Jamie Lynn Butler holds her letter to President Obama

We learn early on in the United States that we have three branches of government for a reason – to ensure checks and balances. Enshrined in the Constitution, common law and statutory law are rules we as citizens are all legally obligated to follow. These obligations apply to Congress and the White House too, they don’t get a free pass. When Congress and the White House violate their own laws – the laws that form the very foundation of civil society – citizens can go to the courts and ask the judiciary to step in and compel our government to act lawfully. And it’s the judiciary’s responsibility to do just that.

Congress and the White House have a long-standing, deeply established, legal obligation to protect the natural resources we all share in common such as our air and our water. They are failing us. And while these two branches of government wallow in inaction claiming that nothing can get done in Washington due to the divisive, partisian-made, political climate, the climate we depend upon for our very survival is crashing fast. It is this inaction and subsequent failure to protect our one and only atmosphere as required by law that prompted 11-year old Jaime Lynn Butler – along with youth across the country – to take their case to court as part of the atmospheric trust legal effort lead by the iMatter youth and Our Children’s Trust with support from WITNESS.

Congress and the White House are violating U.S. law. Most all our State Governments are breaking their own state laws too. So our youth are utilizing the last branch of our democracy that may be open to them and asking our judges to listen to their stories, hear their legal argument and make a considered and lawful decision.

Watch the video below produced by WITNESS, Our Children’s Trust and the iMatter Campaign to learn why Jaime is taking her case to court:

Jaime Lynn Butler began protecting the Earth when she was four years old and her letter writing efforts continue. Recently, she sent this letter to President Obama asking for his assistance with something she deems of vital importance – the atmosphere.

January 25, 2012

Jaime Lynn Butler's letter to President Obama

Dear President Obama,

Hi, I don’t know if you remember me but my name is Jaime Lynn Butler. I wrote to you a lot about the arctic wildlife refuge and the oil spill and you wrote back to me. I am concerned about all the animals, the polar bears and jellyfish.

I am sending you a video about me and how climate change is affecting me and Arizona. I hope you win and like my video. Also I hope this video will help you win and you can help stop climate change. I know you can help because I watched your speech last night, and again today in Arizona, it was GREAT!

If you don’t remember me last school year I was in fourth grade and now I am in fifth grade.  Also I am 11 years old and learning about Egypt.  They live in the desert like me and I hope they never run out of water. I go to Pine Forest Charter School and live in Flagstaff because my home on the Navajo reservation has no running water.

I am sad I can’t vote until I am 18 years old, because I am your BIGGEST supporter!

Your Biggest Supporter,
Jaime Lynn Butler

So while Jaime is still pursuing efforts with the White House and Congress, it’s key to understand one thing from all this. Our youth are not seeking extraordinary measures. They are just asking the judiciary to draw on its power – given to them by the founding fathers – to compel our governments to abide by our own laws. In even simpler terms, the youth are asking our leaders to lead but since they haven’t responded to the requests, our youth have no choice but to ask the judiciary to compel our leaders to act.

To learn more about the 10-part video series Stories of TRUST: Calling for Climate Recovery, the iMatter Campaign or the atmospheric trust legal effort click here or read further below.

About Atmospheric Trust Litigation (ATL)

When considering how to save the atmospheric commons globally, one of the most overlooked yet promising gambits is a series of “atmospheric trust” legal effort launched in the United States in May 2011. This remarkable legal effort, which consists of lawsuits or actions against governmental agencies filed in all 50 states and in federal court on the same day, seeks to force state and federal governments to apply the venerable Public Trust Doctrine to the atmosphere and protect it for future generations.

The basic claim in this landmark legal action is that all governments hold natural resources in trust for their citizens and bear the fiduciary obligation to protect such resources for future generations. This cause of action is established by the Public Trust Doctrine, a legal doctrine enshrined in every civilized government to hold governments responsible for protecting the resources we all share in common and depend upon for our very survival, such as air, water, forests and wildlife. The Public Trust Doctrine embodies the basic human rights principle of intergenerational justice which, at its core, means that current generations cannot continue on their current, destructive path and leave the planet damaged for future generations.

The 51 legal actions across the U.S. are all being brought by youth from around the country joined together with public interest attorneys, highly distinguished legal and environmental scholars, and top climate scientists. The youth are asking the courts for both declaratory and injunctive relief. Specifically, the youth are asking the courts to find that:

• The atmosphere is a resource we all share;
• Since the atmosphere is a shared resource, it must be protected, in trust, by our governments; and
• That protection means adopting and implementing Climate Recovery Plans. These plans, based on the best available science, would establish peak global carbon dioxide emissions by 2012, reduce annual carbon dioxide emissions by at least 6 percent every year, and commit to widespread reforestation.

In essence, youth are asking the judiciary to draw on their power to force carbon reduction on the basis of a fiduciary responsibility to protect their futures.

Amy Robbins

By Amy Robbins
Amy Robbins is a member of the WITNESS Board of Directors and was the 2011 Focus for Change Benefit Dinner and Concert Co-Chair.

As WITNESS celebrates its 20^th anniversary this year, I wanted to write a brief note to describe why I support this outstanding, and vital organization.  I know many of you reading this share my view because you, too, strongly support WITNESS’s efforts.

WITNESS has always been known as an organization that promotes the use of video to support human rights campaigns.  But with the Cameras Everywhere initiative, WITNESS is moving in a very new, very bold direction – reaching beyond basic activism to partner with allies in business, technology and media to foster a more conducive environment for the safe and effective use of video.

WITNESS has learned that it is one thing to capture human rights abuse on video, and quite another to ensure that the video is properly authenticated and safely distributed.  With the Cameras Everywhere initiative, WITNESS is working with media organizations and technology companies to ensure that video documentation of human rights abuse reaches the widest possible audience – without jeopardizing activists or victims.

This approach is not without risk, but risk-taking is a hallmark of the WITNESS spirit.  As I’ve observed over the years, the organization is constantly reinventing itself to become more collaborative, more nimble, and more strategic.  And as this new program demonstrates, WITNESS has the courage to innovate, which is what inspires me to stay involved and to offer my support.

I think of a group like the Egyptian Democratic Academy (EDA) and the risks their brave young activists are taking to create change in Egypt. They received WITNESS training in 2010 before the Arab Spring started which enabled them to respond by using video strategically and safely. How many more activists could change the course of history in Egypt and protect freedoms if they had been properly trained to use video?

How much safer would members of EDA be if they had the WITNESS app to protect their identities while filming? (Learn more about this free mobile app here.) The Cameras Everywhere initiative is designed to address these challenges by creating and sharing tools, knowledge and information that will allow both activists and victims to tell their stories in a safe and effective manner, consistent with the highest journalistic and ethical standards.

Cameras Everywhere – and everything WITNESS does to promote and facilitate the documentation of human rights abuse – deserves our wholehearted, enthusiastic support.  The way I see it, each and every one of us has a role to play in helping WITNESS expand its mission.  And if we do our part, we will have a significant impact on those at the grassroots level doing the really hard work… putting their lives on the line, and bearing witness.

The web has given human rights organizations unprecedented access to global audiences. However a website will last only as long as funds are available for maintenance and hosting. Leaving aside practical challenges which exist for every website, in many places there is also the possibility of sabotage or attempts to remove a human rights-related website by opponents, religious, ideological, governmental or otherwise.  Examples include denial-of-service attacks or in the most extreme case, the cutoff of all Internet service providers (the Internet “kill” switch).

Web Archiving

In 2009, Columbia University Libraries received a grant from the Mellon Foundation to explore web archiving program development. The collection at the center of our web archiving program is the Human Rights Web Archive.  The initial and prevailing focus of this collection is websites of human rights NGOs.  As the project progresses, we have also included national human rights institutions, truth commissions, tribunals, and blogs related to human rights.

