Discoveries

I've been searching blogs and Twitter trying to find people interested in social networking and discussing electronic civil disobedience and (if possible) in relation to Henry David Thoreau. I stumbled upon civil disobedience & nonviolence: Manuals for resistance with the help of Internet, a blog "on civil disobedience, innovative resistance without protest, direct action and plowshares disarmament". In this post that I have linked, the author (who I believe is Per Herngren, an author of several texts online that discuss non-violence and the practices of civil disobedience) provides links to websites that teach internet activists how to use Twitter in times of conflict (providing a variety of languages including Farsi) and mentions that "Quite a few of my postprotest hacker friends are involved in making the manuals." This sparked some interest in that in my last post I mentioned hackers on the internet (more in depth posting of hacktivism to come in future blog posts). Herngren is familiar with postprotest hackers and commemorates each blog posting to an act of civil disobedience or nonviolent action.

A recent article found in the NY Daily News speaks about an act of civil disobedience occurred this past Tuesday in Manhattan as a crowd of protestors gathered in front of the Federal Building protesting immigration laws. Ever since Arizona passed the SB1070 immigration law, incidents have occurred all over the country.

Arizona's new law has reawakened Latino and immigrant communities. They're not about to let Congress and Obama dodge the question any longer.

If they do, watch the number of people arrested for civil disobedience climb from a just few hundred into the tens of thousands.

Although this article discusses a physical form of civil disobedience, there are forms of ECD that are occuring along the same issue as well. Twitter users tag #Arizona and #immigration to discuss disturbances about Arizona's new law. Twitter users hate Arizona's new immigration law according to the Huffington Post. Activists are spreading the word about the Arizona anti-immigration law through social networking cites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and blogs.

Online news articles discussing civil disobedience are getting several comments. By participating in some of the comment streams I think I'll be able to get my ideas out there and even form new ones as discussion allows.

A Twittering Thoreau? I Don't Think So...

Traveling back to rooting my paper with Henry David Thoreau, I googled (I love how this is a verb) "Twitter and Thoreau" and wound up with some interesting results. My synopsis: Thoreau would not have a Twitter account, nor a Facebook account, nor a YouTube account. A man of solitude who once said, "I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, then be crowded on a velvet cushion," enjoys privacy and a world void of clutter. He would view our world today as a world filled with noise and clutter. As a man who respected privacy and solitude, as written about in Walden, Thoreau communed with nature to find and discover life in its purest element. Thoreau says:

Our life is frittered away by detail...I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or athousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail....Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

Although Twitter and other forms of social networking do indeed "distract our attention from serious things" they also allow us to keep up to date with breaking news, participate as an activist, promote worthy causes, and assist in helping citizens fight for independence and freedom. These are serious things that are "improving means to an unimproved end" 140 characters at a time.

Beginning

So this blog is a project to express my thought processes as I create my research paper discussing Henry David Thoreau's brilliant essay "Civil Disobedience" and the modern forms of civil disobedience demonstrated through online media.

After discussing in class, I think I'm going to plan to write this paper discussing how civil disobedience can be seen in modern times through using social networks online such as twitter. The Iran election is a hot topic right now and so I think I'm going to use this as my main modern times example and continue to tie Thoreau's essay into what I'm studying through the social networks.