A powerful example of citizen journalism at work occurred last January on the streets on Cairo, Egypt. Journalists were scarce; concerned there would not be enough to cover the news. To everyone’s surprise, the citizens did the work. View the full article here and an excerpt below.
An excerpt:
By its nature, social media is democratic. Social networks are structured on egalitarian and democratic values of social and political participation, he said. There are no barriers to entry. The costs of collaboration are zero. Your significance is based on your voice. Those with the most important things to say are rewarded by the audience. Contribution is commitment, which means you regard yourself as involved and committed when you go online. Others see they are not alone, by watching in real time how the movement they are joining is growing.
When such groups moved from virtual online communities to the streets, he said, they challenged entrenched power structures which were as surprised as the protestors themselves were at the power the Internet had unleashed. But no one really anticipated what this would lead to. No one anticipated Jan. 25, he said.
Interesting interview with democracy activist Alaa Abd Al Fattah at the Personal Democracy Forum.
An excerpt:
NORRIS: Help us understand your role in the uprisings in Egypt.
Mr. AL FATTAH: My role during the uprising itself was I was a foot soldier. I was one person among a big mass. I was in Tahrir. There were similar masses in other cities. And my blog was one of many blogs that were key to building a pro-democracy movement years prior to the uprising. And the online communities then kept growing and growing, and they played a very big role leading up to the revolution in building up to that event but not during.
NORRIS: You’re here in this country in part to describe what happened in Egypt. Are there things that happened there that people don’t well understand? Here, when there are large uprisings or large news events like this, a popular narrative takes hold and sometimes it’s correct and sometimes it’s not completely correct.
Mr. AL FATTAH: I think a lot of it is misunderstood and misrepresented in both internationally and even locally from the framing of this as an Internet-led revolution to a framing that it’s a youth revolution. All of that is based on the aspects of reality, but it excludes the majority of the people who participated in the revolution.
And by that exclusion, you also exclude a very big aspect of what it is about. And also, there’s a lot of focus on Tahrir while you had the majority of the revolution was happening outside of Cairo. And some of its most amazing stories were in – there were six towns that were completely autonomous after the third day of the uprising, and people had to manage the cities and had to organize themselves to keep the cities functioning. And that experience is amazing, and it’s not really being discussed.
Relational Diplomacy is first and foremost not about theory; it is about action – about building a united planet one relationship at a time.
Relational Diplomacy is also about breaking the rules and inventing new ones: turning staid practices upside down, building connections in the most unlikely places, tapping into the magic of coincidences as well as the fruits of hard labor to weave together the most unlikely, but extraordinary relationships.
A successful Relational Diplomat embodies the beautiful marriage of proactive and reactive behavior – both planning and allowing things to happen. When opportunities come, a successful Relational Diplomat is willing to toss away the play book to move forward with the unexpected.
A true Relational Diplomat building a new United Planet Japan, 2011
I’ve recently returned from two weeks in Japan traveling with Ms. Chie Goto — in Nagoya, Tokyo, and the disaster-struck area of Tohoku. I was struck by Chie’s spirit as it embodies the idea of relational diplomacy: she is vibrant, open, practical, and above all, about finding connections and solutions.
A bit about Chie: She left Japan for a few months in late 2010, when the politicians of Nagoya and the Aichi Prefecture were pressing her hard to run for political office. “[This is] not my life’s mission,” she replied to them time and time again. She had a larger vision of the world.
Spirit of Japan
Ever since she was a girl and peered wide-eyed at her bedside globe, Chie yearned to see and understand the world. The opportunity came when she was 14, and traveled around the world with her mother. Afterward, she won a special global prize and opportunity to travel to see the Pope.
After returning from her international experience, Chie’s life was forever changed. She wrote an article to the editor of a newspaper to share her experience and desire for global understanding and world peace. Chie went on the study and live around the world, founded several international organizations devoted to world peace and understanding, and published her autobiography.
In the aftermath of the disastrous earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Chie searched for an opportunity to make a difference and help her country. When she found the position with United Planet Japan, she jumped at the chance to build a new organization with a global vision in her own country; she has been off to an incredible start.
