#activism #communityorganizing #protocols #palestine #censorship
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naddr1qq…lsksMy sister, cousin, and I joined 75,000 protesters earlier this month in holding up a red banner marked with the names of Palestinian martyrs around the treasury building and white house in washington dc to signify the “People’s Red Line” crossed by israel’s invasion of Rafah.
After holding up the red line, we made our way to a nearby park where the organizers held a “People’s Court” to try israel and the u.s. for war crimes. We shared a collective cry as we listened to heart wrenching testimonies sent in by Gazan families of Palestinian organizers about the nightmare they are enduring. As this was happening, israel killed another 274 Palestinians in a raid on the Nuseirat refugee camp. The notification across my screen felt like a punishment for our activism and reminded me that the bureaucrats are not listening.
I was initially discouraged to see a lower turnout than the march on washington I attended last November, where 300,000 folks arrived to denounce the united states’ unconditional support of the Palestinian genocide. I can’t say I didn’t anticipate it, though. Wage slaves have to eat, and paid time off to protest about things they care about is a luxury few CEO’s in this world provide for them.
Adding to this is the brutal suppression of dissenting voices worldwide. Groups like Within Our Lifetime are kneecapped by outright censorship and bans from corporate social media platforms.Not to mention, the u.s. government is forcing a sale of Tik Tok to a former u.s. treasury secretary with ties to mossad.
Palestine is an anti-colonial struggle that inspired so many of us to organize for change, yet we’ve managed to spend the last 8 months funding their genocide with our consumption tax dollars and scrolling through pictures of dead babies and leveled cities. Why have activists failed to push western governments to materialize any sort of timely, meaningful shifts in foreign policy? I think part of it has to do with the tools we are using. Like Malcolm X said, we’re not outnumbered; we’re outorganized.
For one, we are letting these tech CEO’s off way too easy. The spotlight is increasingly being pointed at corporate social media giants for conducting a mass behavioral health experiment on the masses. These centralized platforms bombard users with morally outrageous content and advertisements while working with the state to suppress dissenting voices. Antagonizing algorithms polarize public discourse and keep us at each others throats, preventing any sort of mass peace movement from building power. Places like Europe have a whole framework of data rights protections for users that is nonexistent in the Americas. The corporate communication apparatus we organize with freezes the political process and manufactures consent for genocide. Was it Noam Chomskey who said, “the media defines what’s possible”…? By the way, he’s not dead yet.
How else do you think Trump was able to organize his base to attempt a coup on Jan 6th? He paid someone to build his own communications apparatus in the form of a social media platform, Truth Social, on an open protocol called ActivityPub, a predecessor to Nostr. Meridith Whittaker, the president of the Signal Foundation, explains in a recent article that you should read if you are an activist,
The Right has a point. In that they understand social media platforms as critical infrastructure capable of shaping and distorting our shared information ecosystem, and they recognize that controlling how this ecosystem is “distorted” is a better use of their time — in pursuit of power and influence — than trying to create a magic formula that can “democratize” or “balance” the influence these platforms exert.
The few I hear with similar critiques include OGs like Chairman Yeshitela, who, alongside 3 other members of the People’s Afrikan Socialist Party, is currently fighting bogus charges by the u.s. federal government for conspiring with the Russians in sowing dissent in u.s. elections. The FBI violently raided their properties in 2022 without any sort of warrant and before any formal charges had been filed. Contrast this with the recent raid on Mar-a-Lago where not a single flash grenade was used. He explains in a 2023 interview on Democracy Now! that
We have to move beyond protest and move toward the question of capturing and yielding political power.
As activists, we have to be brave enough to realize that what we are doing is not producing our desired results and pivot to new strategies. Open internet protocols are a must have in any activist’s toolbox if they are serious about social change. Start with a simple internet search, and start building. I currently run a small relay that I use to introduce my community to nostr. I’ve spun up a diaspora instance for my close friends and family in the past as well. While this tech is accessible, it requires you to take some time to learn about the landscape of alternative social media protocols and how the Internet works. You could always reach out via the contact form on my website at https://miguelalmodo.com for more information or questions about how to get started!
My choice of social media is my way of preventing the monetization of my attention and digital footprint by the corpo-state consent factory that defines our current political realities. It’s an step in reclaiming your digital sovereignty and empowering your base with an un-suppressible voice on the internet. A liberated fifth estate built on open protocols could channel people power into material improvements within our lifetimes. It’s why I boycott the corporate tech platforms and why you should too.
edit: I realized after I published this that truth social was launched in Feb of 2022, a year AFTER Jan 6 2021. I insinuated that Jan 6 was organized on truth social which is not the case. By making the connection here, I wish to bring to light the power open internet protocols have in sustaining a cult of personality behind someone like trump. If activists and organizations leveraged the same tech to organize their base, it would bring people together in a way that could manifest the amount of people power needed to overthrow the influence of capital in political processes and allow for real democracy to shape our outcomes.