Web archiving may be defined as the selection, harvesting, and preservation of web sites.  An archived website is more than a snapshot of a website: it is a working copy of a website as it existed at the time of capture.  Sites are captured by a web crawler (such as Heritrix) and then displayed using specialized software (such as the WayBack Machine). We currently crawl the sites of the Human Rights Web Archive four times a year.  For active sites, there may exist 12 captures of a single site at different points in time.

Enduring Access

Why are we doing this? In brief, to preserve online resources for future researchers and activists. Archiving the sites of human rights organizations ensures, to a certain degree, that the website content will be preserved in the context of the original site, and will be accessible even if the original site becomes unavailable.  As with all things digital, long-term preservation is still very much an open question, but web archiving is a step towards an additional degree of protection. In our case, our data will persevere as long as the Internet Archive does, stored in WARC (Web ARChive) files, an international standard.

In September 2011, we crawled over 300 GB of data, 4 million URLs, and 800,000 files. While the live sites are currently available to everyone, what are the chances of being able to find the same particular pages, documents, and video in five years? “Link rot,” or the disappearance/changing of URLs makes bookmarking pages or storing URLs unreliable.  Downloading every reference or page of interest is an untenable solution.  However, an archived URL will not change (although modes of access can change). If you want to see the URL you bookmarked in 2009, you can search for a 2009 capture of the URL in a web archive.

Sierra Leone TRC website, as captured by the Internet Archive on November 15, 2005.

Temporary bodies or organizations, such as truth commissions or tribunals, are particularly vulnerable to the ephemerality of the web.  After the group ceases operations, it is not always clear who has responsibility for the website. Sites vanish (Sierra Leone TRC), or are maintained by dedicated individuals (Greensboro TRC) or simply exist as static sites until the domain expires. In the last case, site functionality usually begins to fail (link rot, site corruption/spam, pages not found, etc.) long before the domain expires (Peru TRC).

Tracking Global Movements and Trends

In addition to ensuring enduring access, the Human Rights Web Archive also provides a sense of context and temporality for the state of human rights in the world from 2009 to present. Because of the interconnectedness of the global human rights community, news and documents proliferate across sites, and events occurring in one region are often documented by organizations located in other regions (especially true for globally-focused organizations like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch). The capture of hundreds of human rights websites allows a web archives user to track reporting of a single event or series of events across organizations at a specific point in time.

During the Arab Spring, a number of web archiving initiatives (Columbia, American University in Cairo, Internet Memory Foundation, Internet Archive) collected web sites reporting on the protests in the Middle East and North Africa.  These collections document not only the organizations’ sites, but the momentum of a movement that swept over a dozen countries.  Reflected in these archived sites are the multitudes of voices, cultures, and ideologies that were part of the Arab Spring, as it was occurring.  The archiving of many of these websites continues, capturing the ongoing struggle and unrest in the Arab world and creating a living archive.

As the Human Rights Web Archive and other web archives continue to grow, it is also possible to study trends in human rights activism, such as changing tactics of human rights defenders and government responses to human rights violations. The archives also reflect how human rights organizations are communicating via social media. After our June 2011 crawl of 369 sites, reviewers found that at least 115 sites had Facebook pages/profiles, 98 had Twitter accounts, 77 published material on YouTube or had their own YouTube channel, and 19 had had Flickr accounts.

Spotlight on Local Organizations

Another objective of the Human Rights Web Archive is to preserve the websites of smaller NGOs working on a local or national scale in the Global South, and to provide enhanced discovery of these organizations and their online resources.  When using any commercial search engine, results for human rights-related searches tend to give more weight to information and publications from the major international organizations. This makes sense for the purposes of search engines, but it tends to obscure the work of smaller organizations, which may be far more relevant for the searcher.

Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) website

For example: we recently received permission to archive the website of the organization Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ), a non-governmental organization based in Harare, Zimbabwe. In a basic search for “gay rights Zimbabwe” in Google, GALZ does not appear until page seven of the search results. Seven of the top ten results were from American or British media.  If I restricted the search to the exact phrase “gay rights Zimbabwe”, the GALZ web site does not appear at all. The only search that returned the organization in the top 10 was an exact search for the organization’s name.

This example illustrates the need to increase discovery for smaller human rights organizations, as well as the importance of metadata. HuriSearch, a search engine created by the organization HURIDOCS provides focused searching of live human rights websites. For archived human rights sites, Columbia catalogers create a full bibliographic record for our online catalog (CLIO), a record in the global catalog WorldCat, and a record for our Archive-It collection page.

Help Us Grow the Human Rights Web Archive

For more information or to nominate a site to be included in the Archive, please visit our website.  For more about web archiving, please visit the website of the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC).

The University of Texas at Austin is also archiving human rights website as part of its Human Rights Documentation Initiative. Do you know of other preservation and archiving projects aimed at human rights content on the Internet? Please share them below in the comments section.

The WITNESS website, as captured by the Internet Archive on December 22, 1996.

Tessa Fallon is a Web collection Curator at Columbia University Libraries.  Her work is currently focused on the development of the Human Rights Web Archive.  Tessa is co-director of the International Council on Archives’ Human Rights Archives Directory Project and co-chair of the Society of American Archivists Human Rights Roundtable.

Why You Should Watch this Video

On Sunday December 11, 2011 The New York Times published an extensive article illustrating the role of livestream technologies in the Occupy Wall Street movement. The following day, seventeen mediamakers, including members of the Global Revolution livestream team were arrested. Since then, police have increasingly targeted members of independent media and citizens with cameras and media-making equipment, seemingly in order to quell future representations of police brutality and to suppress further momentum of the movement.

What does this all mean? One possible answer points to the power of citizen media asserted throughout the movement. Citizen-created media has been critical in sharing police brutality and the Occupy movement’s agenda with the public since its start on September 17, 2011. In fact, the mainstream media has progressively relied on videos and photographs produced by citizens and livestreamers at Occupy protests, illustrating its powerful role in agenda setting among the public.

The need for training videos that guide citizens to safely and effectively film at protests is greater than ever. Cameras are everywhere and understanding how to use equipment to collaboratively protect civil liberties and share a message is imperative.  Challenges to human rights in Egypt, Syria and Occupy Movements around the world – for example – rely on that initiative.  The question now becomes, what are the best tips and techniques we want to share and how do we draw on the attention and focus of audiences to relay that information. The video below is one powerful example. Watch it to understand the importance of civic media and to learn how to cooperate with other citizens seeking to protect our rights.

While watching, consider any missing tips and techniques and how the video works to keep your attention and join the discussion below.

Video Facts:

• Title of Video: How to Film a Revolution
• Date Posted: December 27, 2011
• Length: 4:59 minutes
• Who made it:  Independent filmmaker Corey Ogilvie and Producer Andrew Halliwell
• Location: USA
• Human Rights Issue: Police and Military Brutality

Goal: This video seeks to illustrate how citizens can safely and strategically use cameras in situations of state violence.

Primary Audience: The audience is every citizen with a camera, which happens to be most of us now.

Message:  If we, as citizen journalists, coordinate and strategize our safety and filming positions in places where it is legal to film officers – like the police do their enforcement positions – we will be safer, and our content will be better.

Content/Style/Voices: Demonstration video; Voiceover with archival footage and how-to animation.

Join the Discussion: What tips and techniques do you think are missing from the video? For instance, in our own top ten tips for filmmakers at protests we covered topics concerning informed consent and preserving battery life. What techniques does the video employ to draw your attention and keep you focused on the subject matter?

Check out my previous interview with Josh from Global Revolution to learn more about livestreaming and the powerful role of media at Occupy Wall Street.

***

Chris Rogy is the Tools & Tactics intern at WITNESS. He is a Master’s student focusing on Social Media and Social Change at the The New School. His current projects include a new media documentary called “Re-Fusing Refuge” about the deportation of Cambodian American refugees and a participatory research thesis that develops radio drama practices with community leaders in rural Cambodia.

