Whiskey Mambo

Sara and I decided to join the Prop 8 Protest Rally at Philadelphia’s City Hall today. What a blast! There’s nothing like stopping traffic with a few thousand like-minded activists chanting, hollering, and generally feeling the love. When we first showed up around 1 PM, the crowd was only a few hundred; however, when we left the radio said that the protest was getting bigger by the hour. One of the organizers said that over 5,000 people were there! [Edited: I had thought Brandi said 12,600 people were there, but what she actually said was that 12,600 people had seen the Facebook page. See her comment below for details]. Whatever the count, it felt great to support our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in their fight for equality.

Here some pics! That’s Sara getting interviewed by KYW News! People loved our signs and I expect lots of great photos in the news and online as all the major TV stations and several bloggers covered the event. Oh, a shoutout to Vangie from Dyke Drama who took a second to say hello and introduce herself; she loved our signs. Check ‘em out! (Full disclosure: We got the ideas from earlier protests.)

The spontaneous march around City Hall was my favorite part, and the police were awesome in keeping everyone safe. We expected Pro-Prop 8 demonstrators, but none materialized. The only sour note was a single downturned thumb by a lone driver. Most drivers honked in solidarity! Frankly, Philadelphia is amazing, and I’m proud of my city taking part in this nationwide event and the way that we supported human rights in California and throughout the US today!

To learn more, check out the Facebook Group, the Join The Impact website, and the Courage Campaign website.

Check out the pictures I took at Matt & Lisa’s Annual Halloween for Homies 2008 bash! I’m in the bunny costume (recycled from Sara’s Alice-in-Wonderland-themed Birthday Party). Sara came as a Raven and brought the hooping vibe to the masses. Thanks to Matt and Lisa for being the best hosts and our dear friends!

Ok, this morning, I’m checking my Twitter stream and was happily surprised to find that Tim O’Reilley (yeah, the publishing and web 2.0 magnate) retweeted my post response referencing this story by David Wolman in Wired magazine: Cairo Activists Use Facebook to Rattle Regime. Besides being totally juiced that such a celebrated figure would deem it worthy to (a) follow me on Twitter, (b) actually reads my replies, and (c) thought this was worth mentioning, it got me thinking about a number of items I’ve seen recently regarding the marriage of social activism and Web 2.0.

One great example from this month’s Fast Company is an article by David Kushner regarding a “YouTube for unseen atrocities.” The article talks about a venture started by Peter Gabriel called the Hub, where on-site recorders of terrible events can post their movies such that a devoted group of online activists can react and start applying international pressure to correct the situations. While it is arguably difficult to ensure that cameras are rolling when “The MAN” is kicking the proletariat’s ass, today’s video-capable cellphones are making this a reality even in the farthest reaches of the third world.  More power to them.

Another good example is Amazee (thanks, again Tim!), which is kind of a startup incubator for social activists. Rebels with causes can find like-minded activists and resources to help them get their projects started.

All this makes you want to cheer for the little guy. Or as Arundhati Roy says “stand with the dispossesed.” What social activism will you engage in today?

In the interest of full disclosure:

Shout out to the folks at Strands for sending me a t-shirt. It’s a nice, dark gray number with Strands logo on the front and a nice letter from Kalong.

You have to admire this level of marketing engagement and service. I still don;t have much utility for the service, but look forward to improvements.  With the current financial turmoil, I hope these guys “keep their shirts” as well and weather the storm as the site doesn’t appear to have a discernible business model. Par for the course in Web 2.0, but you want to root for the good guys!

So I check into Lifestream.fm to see what’s up. Ok, it’s a Sunday morning at 9 AM, but given that I’ve already posted to Twitter I would expect to see this morning’s posts in my stream. No such luck: The last post I see is from yesterday morning. Wow, that’s underwhelming.

I need to work on my German too, as it seems Lifestream has a larger proportion of German usership. Having one language, a foreign one for me despite all my latent RosettaStoning, on your Everyone page is somewhat limiting. Users often check out pages like this as a starting point in exploring a new social network, but not being able to read a single post is a turn-off to new users. If they only showed me posts in languages I knew, or allowed me to filter posts by language, that would be a big help.