnesty members would respond with hundreds and even thousands of letters to the responsible government officials urging them to free the prisoners. Email and the Web have dramatically shortened response times, though much of the lobbying is still done with postal mail. Last year’s campaign on torture introduced action alerts via text messages to beepers and cell phones. Over the years, hundreds of prisoners have been released (though AI does not take direct credit for specific releases.) Also of note is the use of geography as a tactical tool. Not every urgent action is sent to every member by the 80 Amnesty offices around the world. When actions are distributed, a geographic balance is maintained so that, for instance, letters an Islamic country does not only receive letters from the U.S. and Western Europe, but from other Islamic countries as well. Conversely, Amnesty generally does not send cases to members that are in the members’ own country (though there are some exceptions.)

Lobbying is not confined to government officials and corporations, but also includes the media. With the Capital Advantage application you simply your zip code for a list of local media outlets and their contact info. Palestine Media Watch sends out regular email dispatches that document media bias in reports on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The newsletter encourages subscribers to respond directly to the news agency concerned.

There are an enormous number of petitions online. Sites like petition online makes creating one very easy, though it lacks a verification mechanism. This petition urging UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson to investigate Ariel Sharon’s crimes against humanity has nearly one million. The petition collected signatures into 2003 — long after Mary Robinson left that office in September 2002 and after the Web site and email account of the petition creator ceased to exist.

One of the best uses of online petitions is simply building a network of supporters. MoveOn.org started in September 1998 as an online petition to encourage the media and politicians to move on from the seemingly endless noise over the President Clinton’s impeachment proceedings. According to the site “during impeachment, MoveOn’s grassroots advocates generated more than 250,000 phone calls and a million emails to Congress.” The site has focused on other issues, but it was in the fight the U.S. war on Iraq that it took off. Most notable, was the virtual march on Washington which organized thousands of anti-war Americans to call and fax the President and Congress on February 26, 2003. The action overwhelmed White House and Senate switchboards and offices. With their periodic email messages urging simple, concrete actions MoveOn also organized off line rallies, personal visits by constituents with their elected officials, and raised funds for the production and placement of television, radio, and newspaper ads. The email list now boasts over two million subscribers around the world.

Fundraising

“This includes appeals to membership and donations as well as the online sale of ‘SMO merchandise’ - T-shirts, books, buttons, posters, and so on. This is problematized by certain kinds of companies that might be considered (or consider themselves) SMOs but have a main organizational function that is commercial, for example Fair Trade Federation (http://www.fairtradefederation.com). Fundraising efforts are also aided by computer-assisted direct mailing campaigns and by member database management.”

An growing number of Internet users are donating money online, though the overall percentage of chartiable donations made online is still very smalll. According to groundspring.org, around 1-3% of individual giving in the U.S. was via the Internet in 2002.

Humanitarian organizations like the Red Cross raise an enormous amount of money whenever a big disaster hits the mainstream media. Donation sites for the families of the victims of the attacks on September 11, 2001 raised an unprecedented amount of money.

Of online donation sites, I find the Heifer International Gift Catalog particularly effective. The Catalog is an e-commerce site where you can purchase cows and goats which are distributed to families around the world that live in poverty. The site creates a strong sense of transparency, giving the impression that there is no question about what your money is funding.

The Hunger Site was the first of many ‘clicks for charity’ sites. The site funnels dollars from banner ad clickthroughs into humanitarian relief efforts. I have always been impressed by the popularity of the site, considering how superficially it address the actual causes of hunger and extreme poverty. The Hunger Site is run by for-profit corporation, though it claims 100% of sponsor banner advertising is paid to nonprofit beneficiary organizations.

In the U.S., registered non-profit organizations are restricted in the amount and kinds of lobbying they are permitted to conduct. So MoveOn, building on its enormous email network, started a separate political action committee. MoveOn PAC is a response to corporate PACs that raise money for (and curry favor from) candidates for congressional office. MoveOn PAC acts as a conduit for Web users to fund candidates with moderate to progressive views. “All funds go entirely to the individual campaigns in the amounts you specify. We take care of all the required [Federal Election Commission] paperwork by transmitting necessary contributor information to each campaign... Through the MoveOn.org Political Action Committee, more than 10,000 everyday Americans together contributed more than $2 million to key congressional campaigns in the 2000 election, and more than $3.5 million in 2002 election.”

