A Friend's Project

The letter that follows is part of a friend's project for my Racial Justice Movements in the United States course.



To All Socially Just Internet Users:

Education, information, and communication are important issues in our collective struggle for justice. We all know the power of knowledge, of telling stories and sharing new ways of knowing and being that help us fight inequality, injustice, and cynicism. The internet has drastically changed the way that we learn and acquire information in our society and has created new liberatory possibilities for building communities and creating change. Imagine a new politics based on open access to information, better education, more communication, and new opportunities to direct and shape our future.

The democratization of information has been a powerful outcome of the new role of technology in society. Now, we have access to indy-media and blogs which provide a grassroots alternative to corporate mass media. We have access to Wikipedia, which provides opportunities for people to contribute to popular knowledge. We have access to networking sites and listservs that help us to connect with others involved in struggle and provide new possibilities for organizing. All of these have been used to great effect within the social justice community, but now its time to branch out to the general population.

This letter is a call to socially just internet users to engage in a broad-based, collective, and sustained effort to claim the internet, more specifically Wikipedia, as a tool for social change. Wikipedia is the place to start, by making the ultimate source of popular knowledge a place for sharing social justice. There is already a presence of socially just thinking on Wikipedia, but what would it mean to ensure its growth by actively connecting popular articles and ideas with issues of justice and equity? Participating in the construction of popular knowledge by editing articles on Wikipedia, taking part in online communities like blogs and listservs committed to justice, and actively living our justice ideals in our participation on the internet is a way for us to use the opportunities afforded to us by new technology to enact change.



In Solidarity,

A Fellow Social Justice Activist, Sam Menefee-Libey