Today marks the one year anniversary of Egypt’s awakening. People all over Cairo are preparing to celebrate a year of great accomplishment. A year ago today, a massive movement demanding change exploded throughout the country. Average citizens took the streets with their cameras to capture it all. Egypt’s revolution became the Arab Spring’s most photogenic revolution. And on the eve of the anniversary, activists all over Egypt were charging their cameras and preparing their equipment to capture today’s events.

I’m honored to be here in Tahrir Square today with our partner, the Egyptian Democratic Academy, a non-profit based in Cairo. We are here to “witness” the #Jan25 anniversary and to learn more about how Egyptian activists used and are using video for change. We will also be sharing filming tips. Our live stream via Bambuser will begin at 12:00 noon GMT.

Watch the livestream:

And for all clips shared throughout the day visit this page. Teams of activists also will be live streaming with the help of Ustream and will be sharing multiple feeds through their ‘Egypt Superchannel’.

Join the Discussion

Please join us on Twitter to ask questions or make comments. Follow and use the hashtag #Video4Change or tweet to @RajaAlthaibani,  @Aouds or @WitnessOrg.

We also welcome comments below.

Note to Android Users Live Streaming From Cairo

Follow these instructions to use Ustream in Egypt:

1. Download “AppInstaller” from the Android market

2. Download the Ustream App through a torrent outside the Android Market, (for example: http://www.4shared.com/file/XKD0tvig/ustream.html)

3. Open “AppInstaller”

4. Select “Install Apps” tab

5. Choose the Ustream Application from the menu

6. The “AppInstaller” will complete the process

تمر اليوم الذكرى الاولى للثورة المصريى، يستعد المصريين في القاهرة والمحافظات المصرية المختلفة للإحتفال بمرور عام كامل من الإنجازات، في مثل هذا اليوم العام الماضي، انطلقت في مصر حركة هائلة للمطالبة بالتغيير، تحرك المواطنين للتظاهر في الشوارع والميداين وايضا تصوير كل اللحظات بكاميراتهم وهواتفهم المحمولة، وبذلك كانت الثورة المصرية هي الكثر جذبا بين ثورات الربيع العربي، وفي عشية هذه الذكرى الاولى، الناشطين في مصري يستعدون بشحن كاميراتهم وتجهيز ادواتهم لتوثيق الاحداث.

فخورة لأن اكون في ميدان التحرير مع شريكنا في مصر ، المعهد المصري الديمقراطي، مؤسسة غير ربحية في القاهره، نحن كمؤسسة “ويتنس” موجودون هنا في الذكرى الاولى للثورة لنتعلم اكثر من الناشطين المصريين وكيفية استخدامهم الفيديو من اجل التغيير، وحريصين ايضا بمشاركة ممارستهم الفضلى في التصوير ونضائحهم، البث المباشر سينطلق في تماما الشاعة الـ12.00 ظهرا. للمشاهدة اضغط هنا.

فريق من الناشطين سيقوم بالبث المباشر للحداث بمساعدة “يو ستريم” وسيقوم بالنشر ايضا في صفحة “مصر سوبر تشانال“

شارك معنا :

يمكنك المشارك عبر تويتير وسئل الاسئلة من خلال وسم البحث “ #Video4Change ”

او متابعة

@RajaAlthaibani,  @Aouds or @WitnessOrg.

وايضا نرحب بالتعليقات هنا

ملاحظة لمستخدمي نظام تشغيل الاندريود على الهواتف النقالة

1 يمكنكم تحميل ” applinstaller” من اندريود ماركت

2 تحميل التطبيق الخاص بيو ستريم من خارج الااندريو ماركت – على سبيل المثال من هذا الرابط

http://www.4shared.com/file/XKD0tvig/ustream.html)

3 قم بفتح – appinstaller

4 اختار select app

5 اختار الustream من القائمة

6 سيقوم الـ appinstaller باستكمال التطبق

In 2011, tens of millions of people took to the streets in protest to defend their human rights. With the help of cell phones, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, we have been able to monitor and track violations taking place all across the world. Even in Syria, where no journalists are allowed, we have been able to “witness” events on the ground from the screens of our various devices.

Cameras are literally everywhere, helping activists and ordinary citizens document and share vast numbers of human rights abuses with unbelievable speed. From Syria alone, thousands of hours of footage of protests and abuse are shared with newsrooms and social media outlets each day. Take, for instance, the images posted of a 13 year-old boy named Hamza Ali al-Khateeb who was arrested at a protest and later found tortured and killed. From similar footage on the Internet, there is no doubt that he represents hundreds of others who have suffered the same fate.

Now facing its tenth month of unrest, the Assad regime in Syria continues to try to silence protestors both offline and online. iPhones have been banned in Syria and just recently an outspoken Syrian-American blogger named Razan Ghazzawi was arrested while on her way to Jordan to attend a conference on press freedom in the Arab world. In September, she tweeted, “I confess, that while it took me a while not to fear death, I still fear torture, very much.”

In Egypt, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’ (SCAF) efforts to present itself as a key player in a semi-stable election process are countered online by citizen video showing a different story. Footage shows tear gas launched into demonstrations and rubber bullets shot at protestors’ eyes, and calls attention to the 12,000 civilians who have been arrested and tried in military courts since Mubarak fell. These people are still awaiting release, despite the SCAF’s promises last September to end military trials of civilians.

With thousands of stories captured on video and shared via social media, it is clear is that online sites are the new public squares of activism and the people who run them are in powerful positions to help ensure that these platforms continue to be used for good.

Over the 20 years in which WITNESS has developed the practice of video advocacy, there has never been as much potential for video documentation and social media to impact positive social change as now. Video has become an essential human rights tool. However, as more people turn to these platforms, the safety and security risks they face are also greater than ever before.

From Esra’a's blog:

Sure we can simply stop using their services – it’s theirs and they can do whatever they want to their terms of agreement (which to be fair we had to agree on before signing up on the site), but it’s still alienating, it’s still dangerous and the more and more companies that adopt these policies the more we risk losing in this struggle against censorship and surveillance.

"Internet and Censorship" by Chappatte

There are many examples of governments misusing technology and social media to track down activists and repress freedom of expression. Until Dec. 1st, when the European Union barred exports of surveillance technology to Syria, it was reported that the regime acquired technology from companies like Area, NetApp, Qosmos and Utimaco to intercept, scan and catalog virtually all e-mail in and out of the country.

And, with the rise of citizen journalism and video activism, eventually some of this footage may be used as evidence in court. It is important now that we find ways to systematically manage and authenticate information. YouTube has become the de-facto repository — a living history of human rights abuse. But imagine what would happen to our ability to secure justice if YouTube changed its archiving and retention policies and deleted evidentiary videos shot by citizens in Libya over the past year?

Part of this requires the development of smart tools and systems that protect identity and capture data for those who are working to document abuses. We’ve partnered with the Guardian Project to create “SecureSmartCam” mobile applications that help address some of the needs of these human rights defenders.

Technology providers can also play a critical role in creating products and services that can better serve citizen activists and human rights defenders. Whether they realize it or not, technology companies are important new players in protecting human rights — they hold the key to determining the fate of the tens of millions of people turning to video, technology and social media for change.

By incorporating human rights values like privacy and security into their content and user policies or by allowing anonymity for activists using their sites, technology companies can better support human rights change. These changes alone will save lives.

Again, Esra’a writes to this point:

There is certain information that we really prefer to simply not share. It’s not because we’re stubborn. It’s because not all of us are courageous enough to share every aspect of our lives, checking in from every location, uploading every photo, revealing our physical addresses or phone numbers. Some of us have a lot of reason to be scared shitless of the likelihood of being an easier target by ruthless regimes and armed groups if we did share all of these bits and pieces that these services require.

These are the issues that WITNESS is currently working to address. We have developed digital tools to better protect citizen activists using mobile phones to document human rights abuse. We are working with other activists and groups, evaluating which tools work, and sharing these learnings online with the broader public.

