It has been 10 years since the launch of the Occupy movement. Ten years since ”Arab Spring".
For me, the Occupy movement was an extension of what many called "Arab Spring". I had been working on an intense project with Susan and Jennifer and many, many others, which we ended up calling "Witnessing Revolution". When I saw a photo of a little shop in Syria, with a sign in the window which said "Occupy Wall Street", I felt compelled to join the Occupy movement as an action of solidarity. So, today, I'd like to remember our "Witnessing Revolution" project.
DailyKos Liveblogs
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"Witnessing Revolution" began as a DailyKos "liveblog". A liveblog was practice where each day, someone would post a numbered piece on a particular topic and link that post to the ones that came before. People could tag in for a number in one of the comments on the post and then wait their turn to publish. It had become a common community effort on DailyKos. A way maintain interest, and maybe get a more in depth education, on a subject by attracting the followers of all the different authors. One of the more education ones came about after the big oil leak from the rig in the Gulf of Mexico. We all got a fascinating education on the technology of the rig and the undersea equipment, as well as the ecology of the Gulf. There are millions of users on DailyKos. A vast resource of expertise. So, one can learn a lot more than one ever expected from a political blog site.
Anyway, each author would use a title that started with the same words. Then, produce whatever suited their interest and writing style. Commentary, stories, technical info..... you never knew what you'd get over the course of a liveblog.
A Different Kind of Liveblog
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"Witnessing Revolution", almost inevitably, morphed into something slightly different. It was still a group effort. (In fact, it wouldn't have been possible without a large team of contributors in the background.) Eventually, though, we halted almost all commentary from ourselves. It wasn't about us, our opinions or our educational offerings.
We wanted to remove, as much as possible, our [mostly] Western/European voices. After all, we're the voices of the oppressor; the imperialist interests which have shaped the politics, economies and geographic boundaries throughout what we disrespectfully refer to as "The Middle East", ever since the early 1900s. We have profoundly altered the very way of life there. Destroying longstanding cultures and sustainable practices. We are not who needs to be heard. Nor can we possibly have the proper insights.
We decided to take advantage of the social media age and boost the voices of the people who were on the ground. What were they saying about their own protests and struggles? Thus, it became a curation of social media posts from the locations where things were actively happening.
It should be noted that we were not professional journalists. This had its advantages and its disadvantages. We could break the molds of "reporting". We didn't have professional egos to soother or careers to promote. At the same time, we had not ability to do much vetting of what we could find. Were powerful interests controlling what made it to the internet? We simply did the best we could.
Removing our voices from the published pieces did not mean that we didn't have voices behind the scenes. Throughout the production of this series, there were heated debates. One of those debates caused a rift in the team. Rightfully so. Not the rift, itself. I wish we had figured out a way to keep working together. The debate was a worthy one. The subject: Libya.
Producing A Collective Publication
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Before we get to Libya, some context of the group's work to that point.
Sparked originally by interest in the Egyptian protests, early blogs were called "Eyes on Egypt". Then, as protests erupted elsewhere, some of us realized there were linkages and that it would be meaningful to talk about them all together. Though it had become popularly known as "Arab Spring", we knew that it wasn't just Arab and we were hoping it was more than just a spring. So, we expanded the name to "Eyes on Egypt and the Region". We consolidated the independently generated liveblog stream by creating a group on DailyKos which was committed to looking at a larger perspective, rather than each protest as a compartmentalized event. We would cooperatively produce each post.
Later, we would realize that any geographic limitation to the project would, by definition, miss the point. Also, that Egypt wasn't the first inspiration of the larger movement. Tunisia had erupted prior to Egypt. It didn't feel right to keep the perspective so Egypt-centric. So, we changed the name of the liveblog, again, to "Witnessing Revolution".
Behind the scenes of these posts. which looked simple enough, was a busy hive of workers collecting resources. We developed a system for collection and cataloguing. We had a wiki where people could submit links. The submission section was open to anyone. Each country with any protest activity had a section. There were a couple of other sections for material that wasn't specific to one location. A team of us - I was on the sorting team - would sort the submissions by looking at the content of the link and then moving it to the associated section, with a date.
The strength of this collective curating was that people from all over the world, with real world connections to people on the ground, could find resources that any one or a small group of us never would have managed to find. Our well became deep.
Whoever was producing the day's liveblog would go to the wiki and choose the submissions they would include. We had a formatted template, with sections for each country. It included code for posting tweets, blogs, photos, FB posts, audio recordings, etc. Once a link was used, it was put into the "archive" of its section on the wiki. (Hey, Susan or Jennifer, do you still have a link to the wiki?) Most days, we covered as many countries as we had submissions from. Some blogs would be dedicated to one place, if there was enough activity to warrant that.
We rarely strayed from our "no commentary" rule. Once in a while, a writer would be given the go ahead to report out with their own analysis. It was very, very rare, though.
All of this was happening daily. At the height of protest activity, there could be a hundred or more links submitted. It was high intensity work. What I've described may sound rather dry. Far from it, because of the content we were wading through.
The Gruesome Nature of It
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The government response to almost all of these protests were violent. Very violent. From beatings and arrests to gunfire to bombings. The people on the ground said they wanted the world to see what they were being subjected to. They worried that national and corporate media would whitewash what was happening. So, we were receiving and sorting through an overwhelming amount of horrific stories and gruesome images. Day after day of bloody scenes, dead bodies. Men. Women. Children. Elders. Gunshot wounds were almost sanitary compared to the aftermath of bombings, where people were crushed or missing limbs. Family members sobbing over their dead loved ones. This was not easy work to produce.
