The American Civil Liberties Union has 7,456 followers on Twitter.
Social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter have provided valuable opportunities for communication and campaigning among activist organizations on the national stage and around campus. On Wednesday evening, students, faculty, and guests packed the James Room in Barnard Hall to attend “Fighting the Good Fight in the Age of the Tweet,” where a panel of activists were to “discuss strategy of online social movements.” But talk of technology and the online frontier were notably absent.
Janet Jakobsen, Director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women and Barnard’s Dean of faculty diversity and development, opened the event with remarks on innovation. “We are always interested in the newest forms of activism,” she said, going on to emphasize the importance of bringing these new forms to campus.
Yet as the three panelists powerfully represented social justice issues, they didn’t speak out much on new media.
Mia Herndon, CC ‘01, serves as director of the Third Wave Foundation—a group formed in 1996 to support young women and transgender youth ages 18 to 30. “We were founded on a basic but also very radical belief that young people are active,” Herndon said.
Throughout her talk, Herndon emphasized that just recently have the voices of youth—not to mention women and transgendered individuals—begun to find space to be heard. Part of Third Wave’s purpose lies in leadership development and grant-making for these social niches. “These are the people who need to be part of making the agenda, because they understand what needs to be done,” Herndon said.
But whether or not the outreach and publicity tactics of Third Wave relied on new technology remained unknown. Third Wave has a Facebook fan page, but Herndon did not elaborate on the subject.
Other speakers were Debra Cole from Domestic Workers United—an organization seeking to pass a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights—and Rinku Sen, whose work at the Applied Research Center aims to “popularize racial justice.”
Cole addressed the emerging activism around Domestic Workers’ Rights, indicating the silent abuse women suffer in the work place, such as abrupt severance without pay, or rape while on the job.
“We would like to put things in place where people are not exploited,” Cole said. “We have a right to be treated with respect and dignity.”
While Domestic Workers United has an extensive website, which includes multimedia alongside a links to documents and information about their purpose, it remained unclear as to whether the site plays a significant role in publicizing the organization’s cause, as Cole, like Herndon, did not address technology in her remarks.
An e-mail advertising the event had emphasized the crucial role new media play in social organization and political formations, noting how “voices of oppressed Iranian voters were heard via Twitter” and that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged graduates to use “digital diplomacy” to fight for social justice during her Barnard Commencement address in May.
Students seem to share Clinton’s enthusiasm in this respect.
“The internet becomes an outlet for young people being able to judge their own government from an early age by knowing exactly what’s going on,” said Nida Vidutis, CC ’12 and a member of the College Democrats. Vidutis also noted that the Internet has helped popularize politics.
Each of the panelists demonstrated significant contributions to her respective, contemporary field of activism. But those in attendance may have left confused as to why the event was advertised as one about “virtual activism.”
Despite the evident drift from its original premise, it still served its purpose in some sense.
Camilla Elvis, BC ’12, reiterated her enthusiasm for the up-and-coming social justice issues that redefined the evening, saying the discussion “was definitely interesting and different from how you normally think about activism.”
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