Planned Parenthood also used fundraising itself as an advocacy tool. After an LA Times columnist wrote that a donation to Planned Parenthood in the name of John Ashcroft was a fitting message to send to President George W. Bush on Presidents’ Day in response to his reinstating the “global gag rule” and appointing John Ashcroft as U.S. attorney general, 15,000 individuals contributed $500,000 . 15,000 acknowledgement messages were delivered to the new Executive Office Building.

Tactical Communication

“This refers to the use of the Internet or other electronic communications to aid mobilization efforts, both before and during street or ‘real world’ collective actions. This includes calls to action distributed electronically, as well as coordination during street actions using internet, pager, cell phone, WAP, or other electronic communications technologies.”

On September 25, 1995 the Mersey Docks & Harbour Company sacked 500 dockworkers in Liverpool for refusing to cross a picket line. Faced with Thatcher’s anti-union laws at home, the dockers appealed for international support. Along with conventional means of communication, they spread the word through email and a Web site on LabourNet. As the dockers travelled to carry the picket abroad, to publicize the struggle and raise funds, they found that when they arrived, people already knew about their struggle “from the Internet.” LabourNet became a daily news service about the Liverpool dispute for dockers around the world.

“Using this network the dockers were able to organise two international days of action in their support. In the first day of action, the body that supposedly possessed the authority to call international dockers’ actions, the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), was circumvented in this way and reduced to trailing limply behind the dockers’ network. It organised virtually no action itself and when asked by the press to supply information on the pending action it was forced to send begging E-mails to LabourNet to try to find out what was actually happening. This first day of action, on 20th January 1997, resulted in what one international union official described as ‘the biggest international working class action for 100 years.’ In 27 countries, 105 ports and cities, dockers, seafarers, and other workers took part in workplace meetings, public meetings, demonstrations at British Embassies and Consulates, work-to-rules, and full-scale stoppages ranging from 30 minutes up to 24 hours. Whilst this was happening, the Liverpool dockers’ union, the Transport & General Workers’ Union (TGWU), was trying to persuade the Liverpool dockers and their families to accept redundancy payments and quit their fight. The international support was inspiring them to carry on and was making the TGWU leadership’s task much more difficult. When the Liverpool shop stewards called a second day of action on 8th September 1997 the TGWU insisted that the ITF must not support the action. This made very little difference. If anything the action was bigger than the first one. US and Canadian longshoremen closed down the entire North American West Coast from Alaska to Los Angeles for 24 hours. The flexibility of the dockers’ communication network was illustrated by the fact that they were able to organise this action whilst keeping the employers in the dark about its actual date, only publicly announcing it at the last moment.

In September 1997, a ship from Britain with containers on board from a company using Liverpool was refused by dockers in Oakland, Vancouver, and at two different ports in Japan. Rather than sail back all the way back to Britain, the ship was sold along with its cargo to a company in Hong Kong.

“This action caused great fear amongst ship owners and their insurers, even more than the international days of action had. Despite this growing international strength, the dockers were ultimately forced to surrender by the connivance of the TGWU leadership. On 26th January, 1998, the Merseyside Port Shop Stewards Committee issued a statement notifying supporters around the world that ‘the Liverpool dockworkers decided to call an end to their long running dispute.’ Behind the scenes, enormous pressure, full details of which have never been fully revealed, had been put on the shop stewards by the TGWU leadership to force them to end the dispute. Despite this defeat, the Liverpool dockers’ struggle proved how powerful a networked union communication structure based on the Internet could be in the fight back against a globalised capital that dominates the mainstream media. During the course of the Liverpool fight, dockers in a number of other countries: Montreal in Canada, Santos in Brazil, Los Angeles in the US, Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Stockholm in Sweden all began producing their own Web sites. The defeat of the Liverpool men meant most of these Web sites later closed down, but workers elsewhere are still building Internet based communications networks inspired by the one built in support of Liverpool. During the Korean general strike in 1997, the, then illegal, Korean Confederation of Trade Unions used LabourNet and its own Web sites to publicise its actions. This later resulted in the formation of Korean LaborNet (NodongNet). In February [2002], the All Japan Dockworkers’ Union, which played a central role in taking action for Liverpool, worked together with labour media activists to launch LaborNet Japan.” [source]

Other examples of electronic media for tactical communication include:

• the use of fax machines to mobilize and publicize 1989 uprising in Tiananmen Square.
  
