I was in Vancouver earlier this month and hung out with some media artists and activists who are building a community-based mobile communication system for Canada's poorest inner-city neighbourhood. They are also one of the candidates for the UC Berkeley's (my college) Mobile Challenge so I want to encourage all of you to vote for them!!
Their proposal to the Mobile Challenge involves getting a system in
place for the Olympics next year so when 12,000 security forces occupy
Vancouver, their stories won't be silenced! As an activists that has attended the Democratic National Convention (both in 2000 and 2008), as well at the Rebublican National Convention (2004 - Bush boooo!), I know firsthand how police forces occupy cities and unleash a wave of repression. Let's support our folks in Canada who are drawing the intersections between police surveillance, police repression, gentrification, racism, and the unequal use of public funds.
VOTE for their project and check out the other amazing work being done around
the world with mobile devices! There are innovatve and timely
technological strategies backing up the fight for justice around the
world.
More about the Mobile Challenge
The Human Rights Center at the UC Berkeley is holding a Mobile Challenge to encourage innovations for applying mobile technologies for human rights investigations and advocacy. Through an online voting process, people interested in technology and social change through NetSquared/TechSoup, can select the best projects from around the world. 10 finalists will be invited to present their ideas at an international conference, “The Soul of the New Machine: Human Rights, Technology, and New Media,” at UC Berkeley, May 4 and 5, 2009. Here is some blurps from their website.
"Fearless City Mobile is the mobile technology piece of a larger grassroots effort to build the W2 Community Media Centre for our inner-city Vancouver neighbourhood. Fearless represents the effort of our residents working together to break the digital divide and learn about appropriate technology to overcome marginalization and support self-representation. Our neighbourhood is referred to as “four blocks of hell” by the corporate media which uses us as a feeding ground for sensational voyeuristic coverage of our national public health crisis. Long standing problems include more than one thousand people homeless, widespread injection drug use, and an outstanding public inquiry into murdered and missing women.
So what can mobile phones do about this crisis? Fearless is on the cutting edge of socially inclusive, creative-use-of-technology initiatives globally. Fearless City Mobile brings together to create longterm change by handing the means of representation to our neighbours, peer-to-peer, one neighbour at a time. We work with technology companies and web developers to support our work and share skills, funds, and strategies. We work with residents and activists to share access and support community generated media production. When the world comes to Vancouver for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, we will have a searchable database of people's stories and documentation of key events, as well as geo-tagged rich media live streaming from throughout the neighbourhood at any given time."
Check out the proposal and vote, visit http://www.netsquared.org/projects/fearless-city-mobile
Find more videos like this on W2: Community Media Arts Vancouver BC
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