When I was in Chiapas this summer, there was one thing I kept wondering: are the Zapatista people better off for being Zapatistas, or not? An article in today's New York Times addresses just that, though I'm taking it with a grain of salt, like anything in the media.

The conclusion the reporter makes is that things aren't much different between Zapatista and government supporters, and in fact some have left the Zapatista ranks, lured away by government aid programs. I saw myself that life is still very hard for the indigenous people in Zapatista territory. However, it also seemed like there was lots of progress, especially in terms of health care that the Zapatistas are making available through clinics and "microclinics." And besides that, I am reminded of something mentioned by Subcommandante Marcos, who freely states in his recent writings that, yes, things are still very dismal for the Zapatistas, but there is one important difference: now they have hope, and pride. This is something not quantifiable and hence not as easy for a publication like the New York Times to report on. It's not as easy to measure as the thousands of pesos being poured into Chiapas by the federal government or the numbers of troops still occupying military bases there.

Once again the excellent blog about videoblogs, We Are The Media, gets me thinking with a great collection of links to vlogs that are covering the Katrina aftermath. What I'm thinking is, well, compare and contrast Indymedia with the more journalistic of the vloggers. There is a lot of very similar rhetoric about freeing the media and citizen journalism. However I don't see as much ideology in the vlogosphere. There are vloggers of all different political persuasions, and many are apolitical. I feel like Indymedia may have marginalized itself to the point where it is only for already very committed activists. The vlogosphere may be a chance to preach to more than the choir. So the questions are, how might Indymedia videoactivists broaden their scope to include the new "subtactic" of vlogging? And, where are the indymedia vloggers?

It reminds me of Slashdot's tagline, which I always found disturbing: "News for Nerds, Stuff that matters." It always turned me off, because it seemed to be an oxymoron. If it matters, then it matters, period, and it shouldn't be just for nerds. I just glanced at slashdot and only 1 or 2 of the dozen or so stories are really that nerdy. Most are really of general interest, though of course teh subject matter is always science or tech stuff. But if it's for nerds, then a lot of itdoesn't matter to others, or at least that is the assumption a lot of non-nerd people will have. The tagline sets up a separation, a self-marginalization. To be accurate, and to continue to marginalize itself, the phrase really should have a "to nerds" at the end, or, if self-marginalization is not the intention, it should be a completely different tagline, something like "News about Nerdy Stuff, that should matter to everyone."

Similarly, I sometimes think Indymedia has an invisible tagline: "News for 'Extreme' 'Radical' Activsts, stuff that matters to 'Extreme' 'Radical' Activists." Which is not to say that was the intention or even is currently, at least conciously (or is it?). But it may be how the IMC is perceived, at least when people are aware of it at all.

Here in Portland there has been much talk about Katrina survivors being brought up here after Oregon offered space. First 1000 were supposed to arrive Wednesday, then apparently FEMA said not yet, now I hear 500 are coming Saturday. There's an old closed elementary school in the inner southeast section of town (14th and Stark) that will house them. I've biked by there several times in the last week and seen big Red Cross trucks parked there.

IMC people here are talking about and working on setting up a media center a few blocks away for the evacuees to use, but I don't know how useful that will be, since apparently there will be new computers donated by Intel and internet access right in the building they'll be staying in. I'm not sure of the best way that our IMC could help these people, at least in a unique, media-centered way. Perhaps just volunteering like regular people is best.

I wish we had CVS Pharmacies here. I'd get a bunch of those cheap camcorders that have been hacked and pass them out to residents of the evacuee facility.

Meanwhile, Blank, a very active member of our IMC video collective, flew down to Houston last night. I've heard so much about mistreatment of journalists and tight security that I'm pretty concerned, for his safety and also just for the prospect of actually being able to get any coverage. But hopefully he will manage to do some good down there. He's certainly got a lot of good gear with him.

2 good articles about New Orleans:
Trapped in New Orleans (thanx Allison)
Real Estate Vultures (thanx Jon)

This post from the excellent blog-about-vlogs, We Are the Media discusses a technique/phenomenon that I have always found useful ever since Mort Subotnick, one of my composition professors at CalArts, mentioned it to me about 10 years ago.

The idea is that playing someone else your work, whether it's music or film/video, is really helpful, even if they don't say anything. Somehow just sitting there watching/listening to your own work with someone else there gives you a whole different perspective on it.

Well, this morning I uploaded my first submission to Current TV and already it has 3 "green lights," meaning 3 other users have voted for it.

I don't know how many I need to actually get it accepted for airing on the channel, but you can definitely help by going to their site, registering, watching it, and greenlighting it. Plus, it's an interesting piece. you'll like it, I promise.

so in addition to all the other geeky changes in my life i decide to go ahead and finally start using an IMAP client locally instead of reading mail on the server like i've been doing for 10 years. I just never knew how cool IMAP was, had a distaste for learning about it ever since a server of mine was hacked thanx to an IMAP exploit, and POP is dumb cuz it ties you down to your mail being on one workstation.

so i've been trying out apple's email client and getting it all set up the way I want
it but there's weird shit that is totally frustrating, something to do with how it interacts with the IMAP server. i have it under control now so i won't even go into it, but it was really pissing me off for the last couple hours.

I've been thinking about starting to include little videos here, not so much starting a "vlog" as just turning my already-existing blog into something that includes more embedded media. i want to test to see if the rss2.0 feed that movable type creates is something that FireANT or iTunes will like.

Anyway,




This is a little creative commons bumper i made a while back that i've been putting at the end of my videos lately. Feel free to use it if you want.