• the use of text messaging by protesters in 2001 revolution in the Phillipines to rapidly coordinate demonstrations that helped topple president Estrada.
  
• the use mobile phones by protestors at the 1999 World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle to coordinate the demonstrations, and outwit the centralized radio system of the police. Other large scale, international demonstrations by the global justice movement, such as the G8 protests in Evian, France and convergences like the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, rely heavily on the Internet to coordinate.

The January 2003 presidential victory in South Korea also stunned everyone by shaking off 50 years of conservative rule. The change is in part the result of a demographic shift and the use of the Internet by the younger generation to get out the vote.

The February 15, 2003 protests against the U.S. invasion of Iraq were historically unprecedented for the scale and global distribution, and the fact that they occurred before the war. Millions of people in 793 cities around the world took to the streets to protest Bush’s war in Iraq. Though email facilitated much of the organizing within individual cities, I hear from organizers that almost no coordination at all took place between cities. It was mostly word-of-mouth. The idea started at the European Social Forum in November 2002. There, the date February 15 was chosen as a date for anti-war demonstrations “in every capital.” From there the idea spread. Images of the protests circulated the Web in practically real time. Some articles: Wired, New York Times, Washington Post.

Mentioned above, MoveOn.org’s massive lobbying blitz, the February 26, 2003 “virtual march” on Washington D.C. falls under this category, too.

Last updated on July 20, 2003.

From Boston IndyMedia:

“On the evening of May 20, Direct Action anti-authoritarian activists from the White Mountain Autonoma, AnarchoNinjas, and the Trained Monkee Collective came together to ‘tag’ every pay phone in Nashua, NH with a sticker that reads, ‘This Phone is Bugged’ in large letters, citing the relevant section (Section 215) of the Patriot Act 2001 authorizing this in smaller print. An example of the stickers may be viewed at http://www.crimethinc.com/cards/28_med.gif. The stickers are placed upon the telephone receivers.

Intended to create situations where the average mass media-deadened citizen of Nashua is confronted with the current political reality of life under Bush II and his attack dogs of Homeland Security, Nashua was chosen as the introductory site for ‘Operation Wake The Fuck Up’ due to its large population, strategic location on the NH-Massachusetts border (thousands of Bay Staters shop in Nashua daily to avoid Massachusetts sales tax), and the critical role it plays in the NH Presidential Primaries as the first large population block to report its’ poll returns.

There are approximately 400 pay phones in Nashua, locate in the various shopping malls, pubs, public buildings, stores, restaurants, and hotels - including the 8 pay phones in the lobby of the Sheraton Tara, preferred home-away-from-home for Bush II when in the greater Boston area, due to its isolation and ‘security’.

Additional activities are planned for the near future, including mock ‘stop-and-search’ actions, imitating the activities of Homeland Security and its componant bureaus and agencies. These will be very similar to the mock ‘search-and-destroy’ missions used to great effect by Vietnam Veterans Against The War during the anti-Vietnam War years, in which activists, dressed as ordinary people, are pulled out from the innocent spectators and are mock-abused in true government style.

Activists wishing to join the fun may contact the White Mountain Autonoma at wma@datasquire.net.”

Bush launched his presidential campaign just last Friday. The New Hampshire primary takes place on January 27, 2004, a mere 35 weeks from now.

Print out the stickers yourself or buy a pack online.

Thanks, American Samizdat

“The Computer TakeBack Campaign is protecting America’s public health by promoting corporate accountability for electronic waste.