When technology companies work together with NGOs to incorporate the best interests of their users into policies and practices, we can keep the platforms and tools so essential to the millions of citizen activists from serving the wrong side of justice.

And a last word from Esra’a:

We’re not asking you to recreate your products to be more fitting for our needs. We’re not asking you to make your products more tempting for spambots and potentially abusive users.

We’re asking you to be considerate.

We’re asking you to make an exception.

For some of us out there, our lives literally depend on these little exceptions.

Read Esra’a's original post “Silicon Valley companies don’t get the full range of dangers involved with online advocacy” published on January 20, 2012.

UPDATE:  Climate Change is Making it’s Voice Heard in the Halls of Justice. Scientists know that climate change creates more extreme weather events. Due to an intense winter storm in the Pacific Northwest, the Washington State hearing on the Atmospheric Trust Litigation being brought by youth is postponed. Stay Tuned for the Reschedule Date.

UPDATE: The Washington State hearing has been rescheduled for Feb. 17th at 11:15 am PST. If you live in the Seattle area, we hope you can make it to the hearing.

Over the course of the last year WITNESS has partnered with Our Children’s Trust (OCT) and the iMatter Campaign to elevate the voices of youth from across the country who are defending their right to a healthy atmosphere and sustainable future. The youth are taking their case to judges across the country and asking that the courts order the adoption and implementation of scientifically sound Climate Recovery Plans.

To support this goal WITNESS, OCT and the iMatter Campaign are co-producing a series of 10 videos that are telling the stories of U.S. youth whose lives have been or will be affected by climate change and the deterioration of our Earth’s atmosphere – from the melting permafrost in the Arctic to the drought that is now considered the new normal in America’s southwest. These video portraits that are part of the TRUST Series showcase how these youth are bravely speaking out to hold our governments accountable to protect the atmosphere – a vital resource we all depend upon for our survival.

This is a key moment in this campaign and we need your support. Beginning today, on Jan. 20^th, some of the young people featured in the TRUST Series, along with many others, will head to courts in Washington State, Oregon, New Mexico, Arizona and Alaska. They are hoping judges will make considered decisions in their favor in what some have called the most remarkable legal actions to halt human-induced climate change. The youth are asking the courts to require their states to develop climate recovery plans based on sound science. The government defendants in all five states are asking that the public trust cases be dismissed.

Our youth need our help in three key ways:

1. Help share our Facebook Events pages for the five state hearings to encourage locals to turn out at the hearing and support the youth plaintiffs. The five hearings will be held as follows:

• Washington:      January 20, 1:30 pm (PST)
  King County Superior Court, Judge Dean Lum,
  516 Third Ave., Seattle, WA 98104

• Oregon:               January 23, 10:30 am (PST)
  Lane County Circuit Court, Top floor of Courthouse, Judge Rasmussen
  125 E. 8^th Ave., Eugene, OR 97401

• New Mexico:     January 26, 9:00 am (MST)
  Judicial District, Courtroom 250, Judge Sarah Singleton
  100 Catron St., Santa Fe, NM 87501

• Arizona:               February 10, 2:00 pm (MST)
  Maricopa County Courthouse, East Court Building, STE 814, Judge Mark Brain
  201 W. Jefferson St. #4, Phoenix, AZ 85003

• Alaska:                 February 15, 3:00 pm (AKST)
  Nesbett Courthouse, Courtroom 504
  825 W 4^th Ave., Anchorage, AK 9950

2. Share the Public Trust message and our ATL work with your network to help us build more momentum by watching and then sharing the films broadly:

• Watch TRUST Alaska and meet Nelson Kanuk, a native Alaskan all to familiar with the impact climate change poses
• Watch TRUST Montana and meet John Thiebes, a young farmer fighting climate change in the agricultural heart of Montana.
• Watch TRUST California and meet Alec Loorz, co-founder of Kids v. Global warming and a climate change activist in California.

3. Share the following media releases with any bloggers or reporters you know and ask them to give our youth a voice by covering their story:

• Atmospheric Trust Litigation (ATL) Press Backgrounder
• National Hearing Press Backgrounder announcing these five hearings and the upcoming federal hearing on the Motion for Preliminary Injunction

And if you have media contacts in Washington State, Oregon, New Mexico, Arizona or Alaska, please email kelly [@] witness [dot] org with the names and contact information of any bloggers or reporters we should share the state-wide releases with in these states over the next few weeks.

In the words of Bill McKibben:

I see young people around the country leading the way forward out of the dark days of fossil fuel dependence. They want freedom from the harms that a century of burning oil has laid at their feet. This is their civil rights movement. As Martin Luther King, Jr. declared, ‘We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late.’ The atmosphere is these young people’s rightful public trust to inherit, and I hope these judges comprehend the ‘fierce urgency of now’ and heed their call.

Please lend your voice to support our youth now!

This post was originally published on Global Voices Online as “U.S. Bills Could Threaten Global Internet,” January 17, 2012 and is available in English and six other languages.

At Global Voices, we understand that we, collectively, are the Internet. Our individual participation is what makes the Internet a global conversation of startling depth and variety, but this is possible only because of its open technical and legal structure. Unfortunately, there are powerful corporate and government forces who would prefer to see the openness and accessibility of the web restricted. They seek to deploy censorship and surveillance in the name of enforcing copyright, employing the very tools used to censor the Internet in authoritarian countries, such as China, Iran, and Syria.

Ignoring the warnings of citizens and technologists, United States lawmakers are considering two bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), that are a real and dangerous threat to the openness of the web everywhere in the world. In response, the Global Voices community has decided to join websites such as Wikipedia, Reddit and BoingBoing in “going dark” and will black out the Global Voices Advocacy site for 12 hours on January 18, and display a banner on other Global Voices sites that provides more information about the proposed bills.

We are an international volunteer community dedicated to amplifying citizen media from around the world. In the last six years, we’ve produced more than 75,000 posts that link to blogs and other citizen content for readers in over 20 languages. Our content is free to use, and free to share. We rely on the open Internet to carry out our mission, and on social media and citizen media websites that allow for simple publication and sharing of content. Platforms like WordPress, Wikipedia, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Reddit, Tumblr, and many other online media production communities host content on which we base much of our work.

The passage of SOPA and PIPA by the United States Congress and Senate would force social media platforms and other web sites that host user-generated content to pro-actively monitor and censor users to prevent them from posting words or images that may violate copyrights. It would raise the cost of participation on these sites for all users worldwide, and could force many social media projects to shut down, especially smaller websites and businesses.

We are concerned this law would will inflict broad damage on the work of digital activists living under repressive regimes, as well as restrict basic speech freedoms around the world. Current copyright laws are occasionally misused in the U.S, and can result in de facto speech restrictions. In countries with less independent judicial systems, abuse of copyright law to repress activism is both simple and frequent.

Global Voices contributors in many countries face increasingly aggressive surveillance and censorship. Several are in prison or exile because of their online activities. Passage of these bills will send a clear message that the US government believes it is acceptable to monitor and censor citizens to identify “infringing activity” which too often is equated with political and religious dissent. Passage of SOPA and PIPA would also give the United States government a disproportionate amount of power to determine the course of the Internet. The result will be a more dangerous world for bloggers and activists, and less free speech for all.

Even though the current version of SOPA was put indefinitely on hold this week, PIPA, the Senate version of the bill, is still alive. And the issues and forces that are driving the passage of a law remain. For this reason, Global Voices is joining the Internet blackout on January 18, 2012.