Sticking to a Mission
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The group had had some conflict in the background, before we consolidated into a collectively produced witnessing project. Some people wanted to focus on action-oriented blogs: calling and writing politicians, etc. Others of us wanted to focus on building an awareness and amplifying voices. So, we split into two efforts, which were complimentary. Still, with the collective curation inviting anyone to participate, we constantly faced the pressure to do more than witness. There were endless email chains about what content met our mission. For instance, we were witnessing actions of citizens against their own governing states. We would regularly receive submissions about and arguments for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. An important topic to cover, certainly, but not within our mission description. We wanted to have the public see as many authors as possible, but we found that we couldn’t trust authors to stay on point. The group function on DailyKos allowed us to let people put posts “in the queue”, where we could edit them before publication. It was way too much work for us, as volunteers with lives to lead, to rein in authors who felt the need to have their own voice. In the end, we stuck with a small group of “authors” posting so that we could ensure that we were true to our mission.
Then Came Libya
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Those of us doing the witnessing project were deep into this when activity in Libya became intense. In retrospect, I almost wish we had decided not to include Libya in our liveblogs. I can see, now, how, from the beginning, it was different. Or became different quite quickly. There were unarmed protests, at first, which looked quite similar to everywhere else. Later, it was an armed rebellion, engaging in firefights with Gaddhafi's military. Taking cities and standing ground as the national armed forces swept in. We didn't know what to make of it.
Most of us would have supported a truly liberational armed rebellion against an authoritarian governance. But, we weren't sure who was fighting what. Arms cost money. Where did they come from? Of all the places where uprisings were happening, why was this happening in Libya and not, say, Bahrain? Hello, oil interests! We had questions. Lots of them. Some of us knew that we weren't well-equipped to analyze it well. Nor did we want these diaries to become yet another playground for unreasonable internet debates.
Still, we were committed to sharing what was happening and a lot was happening in Libya. It would have been a glaring hypocrisy to leave that out. We stuck to our principle of curating what we found from people who were there.
Then, there was a campaign to have the UN/US give military support to the rebels. This is where our group became staunchly divided. One faction wanted us to break our witnessing only principle and support at UN/US “no-fly zone” action. Others of us were absolutely against that. These blogs were about witnessing. Also, some of us recognized the very neocon-imperialist nature of sending in US/European troops. We remained committed to the mission. This meant that we lost a chunk of contributors. But, we pressed on.
Until We Couldn’t
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We published over 250 editions of the daily liveblog, along with another 200 or so related posts. We keeping on keeping on, until, as a team, we were thoroughly burnt out. The protest movement was waning. We had watched Egypt’s inspiring movement end up crushed by a military coup. Having been in contact with organizers on the ground there, I met a group of them when they came to Boston. They were devastated by this outcome.
The Egyptian movement was a profound inspiration for people everywhere. The military coup and resulting repression was an almost equally powerful source of demoralization. Additionally, repression of journalists and social media voices meant that sources for witnessing were disappearing. This was happening elsewhere as well. All of it was bearing down on us and wearing us out.
I still have pangs of guilt about declaring that I needed to stop. The people living through it all of didn't have that option. However, I was loosing my ability to process it. Each of the people in those stories and images were living their one experience. We were processing the experiences of millions.
While it is important to bear witness and spread that witnessing, it also feels as though you're helpless, while trying to make sure you aren't being just voyeuristic. If you're not in the right frame of mind, you can cross the line from witnessing in solidarity to extracting revolution porn. Personally, I was coming to terms with the reality that I had become permanently disabled. My young child was having serious issues with bullying in school and teachers who labeled her “different” (which, apparently justified the bullying.) She needed me to protect and care for her. There wasn’t anyone else to do that. I couldn't keep saturating my days in the details of the grim brutality of our violent, authoritarian world and still be there for her. I shifted my energy from witnessing to standing in solidarity via the Occupy Movement. I’m glad to have done both. Occupy became a meaningful symbol and moved more of the world to think about the cruelty of class warfare waged by the “1%”. I was able to voice my sense of the links between the inequities here and the struggles around the globe. Being a facilitator for other people’s voices at the Occupy gatherings/meetings/rallies felt related to the witnessing work. Many ongoing friendships/comradeships were forged and continue to this day. Though it had its challenges and reproduced many of the toxic dynamic of our culture, it still felt, overall, that it was a generative experience, moving the public discourse in a good direction.
“Witnessing Revolution” may not have the popular cache of Occupy, but its a solid body of work for all of us who produced it to be proud of. Again, not perfect. We learned as we went and navigated a lot of complex challenges posed to us via the technology, the content matter and the people. Like Occupy, I came away with friendships/comradeships that are still strong today. Sometimes, it’s not about outcomes. It’s about what you forge along the way. The work you choose to do is the raw material for what comes out of the forge. If all I forged were one friendship, I’d say it was worth it. So much more was forged, though. While I may wish that I’d done certain things with more wisdom or that particular events had gone better, I don’t regret either of these pieces of my history. Our history. I’d definitely do it all again.
Forge on, everyone. There’s still work to do.