This week been full of violence and hate: Dr. George Tiller's murder, a cartoon depicting Sonia Sotomayor as a piñata, and a rash of hate crimes against LGBTQ couples.
But nothing burns through ignorance like turning bigoted poo-poo into renewable energy. Sometimes called a Blog-at-thon, we’re having a Blogging Weekend of Action called "We can Do Better" starting tomorrow Saturday, June 6th and ending at 12am Monday, June 8th. We’re asking folks to write against hate and violence and post their links to the event page.
I know I'm many years late to the party, but my skepticism of online activism is beginning to dissipate as I watch the division between online and offline action blur. I also sense that there’s a growing and nasty undercurrent of domestic terrorism, and if we can all join in examining those patterns of violence, we can start to change the structures that are promoting it.
The idea to have a weekend of blogging was inspired by the Roe v Wade Blog-a-thon I participated in this past winter, where people wrote posts on what Roe v Wade meant to them. I wrote about a very contentious encounter with a Pro-Life protester. The experience was valuable - not only had I found a place to vent, I found I was more tuned in to news on reproductive politics, and found myself donating more readily as well. The online action complimented what I was doing already offline, and the online work was continually pushing and inspiring my work offline. As someone who organizes for a living, it's heartening to know that tools - whether it's a bull horn or a twitter account - can be used in such a complimentary way.
In that spirit of collaboration, I hope you'll be a part of our blogging experiment this weekend. All of us - as progressive activists, bloggers, organizers, hell-raisers, trouble makers - whatever we self-identify as - have the opportunity to take action and turn the increasing violence and hate into a teachable moment.
I don't think this will be a persuasive action; in other words, I don't think that we're going to change people's limited and bigoted mind-set. But I think it's a a chance to come together in a new way and connect with one another. So that when the threats, deaths, allegations become even more escalated, we will have enhanced our network of allies. I think of it as "laying pipe."
I hope you consider using the Do Better tag on this platform and elsewhere. I feel that the hate that's being spewed could be an opportunity that helps coalesce the new Civil Rights movement.
Please post your links if you participate in the comments section of this post or to the event page on Facebook. You can also use the #dobetter hashtag if you post to twitter. On Monday, I will do a roundup of what people wrote about, and I'm also hoping this action will help generate traffic.