Recent Global Voices Advocacy posts on SOPA/PIPA:

• Trevor Tim, ”How PIPA and SOPA Violate White House Principles Supporting Free Speech and Innovation”
• Katitza Rodriguez, “SOPA undermines the U.S. in its negotiations for a free, open Internet”
• Weiping Li, “For Chinese Netizens, SOPA is Another Great Firewall”
• Yoo Eun Lee, “Stop Online Piracy Act: The Fight Continues”

Other resources for understanding the effects of SOPA/PIPA:

• Joi Ito and Ethan Zuckerman, “Why we need to stop SOPA and PIPA”
• “Internet Blacklist Legislation“, Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF’s email campaign against the legislation and EFF guide to meeting with your representatives. EFF also explains how SOPA/PIPA will hurt open source software creation.
• Dan Rowinsky, “What You Need to Know about SOPA in 2012“, ReadWriteWeb
• Wikipedia, “Stop Online Piracy Act”
• Rebecca MacKinnon and Ivan Sigal, “Online piracy laws must preserve Web freedom, CNN.”

What you can do:

• If you are an American citizen, Americancensorship.org can help you to quickly communicate with your elected representatives, or help you to join the strike. Learn more about the strike at www.sopastrike.com.

******************************

From the Editor: More Online Resources About SOPA/PIPA Legislation

• The non-profit expert blogger Beth Kanter has created a list of SOPA Resources worth checking out;
• Timothy Karr, the Campaign Director for Free Press and Savetheinternet.com explains why organizations including his are participating in the black out of their websites today;
• Google, Wikipedia and Mozilla are among the global online brands that are participating in the blackout. Read Google’s statement “End Piracy, Not Liberty” and sign their petition to U.S. Congress

Add more resources in the comments below!

Martin Luther King, Jr., August 1963

While at the convening of the U.S. Human Rights Network last December I did a pre-release screening of a new documentary co-produced by ECPAT-USA and WITNESS. The video, What I Have Been Through is Not Who I Am, tells the story of Katrina, a formerly sexually exploited teen who was arrested, when she should have been protected. No one in this small audience could believe that, in the U.S., we jail children who are bought and sold for sex, rationalizing that prison will protect them from their traffickers. Admittedly, when I first heard about this back in August of 2010, I did not believe it either. But we do do this.

In thinking about this reality for exploited children, I asked myself, if I am raped should I be imprisoned to protect me from my rapist? If my domestic partner physically abuses me in my own home, should I be imprisoned to protect me from my domestic partner? The answer is black and white. It’s no. And it’s this very contradiction in laws across the U.S. that the film Not Who I Am addresses and which our partner, ECPAT-USA is working to change.

In the documentary, Katrina, tells the story of being lured into the sex industry while still a teen, and the abuse she suffered from a trafficker who keep her in that life. Her compelling and emotional story takes us from Atlanta to New York City and to Atlanta again, from desperation to recovery and success. Her story illustrates the failure of the criminal justice system to help these youth and call on our state legislatures to stand up and make justice a reality for our country’s exploited children.

Here is Katrina’s story, a story that mirrors that of thousands of young girls and boys in every corner of my country (total running time 21 mins):

ECPAT-USA and WITNESS co-produced the video to educate public policy makers, especially state legislators, about the best way to help children involved in the sex trade and ask them to make changes on behalf of these youth. Legislative reform measures and new approaches, recommended in the film can, and must, shift our collective responsive from a punitive one to a restorative one.

Now that you have heard Katrina’s voice, please use yours.

To help protect exploited children:

• Share this film with your local legislatures and ask them to support and pass state-wide legislation that-

1. Protects exploited children under 18 from being treated as juvenile offenders
2. Provides victims with emergency and long-term services
3. Increases penalties for criminals selling and buying sex with children
4. Empowers government and non-profit collaboration assist victims and prosecute offenders

• Share this film with faith-based communities, your local law enforcement offices, shelter services within your community, child welfare offices, family and friends and ask them to write to their state legislators and share the film too.

• Learn more by reading ECPAT’s report on “State Laws and Best Practices for Improving our Response to the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S.” To download the report, click here.

• To report an instance of human trafficking or if you are a victim of human trafficking, call the National Trafficking Hotline operated by the Polaris Project for confidential help 24/7 at 888-3737-888.

On 3 January more than 300 families were forcibly evicted from their homes in Phnom Penh by the local construction company building on the land and more than 100 state armed forces. LICADHO captured the forced eviction on video – see below – where residents have been arrested, women and children have been detained and several were injured. LICADHO and civil society organizations released public statements denouncing the forced eviction and demanding the release of those arrested and detained.

In 2009, in the same neighborhood, families affected by HIV/AIDS were forced from their homes even after considerable local and international community campaigning. A public letter to the Government of Cambodia demanding the residents’ right to health and adequate housing be respected was signed by WITNESS, Human Rights Watch and AIDS Free World as well as +100 other HIV/AIDS organizations around the world.

NOW TAKE ACTION WITH AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL’S CAMPAIGN TO SUPPORT THE COMMUNITY.

For more video on forced eviction campaigns in Cambodia, check out LICADHO’s video gallery.  Also follow the WITNESS blog stream on forced evictions to learn more about the campaigns a part of the global campaign.

Guest post from WITNESS partner LICADHO:

January 12, 2012 – We, the ten undersigned civil society organizations, call for the immediate release of Borei Keila residents detained yesterday and since unlawfully detained at the Prey Speu Social Affairs Center. We also call for the permanent closure of the Prey Speu center, which has been proven time and again to be nothing more than an extra-judicial detention facility.

The detained residents – 24 women and six children – are among several hundred who were forcefully displaced on Jan. 3, 2012, when Phan Imex, a construction company owned by the well-connected Suy Sophan, destroyed their homes in Phnom Penh’s Borei Keila settlement. The brutal eviction was overseen by over 100 armed state forces, and resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of at least eight residents. Approximately one dozen people were injured, some seriously.

Phan Imex had secured the right to develop the Borei Keila site in exchange for building 10 apartment buildings for displaced families. The company only constructed eight buildings, however, and unilaterally reneged on the agreement in April 2010, reportedly because construction costs were too high. Phan Imex was allowed to continue developing the land for commercial purposes, however, despite the contractual breach.

Yesterday’s arrests of women and children took place while they were protesting their eviction and demanding the release of their fellow residents in front of the Phnom Penh Municipality building. The arrests were executed by both police and Daun Penh district security guards. The security guards have no legal power to arrest anyone.

“In fact, it is not even accurate to call these ‘arrests,’ ” said Yeng Virak, CLEC Executive Director. “Arrest implies a lawful warrant, legal due process and criminal charges. The authorities have provided none of these here. Someone simply decided that they wanted to get rid of these people. That’s what Prey Speu is – a place of extrajudicial detention. That’s what it has always been.”

“The authorities already sent a clear message that they have no regard whatsoever for the residents’ property and contract rights,” said Sia Phearum, HRTF Director. “Now it’s clear they have no regard for their civil rights either. They protested too loudly, and they’re paying with their freedom. This action really raises the ante in what was already an outrageous case. It’s gone a step beyond shocking.”

Organizations, such as LICADHO and Human Rights Watch (HRW), have long documented widespread abuses, including illegal confinement, rapes, beatings, deaths and torture, at Prey Speu and other social affairs centers. Conditions are in many cases worse than in Cambodia’s prisons, and the authorities provide no legal due process to detainees.

“The illegal detention of victims of forced evictions within the walls of Prey Speu marks yet another deplorable milestone for this infamous center. For the authorities to illegally detain anyone, especially children, into a center with such a clearly established track record of abuses is deeply troubling,” said LICADHO Director Naly Pilorge. “Centers such as Prey Speu serve no legitimate purpose in a free democratic society. Its closure is long overdue. This latest incident should serve as a wake-up call for all partners to the Social Affairs Ministry to push for a permanent shut down of this center.”

We call for the immediate release of all Borei Keila residents from Prey Speu, as well as the complete and permanent closure of the center at the earliest date possible. We also call for Phan Imex to honor its agreement to build 10 apartment buildings for Borei Keila residents, and for the government to ensure that construction takes place and that forcefully evicted families are given on-site apartments.