Tens of million of computers become obsolete every year and less than 10% are collected for recycling, with the rest of them stored in homes and offices, disposed in landfills and burned in incinerators, and shipped to poor countries for dismantling under horrific conditions. Newer, faster, smaller, and cheaper products hit the market every day - all of them toxic, most of them designed for disposal rather than reuse and recycling, and, once obsolete, are ignored by the very companies that profit from short life-spans and cheap design.

Currently, the expense of collecting and managing discarded electronics is borne by taxpayer-funded government programs. Public policy and corporate practice have failed to promote producer take back and clean design. The principle of producer take-back shifts the burden for collection and recycling costs off of taxpayers and government to the producers, providing an incentive for companies to market products that are durable, less-toxic, and recyclable....

The Computer TakeBack Campaign was formed to promote clean design and brand owner responsibility for discarded computers and electronics.”

The campaign was launched on November 27, 2001 with the release of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition’s 3rd Annual Computer Report Card. The annual report measures the environmental qualities of electronic equipment and the environmental performance of companies. The report noted that several major U.S. computer companies ran TakeBack programs in Europe, but not in the United States.

Dell was singled out as the focus for the first major campaign. Dell has the largest share of the U.S. and global personal computer market, and are the leading seller of computers to institutions. The Computer TakeBack Campaign is also targeting Dell “because the company’s sales and distribution model uniquely positions it to establish an effective national take back system for used and discarded products.”

After a long campaign and a much public pressure, on March 19, 2003, Dell announced it’s new curbside recycling program. As of March 25, consumers in the continental U.S. could “order home pickup of unwanted notebooks, desktops, monitors, and other select computer equipment for $15 per unit.”

Dell, however, is using prison labor to do the dirty work of recycling its electronics.

A friend of laughingmeme writes:

• Dell still contracting with prison labor to do recycling... prison labor is a low-road solution which relies on ‘high tech chain gangs’ and thwarts the development of a legitimate recycling infrastructure... and prison laborers are handling toxic computers and OSHA standards are not enforced as they should be
• Dell still charging a fee at the back-end (instead of implicit in purchase price) for the pick-up, which is a disincentive for participation
• Dell not reporting on goals or setting timeframes/goals for recovery
• Dell not aggressively advertising program (they launched the program the week we went to war!)
• Dell not commenting/committing to phasing out the toxins in their products
• Dell partnering with a charity, but what will eventually happens to the computers? — they way they are designed now they all become obsolete at some point
• [As of mid-March] Dell has recovered only 1,000 machines in the last six months which is really pathetic. (they actually started taking back computers from consumers in sept, but are just now expanding the program to include home pick-up)

According to this fact sheet: prison labor is not protected by federal safety and health standards, nor is it covered by National Labor Relations Board policies. Financial support for this U.S. prison-industrial complex steals tax dollars from public education and environmental protection programs and kills private sector development in electronic recycling.

Prisoners should be able to develop occupational and educational skills, not forced to do dangerous, toxic work because companies can get away with it. Investing in prison labor also reinforces incarceration as a solution social, political, and economic problems.

Find out more, and what you can do.

Update: On July 3, 2003, Dell announced that it will stop using a vendor that relies on prison labor for its electronics recycling.

“How an Atheist Helps Protect Islamists in Turkey,” The New York Times, November 26, 2002:

“In 1995, [Turkish publisher Sanar] Yurdatapan’s activism took the turn that came to define it: It began when Yasar Kemal, one of Turkey’s most famous writers, was charged under antiterrorism laws for writing an article against the war in Kurdish areas.

In protest, 1,080 well-known people signed their names [as co-publishers] in a book that republished Mr. Kemal’s article and nine other banned articles. They then demanded that they all be prosecuted because it was also a crime to reprint banned articles.

Mr. Yurdatapan’s orchestration of the book put the Turkish state in an awkward position, having to suspend sentences or change the laws to avoid arresting everyone. In 1999, however, he received a two-month sentence....

With little money and a tenuous legal status — his group, Initiative for Freedom of Expression, exists only on the law’s margins — Mr. Yurdatapan keeps up his work: 4 books and over 40 pamphlets have been published.

