Tag: Twitter

Protesting Proposition 8 – It’s All About Love

On By SarahIn Opinion, PoliticsLeave a comment

Today, protests will be happening around the country. LGBT folks everywhere are speaking out for marriage eqality. When I stop to think about it, I get chills thinking that Gillian and I were there and witnessed the spark that set all of this off.  Though we’re no longer residents of California, I’m so glad that we can march in solidarity here in Chicago today, and perhaps even bring the movement for marriage equality here with a stronger presence.

For more information about rallies happening around the country, please visit this site.

I will be among many other livebloggers from around the country, and you can follow our tweets here. Also, you can find some video covereage of the action in San Francisco here.

Peace everyone! Let’s remember that this is all about love!

National Conference for Media Reform

On By SarahIn Community, Opinion, Politics5 Comments

I’m not entirely sure how I stumbled onto these guys, but I sure am glad I did. This weekend Free Press hosted a the National Conference for Media Reform (NCMR) in St. Paul (St. Paul has got it going on these days!). Since discovering Twitter, I have been looking for cool feeds to follow, and I have become aware of a few folks who started following me. Pretty neat.

I found Free Press website and book marked them in Ma.gnolia back in April, but didn’t think about it much again after that. Admittedly, I get kind of lazy about the websites I save there, just kind of harding them for future reference. And I do refer back to them, but some times it takes me a while. But I digress.

I didn’t think about Free Press again until this weekend when the Twittersphere just lit up with activity from the NCMR conference. I had no idea it was going on, but I started seeing lots of posts with the #ncmr hash tag, and the tweets included interesting quotes from the speeches and panels they were watching, and there was a post for the live feed of the conference, so I decided to check it out.

It was amazing! The likes of Bill Moyers, Dan Rather, Ariana Huffington, Amy Goodman, and Van Jones were all there talking about media’s responsibility to help the public hold politicians accountable, and the necessity of media to stay independent in order to accomplish this.

It was all so inspiring. I’ve been tuning in as I can this entire weekend, in between chores and errands. Bill Moyers address is a must-see, and there is another video of him being accosted by a Fox News reporter that makes me just love Moyers more than I did before. The video is going viral, which is very exciting. Word is getting out!

I highly recommend checking out any of these videos. Lawrence Lessig’s is really good. Van Jones had me clapping and cheering here in my living room (I’ll post later when its uploaded). Dan Rather is just a cool guy. I missed Amy Goodman, but I hope they’ll post her speech soon.

I hope the few friends who read this blog and any who stumble upon it will check some of these out. It made me feel inspired to keep blogging, to keep doing my small part of expressing myself, spreading the encouragement to others to do the same, and to use the new media tools to build a progressive movement and community.

Overthinking “Peace” Tweet

On By SarahIn Internet, Opinion1 Comment

One of my Twitter contacts posted the following tweet tonight:

Wondering how many of you my twitter friends, believe in world peace? if you do, copy this tweet in your next tweet.

This got me thinking: Do I believe in world peace?

What does is this question really asking? My first instinct is to say “Duh! Of course I do! I majored in Peace Studies in college.” The language of this tweet is really confusing. Is it telling you to copy the tweet if you wonder how many of your Twitter followers believe in peace? What is the point of this little exercise? Who started this and what do they hope to accomplish?

World peace doesn’t really exist right now. Or more precisely, perhaps, there are many significant wars going on right now that cause peaceniks to feel relatively hopeless.

I suppose I do believe in peace in that it exists in some places in the world right now. More importantly, however, peace is one of my core values, and as a citizen of the world I believe my every action has an impact, and that peace is contagious and inspired. Much like this little tweet.

I decided to edit the tweet a bit:

I believe that world peace is possible. If you do, too, copy this tweet in your next tweet. Pass it on.

But I can’t bring myself to actually send it! I feel a little silly, like I’m making a big deal out of nothing. But at the same time I think it’s kind of important to send the right message to my 26 Twitter followers. And what is it trying to convey? But even though I’ve never even met my Twitter contact in person, I don’t want him to think that I don’t believe in peace. Because I do! What am I trying to convey? So I wrote this blog, which is way too long for a tweet.

Truly, I’m overthinking this. But perhaps that was the original intent. Or maybe its just me.

Twittering

On By SarahIn Fun & Entertainment, Internet1 Comment

Okay okay, so I’m a little obsessed with social networking sites. Just tonight I joined Pownce. I couldn’t tell you yet what it does, but I’m there. I think I can share more stuff there.

I joined Twitter a while back (like, in November), but I had no idea what to do with it. So I didn’t use it at all.

Within the last couple of days, two people (whom I know) have started to follow me on Twitter, so I figured i had better figure out what this is about and use it.

I’m starting to get it. It’s like a teeny tiny blog. You write 140 character updates about what you are doing. Some have compared it to the CB, which is an analogy I love. I remember when that was all the rage in the 1970s. When I was about eight years old, my family took the all American vacation, driving across country in our van. My dad got a CB for the trip. We all created handles. I think mine was “Pooh Bear,” being that I was obsessed with Winnie the Pooh.

I like the CB analogy, but I think that Twittering is more artful, more akin to haiku.