Internet brings back humanity

In the 2011 Personal Democracy Forum, Jim Gilliam, co-founder of Brave New Films and CEO of Nation Builder, said the internet is his religion.

Gilliam begins by pointing out that as a child and adolescent he was right-winged and deeply religious.
He lost his faith after getting cancer, and after his mother passed away from cancer.
Gilliam claims he only survived because he was able to receive the treatment he needed, which he got from support from bloggers and fans online ... This brought his faith back, but this newly found faith was for humanity and the internet.
With the internet connecting everyone, we have become the creators, he said, and together we are the creator.




 

The importance of this video, which has been called the "best video online," is not only that it narrates an incredibly moving story, but it shows in the most clear way the possibility of a cultural movement  shifting from reliance on religion to reliance on humanity; this "humanity" being millions of internet users.

We have seen the power of the internet to build demonstrations and take down dictators, but this video shows us another side of the internet. There are times when this generation, our generation, is portrayed as one that does not care; it is portrayed as a generation that is disconnected from society because we are tech junkies and spend so much time online.

However, Gilliam's story shows the internet is just another way to connect. In fact, it shows it is a much more effective way to connect with each other and help each other. The internet does not take our "humanity," it gives us the opportunity to actually exercise that "humanity" on a bigger scale.

Fun over activism: Are people forgetting #YoSoy132?

After a powerful protest against mainstream media during the summer, the #YoSoy132 movement is not dead... or is it? 

In August, the group called for Mexicans to boycott the annual Corona Capital Music Festival held this weekend in Mexico City. 

The group protests this event because it is being sponsored by the famous Mexican beer company, Corona, and OCESA Digital, a Televisa (Mexican television network) partner. Allegedly 40 percent of the event proceeds will go to Televisa.

This is all nice, but #YoSoy132 made the announcement in August. What was the result? The boycott seems to have been forgotten. Only about a dozen tweets were written about the boycott in the last couple of days. 

El Universal reported more than 57,000 people attended the festival, and the few tweets in #YoSoy132 about the festival were ridiculing the movement. 

Mexico's scary reality

I want to bring a Mexican website I found this week to everyone's attention.

The website is Mundo Narco, which translates to "drug lord world," and it is, in my opinion, one of the bravest independent publications in the blogosphere.

The blog has been live since 2010. It is run by a one anonymous blogger.
It features news about drug cartels in Mexico. It is updated everyday, and sometimes several times a day. The site administrator has done a great job organizing the website with tabs for each region in Mexico.

Along with the blog posts, the site presents real videos of drug lords breaking the law. The videos are submitted by site viewers who witness the violence in their own communities. Much like WikiLeaks, the website receives evidence from anonymous sources. These videos are also posted on YouTube and VK, and frankly some are so explicit, I don't know how they have not been reported as so to YouTube.

I'd like to add that I have fact checked some of it's posts (which do not include links to the sources) and the three I checked were accurate.

The site's purpose, the blogger writes, is to bring attention to the atrocities faced by Mexican citizens because these are not being reported by mainstream media. 

"... los medios de comunicación y el gobierno intentan aparentar que en México NO PASA NADA..." 
"... the media and the government try to make it seem like there is NOTHING going on in Mexico..."

Here is an example of the videos being published on this website:
"El Taliban" el Z50 sigue retando a z40 ahora tortura a un Zeta