In 2000, he took up the case of Islamic activists, including the nation’s only Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, who has been banned from political life since the army’s ouster of his government in 1997 and whose party was victorious in the recent elections.”

The February 3, 2000 Kurdish Observer reports that Sanar, a civilian, was sentenced by a military court to two months in prison for “making publication to lose people’s enthusiasm for the military service.”

Sanar became well-known as a composer, songwriter, and advocate for free expression in the 1970’s. From Human Rights Watch:

“Sanar Yurdatapan was stripped of his citizenship by the military junta that seized power in Turkey in 1980. He lived in exile from 1980 until 1992. The military handed back power to a civilian government in 1984, but they have kept public discussion of certain issues off limits, particularly criticism of state institutions (especially the military) and the role of ethnicity or religion in politics.”

He has also worked on prison conditions, the right to conscientious objection to military service, and exposed the Turkish military’s massacre of Kurds. The Times again:

“[In the summer of 2002], as part of its bid to join the European Union, Turkey passed several laws easing freedom of expression. Mr. Yurdatapan says the atmosphere is improving, though not enough for him to end his work.”

More publishing than design, the 1995 action is such an elegant act of civil disobedience, a grand mockery of Turkish censorship law.

The June issue of Metropolis magazine has a short review of this blog in its Screen Space column:

Social Design Notes

Activist and graphic designer John Emerson’s Web log follows the role of design in social activism, collecting little-known news items from around the world. Recently Emerson has devoted much of his coverage to the war in Iraq. He critiques the way newspapers and magazines use graphics to enforce pro-war rhetoric and celebrates protestors who alter existing ads and signs to get their message out.

I’m flattered that Metropolis reviewed my blog, but the review is somewhat skewed by its timing. If you stopped by during the invasion of Iraq that was probably much of what I was blogging.

Crawl through the archives, though. There’s some good stuff there. I do write a lot about the role of design in social justice movements, but I also blog other examples of design in the public interest including (but not limited to) environmentally friendly materials, civic wayfinding, public friendly consumer labeling, sustainable energy sources and design for energy efficiency, universal design and accessibility, mapping, design and public transit, e-government, and design by working people for working people. In addition to news items, I do post some commentary, criticism, original research, and longer features (when I get the time.) I do hope to do more of the latter and less of the link propagation.

I’m not sure what “little-known” means. I do not post items because they are obscure, though I sometimes do not post things that are all over everyone else’s blogs. “Little-known” to who?

In my item on anti-war protests in the City, I was not just celebrating protestors altering ads, but commenting on how protestors were using the City itself not just as a site of protest but as a medium. Not just altering ads, but posting stickers and signs of their own, marching by the thousands, rearranging street furniture, blocking traffic with their bodies, changing the face of the City and using the City itself to disrupt business as usual. I’m actually increasingly skeptical of Adbusters style activism, of altering logos and ads unless it’s within the context of a broader grassroots social movement.

Anyway, all this is to say that in year two of this blog (which starts today) I will try to post more in-depth, to organize my archives better, and to further clarify this whole “design in the public interest” thing.

Thanks for stopping by.

“More than two million men and women are now behind bars in the United States. The country that holds itself out as the ‘land of freedom’ incarcerates a higher percentage of its people than any other country....

Perhaps the single greatest force behind the growth of the prison population has been the national ‘war on drugs.’ The number of incarcerated drug offenders has increased twelvefold since 1980. In 2000, 22 percent of those in federal and state prisons were convicted on drug charges.

Even more troubling than the absolute number of persons in jail or prison is the extent to which those men and women are African-American. Although blacks account for only 12 percent of the U.S. population, 44 percent of all prisoners in the United States are black.

Census data for 2000, which included a count of the number and race of all individuals incarcerated in the United States, reveals the dramatic racial disproportion of the incarcerated population in each state: the proportion of blacks in prison populations exceeds the proportion among state residents in every single state. In twenty states, the percent of blacks incarcerated is at least five times greater than their share of resident population.”

Some experiments with GIS turned into a redesign of this Human Rights Watch backgrounder. Interesting to note the regional clusters that emerged from dumping various metrics into a spatial layout. Download the PDF here (192 Kb).