Month: March 2012

Reconnecting with Mother Earth – The 2012 Mayan Challenge (VIDEO)

As the world keeps an eye on 2012 and the end of the Mayan calendar which signals the end of another sun cycle, we must look to the living Mayans to see what this really means. For some this prophecy means a blip of tourism, book sales, and maybe some survivalist hoarding. For the Mayans this is about survival, survival from human-made systems.

With mining, land grabs, political maneuvering, and military intervention, the people of Mesoamerica are under attack. They are being pushed out of their lands and being put into a capitalist system that is a recipe for poverty creation.

MISSING: United States #KONY2012

Now that social media is buzzing about the KONY2012 campaign by the organization Invisible People, this is a good time to start looking at issues here in the United States.

For example, did you know that there are only two counties on the entire planet that have not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a human rights treaty? Somalia and the United States are the only two countries that have not stepped up to the plate and ratified.

KONY 2012 and the Age of Online Activism

The KONY 2012 campaign is a great example of how people can come together to raise awareness on an important topic.

I work for a labor organization and a great deal of the work we do is tied to feet on the street. We organize people and money for the benefit of our members and society. When it comes to doing online activism, this is still something that is new in the social justice arena.

Yes, it’s easy enough to create a Facebook page or a Twitter page and send out an email now an then. But those types of efforts rarely have a major impact when they are done as items on a check off list and not as a significant and urgent component of a campaign. The KONY 2012 campaign does just that.

The KONY 2012 campaign includes a strong narrative in regards to the devastating effects of children being recruited into a personal army and it uses new media to help get the message out. At the time of this post, the KONY 2012 video has over 43,300,000 views on YouTube, is filling up Facebook timelines, and is trending on Twitter with the “Uganda” and “Invisible Children” terms.