Amnesty USA organizes Rally to Close Guantanamo Bay, Jan. 11, 2012

Tomorrow marks the 10th anniversary of the first detainees being brought to Guantánamo Bay in the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” Amnesty International is organizing a day of action to call for the detention center’s closing. Actions are taking place in Washington D.C. and throughout Europe. The Washington Post reports that detainees currently held in Guantánamo are planning 3 days of peaceful demonstrations beginning today.

As part of their awareness campaign around their day of action, Amnesty’s USA branch produced a video called “Happy World Travel” using satire to call attention to Islamophobia and racial profiling that have emerged in the United States post 9-11.

The video shows a young man of Arab descent going into a travel agency to book a vacation which turns out to be a covert questioning center for a U.S. government agency (possibly the Department of Homeland Security). The travel agents eventually gather enough “evidence” of the would-be vacationer’s terrorist leanings to hood and bind him, and ship him off to Guantánamo Bay. Watch the video:

The detention center has been the subject of many parodies and comedy routines in the U.S. over the last decade. For example, the feature-length film “Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo” and a puppet character called Gitmo (who looks a lot like the popular Sesame Street character Elmo) makes reoccurring appearances on the fake news program “The Daily Show.” However, human rights groups and activists are not making light of the length of time it has taken to close it. Amnesty International’s Secretariat just released this video calling Guantánamo existence the cause of “a decade of damage to human rights.”

Human Rights Watch says the indefinite detention of hundreds of detainees “does enormous damage to the rule of law both in the U.S. and abroad.” You can read their full coverage of Guantanamo Bay here. And, this weekend The New York Times published a first-person account of a former detainee which he describes as a “nightmare.” One can get a sense of what Mr. Boumediene experienced from his written account as well as from this short video taken by the BBC last September which shows the exterior and some interior shots of the detention center.

The day of action tomorrow is aimed at encouraging President Obama to make good on his campaign promise to close Guantánamo, and to either try those who have been formally charged or to release those who have been deemed no threat. The President’s office responded to the calls for action (quote from The Washington Post article mentioned above):

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday that President Obama remains committed to closing the facility at Guantanamo. “We all are aware of the obstacles to getting that done as quickly as the president wanted to get it done, what they were, and the fact that they continued to persist,” said Carney. “But the president’s commitment hasn’t changed at all.”

However, the President’s recent signing of the National Defense Authorization Act allows for presidential authority to eliminate due process for anyone arrested on suspicion of terrorism, including American citizens. Though President Obama signed the bill with reservations stating he would not detain American citizens indefinitely, the bill is a setback for the rule of law.

Indefinite detention on American soil is not the only concern to human rights groups. HRW estimates that 3,000 people are being held in Afghanistan and that they “have not been afforded the basic rights that even captured enemy fighters are due in a civil war, such as being informed by a judge of the basis for their detention or allowed access to counsel.”

Additionally, the alleged use of torture in questioning of terror suspects and the use of extraordinary rendition – a practice whereby a suspected terrorist is taken to a site not on U.S. soil and interrogated – have been widely denounced by activists. Rendition was the subject of a video produced by WITNESS along with a dozen other organizations (including HRW, Amnesty, Reprieve, and the ACLU). “Outlawed: Extraordinary Rendition in the War on Terror” calls on the U.S. government to end the practice of rendition and adhere to due process.

With such a dismal record of adherence to the rule of law over the last decade by our government, perhaps humor is the only way to push forward. Here is the most recent appearance of the character Gitmoon “The Daily Show” which laments President Obama’s signing of the NDAA and the indefinite detention of people at Guantánamo.

I want to thank you for 2011. Thank You! For the difference that you made, and for inspiring others to do the same. Each one of you helped WITNESS accomplish so much in the past year.

We were able to highlight others’ videos and stories more. More stories were told and heard, invisible violations made visible so they could not be ignored and violators held accountable. Activists were trained and supported, tactics and tools shared with a larger number of people than ever before, campaigns launched and action catalyzed, and as a result, commitments made by those who can change things.

A filming training exercise with a WITNESS partner in Kenya

2011 was the year of video. From the beautifully told and shot video of young climate change activist Nelson Kanuk, to Antonieta’s passionate plea to resist forced evictions in Rio, to the Oyela Irene’s personal story, to the grainy videos or testimonies shot or live streamed during protests in Cairo or in Zuccotti Park, to development of the SecureSmartCam app with the Guardian Project.

There are times that people ask me if WITNESS does not do “too many things” – but while we need to stay focused and have the resources to reach our goals, looking back at 2011 I believe that the breadth and depth of our commitments and work is an enormous asset and that our campaigns, trainings, tools, tactics and leadership activities all feed each other in fueling video as a premiere human rights tool. Through these activities we engage and learn from the world around us – what works and what doesn’t and how we can be more effective and have a bigger impact.

In the past year – WITNESS has looked outward more. We’ve adapted to the landscape better. We’ve engaged with groups, networks, and individuals. We’ve become nimbler and scrappier. We’ve participated in and facilitated networks of community organizers, human rights defenders, bloggers, citizens standing up for justice. We’ve made mistakes and we’ve done things right – we’ve learned and we will apply those learnings to everything we do in this coming year.

Change is constant. And it is a challenge for any organization to respond to that reality. We need to stay focused and use our resources optimally but we also need to be able to take advantage of and learn from what’s happening around us, and take risks. 2012 presents an incredible opportunity for WITNESS to expand its impact. But the only way we will get that balance right is to trust our guts, to continue to experiment with video innovation, to be mindful and disciplined in assessing what works and what doesn’t and to be outward facing and remain closely linked to our partners.

We can make video an even better human rights tool in the coming year and we can empower more people to use it well to document and end human rights violations. We turn to you again, to help us accomplish those goals.

Here’s to all of you for your support and here’s to all of us in the coming year taking advantage of the opportunities that lie ahead of us to fight for human rights with video.

Happy New Year!

By Stephanie Zito

One of the casualties of working in the not-for-profit world for many years is that when you’re surrounded by need day in and out for so long, at some point you stop seeing it. This year, it dawned on me that while I’d given nearly 15 years of my career to making a difference in the humanitarian world, I’d somewhere lost my idealism to do so in the process. Armed with determination to re-discover my will to make the world better I decided that every day for one year I’d find a different project that was succeeding in bringing change and make a financial donation of 10 dollars to support it.

Ten dollars doesn’t seem to be much, and you probably think that such a small donation can really make a difference in a world of so much need. Honestly, I wasn’t sure either if it did when I started, but I was on a 365 day giving quest to find out.

On my 198th day of this mission, called the #give10 project, I happened to see a tweet from WITNESS about land grabbing at Boeung Kak lake in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Ironically, while I’d been living in Cambodia’s capital city for nearly two years, and while I’d surely heard about the land grabbing and forced evictions taking place just a few miles from my house, I confess that hadn’t been paying much attention. Just like anywhere else in the world it’s too easy to be caught up in day to day living and turn a blind-eye to injustice happening right in your own neighborhood. Even as a professional do-gooder, I realized I was guilty of not caring.

I gave my $10 donation to WITNESS that day and started following them, not only because they were talking about an issue in my neighborhood, but because we could all use a little more awareness of the many of hidden injustices and human rights abuses happening around the world.

I think WITNESS is onto something in their quest to marry truth and technology as a powerful combination to give voice to the many who have been silenced for so long. Traditionally, the charity world has operated like the journalism world. Outside correspondents report on other people’s stories. Yet, digital technology has turned this upside down. In the age of Twitter and iReports, we don’t rely on big networks to tell us what is happening in the world. Communications is becoming more grassroots, and I love that WITNESS is plugging into this space and advocating for issues by helping people raise their own voices.

While my singular $10 may not go very far, after 9 months of giving, I am convinced that it does make a difference, and I’m on my way to starting a movement of generosity. If everyone could #give10, we’d have a lot more resources combined to make change.

