New Media

This is an interesting and highly accessible format for engaging folks in thought around topical political and social justice issues. Perhaps also a format for media criticism. This one focuses on immigration reform. It's kinda long, but worth checking out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN1kp1ggWyM

Fifth Estate, Best Practices and Democracy

The Fifth Estate extends from the blogosphere to the community and the ways participants hold the powers accountable. The Fourth Estate, the media, held some of that responsibility, but communications is now more in the hands of the people. 

So how do mainstream Fourth Estate best practices extend to community and social media-- the Fifth Estate? Compelling stories will showcase where technological innovations can uphold or violate ethics. Where there are concerns, we will ponder new best practices needs. Stories reach from the regular user to business to government, policy and law.

New York (FNS)—In an effort to help dispel concerns of racism, Terri Stocke, President of the Second Amendment March, agreed to coordinate with members of the Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/Push Coalition in an effort to encourage more members of the Black community to bear arms and to carry them publicly.

In return, members of the Black community have agreed to flood the 2nd Amendment March, scheduled for April 19, 2010, in Washington, DC, with hundreds of thousands of heavily armed residents of Chicago’s South Side and New York City’s Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhoods.

“We hope that the Black community understands that 2nd Amendment rights apply to all Americans” Ms. Stocke told the crowd outside Mr. Sharpton’s offices. She went on to tell the crowd:

It seems that many of those who are regular guests of this space are committed to a worldview based on some degree of reason and rationality.

That’s a handy thing if the “Covert Alarm Locator Apparatus” in your Isaac Daniel® Compass Global 1000 GPS sneakers should happen to fail and you need to find your way back to where the rest of us are; sadly, not all voters are equipped with such a helpful worldview.

Luckily for them, there are lots of conservative “mouth organs” ready to fill the “information gap”.

They send out lots of emails every day, spreading their Word, and as a public service I receive several of them; this to help keep track of just what’s out there, exactly.

If you ever wondered why otherwise normal people believe some of the craziest things about “Obama’s Secret Death Care And National Virgin Sacrifice Program”, have a look at some of the things I get every single day, and it might all make a bit more sense.