[Air-l] social movements / social software

[Todd Davies]

Good testimonial from one of the young organizers in texas today on Democracy 
Now (see http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/11/1426244):

"JUAN GONZALEZ: Could you tell us a little bit about how you organized the 
student walkouts and how you got involved yourself?

GUSTAVO JIMENEZ: Well, it all began on Sunday. Sunday morning, like around 
9:00. I was actually on MySpace. Thats the website that was a real big help in 
getting the word out. And I seen a bulletin that a girl from L.A. had posted 
up; and it showed, you know, the march  the rally that L.A. had and the 
hundreds of thousands of people that showed up. And it also had some sort of a 
slideshow. And it showed these pictures of, you know, the rally and migrant 
workers and everything. And I guess that that was the main thing that kind of 
got my attention and said, well, if California, you know, is trying so hard and 
people around the U.S. is trying so hard -- because you hear about the news, 
you know, people marching in other states -- and I said, well, we should try to 
do something here. And she had actually posted up a national walkout for Monday 
the 27th.

And I guess usually when you see those type of things, you know, walkouts, 
nobody really does them; but on those, I guess, you know, its for a reason, its 
for a good cause. I decided to help out in any way that I could; and, I mean, 
immediately I had to call a best friend of mine, Miguel, and as soon as we 
called him, I mean, we spent the rest of the day just calling, texting people 
on their cell phones, emails, and by anywhere. We got some -- I had made some 
fliers, and I made some that same night. And, I mean, it was just a one-day 
thing that we hoped to try to get as many people as we could."

Todd Davies                   ***  email: davies at csli.stanford.edu
Symbolic Systems Program      ***  phone: 1-650-723-4091
Stanford University           ***  fax: 1-650-723-5666
Stanford, CA, USA 94305-2150  ***  web: www.stanford.edu/~davies