I see the work of WITNESS in a similar way. If only one person suffering injustice speaks out, their voice may not by very loud. But if we create a movement for many to speak out and join their voices to be heard, change is imminent.

A little can go a long way. What small part can you play?

Stephanie Zito is an American do-gooder living in Cambodia. Her mission in life is to see the world, change the world, and have fun doing it. She writes about her adventures in life and giving at www.wanderingzito.com. Follow @wanderingzito to track the #give10 project on Twitter.

هذه المدونة هي الأولى في سلسلة من المدونات في اللغة العربية تهدف إلى تبادل ما لدينا من المواد التدريبية مع الجمهور المتحدث باللغة العربية (انظر إلى المدونة الأساسية في أهم ١٠ نصائح في التصوير و الذي كتبه زميلي كريس مايكل).ل

هذا الفيديو هو واحد من آلاف الفيديوهات التي تم إرسالها من سوريا الى الخارج . تم إرسال هذا الفيديو إلى صفحة  الفيسبوك“الثورة السورية ضد بشار الاسد ٢٠١١”  الذي قاموا بحفظه وأرشفته وفيه يتطلع المشاهد على الكيفية التي يتعامل بها السوريون لحماية هوية المتظاهرين من مخابرات النظام السوري. حيث قام المصورون بتصوير خلفية المتظاهرين حتى لا تظهر وجوههم وفي نفس الوقت جعلوا  لوحات المظاهرة مواجهة لكاميرات التصوير تم تصوير هذا الفيديو في دمشق: خ

لتحميل أفضل ١٠ نصائح في اللغة الإنجليزية، يرجى زيارة موقعنا على الانترنت هنا. تلميحات متوفرة أيضا باللغة العربية على موقعنا هنا.غ

      ١٠ نصائح لتصوير المظاهرات والإعتقالات والإشتباكات

١ـ  التحضير : تعرفوا على الأجهزة الخاصة بكم. أوقفوا بعض الميزات أو البرامج لتطويل عمر البطارية (مثل البحث عن خدمة الإنترنت اللاسلكي/ الواي فاي). ليكن معكم بطاريات إضافية مشحونة وإستخدموا بطاقات ذاكرة فارغة و أحضروا بطاقات إضافية. إستخدموا أحزامة الكاميرات أو أربطوا الكاميرات بأياديكم. وحيثما أمكن ذلك، شغلوا ميزة الوقت و التاريخ ومكان إلتقاط الصورة وإضبطوها بشكل دقيق. وفي حالة الإعتقال (وإذا كان الوضع آمناً) احتفظوا برقم هاتف شخص أو مجموعة معينة في مكان أمن لديكم للإتصال بهم في حالة الطوارئ. غ

٢ـ  إلتقطوا صوراً محددة: إضغطوا على أزرار التصوير (10 ثواني على الأقل) وإستديروا بشكل بطيء وتجنبوا الإهتزاز وتقريب الصورة إقتربوا من الهدف عندما يكون ذلك ممكناً. وأحصلوا على مناظر بزوايا متعددة عريضة و متوسطة و عن قرب. صوروا لغير المتواجدين هناك، ما الذي يحتاجون رؤيته لفهم ومعرفة ماذا يحصل، وإذا وقعت أعمال عنف أو حصلت مضايقات – إستمروا في التصوير.غ

 ٣ـ  دائماً إلتقطوا صوراً: عليها التاريخ و الوقت و أظهروا الموقع (مثل إلتقاط تقاطعات الطرق و لوحات أسماء الشوارع والمعالم.) أحصلوا على زوايا مختلفة عند توثيق حجم وسلوك الحشد وتشكيلات وعدد القوات الأمنية وأية أسلحة يحملونها أو يستخدمونها. سجلوا أوامر القوات الأمنية أوأذوناتهم و الوقت وإسم الضابط و رقم الإشارة أو أية رموز تعريفية. صوروا قيام القوات الأمنية بإنشاء أو نقل المتاريس. صوروا عمليات تصوير المظاهرات والمتظاهرين من قبل القوات الأمنية.غ

  ٤ـ  إلتقطوا صوراً مفصلة للأحداث: إذا كانت هناك حالات إعتقال أو عنف، حاولوا أن تلتقطوا كل الحدث بتفاصيله بما فيها الوقت والمكان وعدد وهوية الأفراد المعنيين ووجود وسلوك الحشد أو رجال الأمن بشكل واسع. صوروا أو سجلوا أسماء الضباط (بأصواتكم) و أرقام الإشارات التعريفية و أرقام الخوذ أو اية إشارات تعريفية بكاميراتكم. إعملوا على إظهار صور المتضررين في الفيلم. كونوا سريعوا البديهة. صوروا من الأعلى إذا كان هذا ممكناً أو من الأسفل من بين أرجل رجال الأمن لتسجيل ما يحدث. تدارسوا إضافة حقائق جديرة بالذكر بشكل لفظي لشرح ماذا كان يحدث قبل بدأكم بالتصوير لإعطاء سياق للفيلم.غ

 ٥ـ  إعملوا كفريق واحد: إذا كنتم تصورون، أجعلوا شريكاً لكم ليراقب لكم المكان وليحافط على أمنكم وليقوم بلفت نظركم إلى لقطات اخرى محتملة قد يكون من المهم أن تصوروها. وإذا قام بالتصوير أكثر من واحد منكم فحاولوا تلتقطوا صوراً من زوايا مختلفة لنفس الحدث وأبقوا أعينكم على بعض دائماً. وإذا كنتم تواجهون مخاطر الإعتقال وتريدون الإستمرار في التصوير، فكروا بإعطاء بطاقة الذاكرة المستعملة لأحد أصدقائكم ليحفظها بشكل آمن وإستبدلوها ببطاقة أخرى فارغة وإستمروا في التصوير.ح

تحميل الصور ومشاركتها مع الآخرين من أجل إحداث تغيير. ن

٦ـ  ضعوا عناوين واضحة ومعبرة لصوركم. إحرصوا على أن تكون عناوين صوركم مختصرة و معبرة. أضيفوا التاريخ والوقت و المكان. إستخدموا كلمات تسهل لكم ولغيركم إيجاد أفلامكم. على سبيل المثال المحاكمات العسكرية، مصر، مظاهرات. ذ

٧ـ  ضعوا وصفاً لأفلامكم. دائماً ضمنوا أفلامكم التاريخ والموقع وتفاصيل عما حدثقبل وأثناء وبعد الانتهاء من التصوير. ضعوا في عين الإعتبار البدء بموقع محدد للمعلومات كمصدر للمزيد من المعلومات للمشاهدين، على سبيل المثال http://yemenrightsmonitor.blogspot.com12 نوفمبر 2011 صنعاء ، اليمن. ثم تقديم وصف للفيلم. ف

 ٨ـ  ضعوا كلمات تعبر عن موضوع أفلامكم. دائماً أضيفوا هذه الكلمات والتاريخ والوقت والمدينة وموقع محدد وكلمات معبرة أخرى (مثل مجزرة حماة). وإستخدموا كلمات عامة تستخدم في البحث مثل وحشية الشرطة أو رجال الأمن، والإعتقال، والتعذيب. د

٩ـ  العناية بأمور الأمن والسلامة. إذا كنتم تعتقدون بأنه يجب حجب الوجوه الظاهرة في الفيلم أو أن هذا الفيلم سيئودي إلى الإضرار بقضية شخص ما أو بكرامته فلعيكم التفكير مرتين قبل تحميل الفيلم. و إذا كان هذا الفيلم سيعرض الأشخاص الذين يظهرون به للخطر فعليكم التأكد من إستخدام وسائل مساعدة لحماية هوياتهم. ولتجنب تعريض الأشخاص الظاهرين في صوركم للخطر، لا تتركوا أية آثار لمحتوى بطاقات الذاكرة. وتذكروا بأن تقوموا بتفريغ بطاقات الذاكرة وإعادة تهيئتها بعد كل إستخدام وقد يكون من المفيد لكم الإحتفاظ ببعض الصور للموالين للنظام في هذه البطاقات بدلاً من ذلك. وهذا قد يقلل المخاطر ويبعد الشكوك عنكم في حالة مصادرة قوات الأمن لبطاقات الذاكرة الخاصة بكم. ك