Devastation in Japan
I was so lucky to have the chance to travel with Chie, and see her skills in action. She has a remarkable ability to make connections between people, and to motivate them to take action. In Nagoya, Chie and I met with Governor Omura and made a two-hour presentation in Japanese to the Aichi Prefecture Assembly members.
We are trying to build ties at a local government level to inspire relationships among businesses, schools and universities, civil society, and people. By connecting people and organizations across borders and diverse sectors, we are able to tap into unharnessed synergies, find pockets of unexplored potential, and build bonds of cooperation and support needed in a globally challenged world.
We are working from the top down, bottom up, and right through the middle. Each level of relationships fuels the other. If we can garner local government support, business support, academic involvement, civil society engagement, and people-to-people collaboration and exchange, we can build a sturdy net of relationships that will form a foundation for further collaboration and innovation.
With this goal in mind, government, business, academic, civil society leaders from Japan will visit the United States to build mutually beneficial relationships; and leaders from the United States and other countries will go abroad. Business leaders will focus on sectors of common interest and global importance such as clean energy, life sciences, IT, agriculture, etc.
Through this effort, I hope that we can turn the push for global competitiveness (in which one country’s loss is another country’s gain) into a push for true global cooperation (everyone wins).
When we extend the limits from the traditional “us” versus “them” to encircle the entire planet with the idea that we are all on the same team in which we all depend on each other, learn from each other, and uplift one another in an interconnected world, then we will have taken a very important step in the realization of a united planet.
Please view Chie’s beautiful and moving video of reconstruction efforts in Japan: Click here for the video.
I had a very interesting taxi ride from Minsk to Dudutki, a small village outside of the city. I was fortunate to meet a taxi driver who spoke English well. He told me some interesting stories on our 2-hour ride. A well-educated man, he had to quit teaching—a profession that he adored—because he did not earn enough to support his family.
He said that the Belarusian people were very obedient and respectful. He was proud of his country. “We don’t have any crime”, he said. When organized crime started to become a problem, Lukashenko, President of Belarus since 1994, (regarded as the last dictator of Europe) created a Special Forces squad to face them. He gave the squad unlimited powers. One by one, the crime bosses started to disappear. Sooner or later, they left the country completely –fleeing to the Ukraine and beyond.
There were other kinds of crime on the streets and highways. “You couldn’t stop to change your tire without getting robbed,” explained my taxi driver. So Lukashenko made another police squad to fix the problem. Again, the squad had unlimited rights, including the power to kill the criminals on the spot. Suddenly, all these crimes stopped. No one wanted to face the risk of getting slaughtered without a trial.
After hearing these stories, I decided to take a stroll to the Presidential Palace to see where Lukashenko lived. As I pulled the camera from my backpack, guards raced towards me and demanded that I put it away. Can you imagine not having the right to take photos of 10 Downing Street, Bellevue Palace, or the White House?
It is hard to believe that 10 million people live under such circumstances- under this degree of suppression in the modern world. But then again, think of all the countries, especially in Africa, that face similar peril. In many developed countries, we take our freedom for granted. We squander our right to vote, not realizing that in some countries it is a right so precious that people would easily give their lives for it. The people in Belarus, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, among many others, live in alternative realities with barely enough oxygen to breathe — starved of the basic right to decide their own destinies.
All this happens while the rest of the world continues on, largely oblivious to their plights. I met a young German man who said that he avoided travel to Belarus at all costs because it was a dictatorship. I would argue the reverse – that we shouldn’t leave the people there stranded in some strange alternative reality. Instead we should do everything in our power to build bridges from the outside-in and empower the people to build bridges from the inside-out.
If enough bridges are built, freedom can seep in. People can take control of their futures. They can influence and shape the societies in which they live. After all, isn’t this a basic human right?
The people of Belarus and other dictatorships around the world would benefit from employing the principles found in the book, Relational Diplomacy. They can learn ways to organize, create change from within, and transform their own societies.
This article from Slate offers an insightful examination of the question “Did Twitter Make Them Do It?” Jesse Lichtenstein offers a thought-provoking overview of the debate over the role of new connective technologies in Egypt’s recent revolution.