١٠ـ  ضعوا أسماءاً لأفلامكم وإحفظوها. لا تعتمدوا على اليوتوب أو أية مواقع أخرى لحفظ صوركم – فقد يتم حذفها مما سيؤدي إلى فقدان وضياع معلومات تقنية مهمة في المواد المحفوظة. إخفظوا الصور والأفلام الأصلية في جهاز الكمبيوتر الخاص بكم. وكذلك إحفظوا نسخاً إحتياطية منها على أقراص صلبة خارجية. ضعوا أسماءاً لملفاتكم ونظموها حتى يسهل العثور عليها – أضيفوا التواريخ و الأماكن و الكلمات التي تصف محتواها. خ

This blog post is the first in a series of posts in Arabic aimed at sharing our training material with the Arab speaking audience (see our original post on the Top 10 Filming Tips, written by my colleague Chris Michael). It is also part of our series of Resources for Video4Change Activists started earlier this month.

Capturing content like the above puts citizens at high risk, it is important to keep recording while also assessing the safety and security of the situation. With a sea of content pouring out of the region, it is becoming even more important to film strategically and with an intended aim. Activists are identifying new ways to film effectively, for wider impact. Filmmakers are optimizing the use of video as a tool to advocate against specific issues, raising awareness, and recording and archiving for future evidentiary use.

Our Top 10 Tips is a starter list, and made to be adapted over time. We want to hear and learn from you. What have you learned while filming on the ground, at any demonstration or event? What do you wish someone told you when you started filming and sharing social change video?

Please add this list and share this post with your #video4change allies – particularly those who continue to document clashes and human rights abuses around the Middle East, North Africa and the world.

If you would like to download the Top 10 Tips in English please visit our website here. The Tips are also available in Arabic on our website here.

If you’d like to make a year-end contribution, please visit our Donate page.

To stop us from falling short, our world leaders simply need to look to a new generation of activists for the answer.

Across America, our youth are raising their voices on the streets and in the courts calling on the U.S. and state governments to implement Climate Recovery Plans that are based in science. This all began on Mother’s Day this year when youth activists filed legal actions against 49 of the 50 states and the federal government to force action on climate change.

The litigation is based on two deeply respected and engrained legal principles. First, the Public Trust Doctrine is one of the oldest principles known to civilized government and holds governments accountable to protect the resources we all share in common and on which we depend upon for our very survival, such as the air, water and wildlife. Second, the principle of intergenerational justice, a legal and ethical obligation that is enshrined in international human rights law but simply put, it means, that the adults can’t have a party on the planet and leave it a mess for our kids. (For more context on the principle of intergenerational justice, see this article by Burns H. Weston – PDF.)  When you combine the Public Trust Doctrine with the principles of intergenerational justice and passionate youth who are fighting for their future, we have an unprecedented approach to climate litigation that goes back to a very basic principal: trust.

You may wonder what do these kids want from the court? This answer is simple too. They want: 

• The court to say out loud that the atmosphere is a resource we all share;
• Since the atmosphere is a shared resource, that it be protected, in trust, by our governments; and
• That protection means adopting and implementing a Climate Recovery Plan that is based in science.

No money damages. No punitive damages. No big settlement. They are just asking we adults to develop and implement a smart strategy to protect our atmosphere and their futures. Very reasonable.

But most of all, you may wonder who these youth are? They are from cities, small towns, farms. They are of all ages. They are black, white, brown. Some come from families that are well off. Others are poor. Others in between. They’re all playful. Some are athletes. Some paint. Some act. They all love seem to have a deep love of music. They love their brothers and sisters and those with pets, love their pets. They are all so different yet they share two things in common. They all hope to live in an ecologically healthy world and they are all scared they may not get to.

For a small window into the lives on one of the youth plaintiffs, meet Nelson Kanuk. Nelson is now 17 and is from Kipnuk, Alaska. Nelson was curious about climate change and when he finally understood what climate change was, he thought, “What could I do to help?” He concluded, “I thought that would help a lot to tell my story about how we’re being impacted by climate change on this side of the world.” Here is his story:

This video is part of a series we are producing with our partners at the iMatter campaign. To watch the second video in this series, TRUST Montana with John Thiebes, click here. To watch the first video, TRUST California with Alec Loorz, click here.

Nelson – just like all the youth plaintiffs – is daring and is a visionary. Shouldn’t our world leaders share these same characteristics? If you are a world leader reading this now, I dare you to follow Nelson’s lead and the lead of all the youth that are taking their case to the courts seeking a smart strategy to address climate change. And if you weren’t inside the negotiations in Durban I hope you will support our youth by sharing your story here.

I had the opportunity to put some questions to the company’s Executive Chairman, Hans Erikkson.

Q: Bambuser is not the first livestreaming mobile phone app in existence. How does it work differently from other services out there? And why do you think the app has become so popular with activists from Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park and beyond?

Hans: There are a number of differences between Bambuser and other services. The three most important are:

• Bambuser provides a service that has proven to be the most reliable for continuous mobile live video streaming and broadcasting even over weak networks. The reliability has been one of the out-most important aspects.
• We provide as close to real-time streaming as your connection allows. As my colleague Jonas Vig explained in the Wall Street Journal: “…if you are in an area with a poor connection, the frame rate will drop down, but it will be as close to real time as possible.” The article goes on to explain, “Normal video is transmitted at around 30 frames per second. That requires a good connection. The Bambuser app will drop as low as single figures, so the effect will be jerky, but it will still be real time… once the livestream is over, the app uploads the missing frames, backfilling the video so that the replayed video is of much higher quality.”
• Bambuser supports, by far, the highest number of handsets. Currently around 360 different models. This includes most models based on iOS, Android, Symbian (Nokia), Bada (Samsung), Meego and Maemo (Nokia), Windows Mobile – this means that if you have a smartphone you’re most likely able to use Bambuser Find your phonehere.

Q: What are the three most important things for people to keep in mind as they livestream from their mobile phone?

Hans: From a user perspective only one thing, and that’s safety. From a quality perspective:

• Keep an eye on the “stream health”. The Stream health is an indication of how good the viewer experience is. E.g. streaming in very high quality when you have a poor connection generates a poor viewer experience. If stream health is below 60% consider switching to lowerresolution. If the Stream health indicates 100% you may be able to increase video resolution.
• Audio is the single most important thing. If you’re interviewing someone, make sure to keep him or her close to the phone or use an external microphone. Try to tell your viewers what’s going on in the video, this will help them get a richer context and make them watch longer. Interacting with your viewers enables you also to ask them about video and sound quality
• Try to keep the phone steady and try to avoid sudden moves. When turning in another direction, try to do it gently as this will give the viewers a much better experience.

Q: Can you share a couple of examples of noteworthy streams on Bambuser from the past couple of months?

Hans:

• From Syria, we’ve seen some really terrible footage from recent fighting in the town of Deir Ezzor (you may also be able to get live footage from this user).
• An Occupy Wall Street activist was broadcasting live from the police van – after the arrests at the Winter Garden/Goldman Sachs building (December 12, 2011)
• A Russian activist who got arrested in Moscow broadcasted his arrest live. Here he is minutes before getting arrested:

Minutes later in the police car. And later in the arrest.

• Egyptian human rights activist Ramy Raoof broadcasting live during protests in Cairo days before the [parliamentary] election (November 2011). The video stops as he’s being hit by rubber bullets fired by the Egyptian Military/Police. Documentation of violence and wrongdoings will become default and this will enable the outside world to get a much wider picture of the actual situation in places where unrest is present.

• And some video from new unrest starting last Friday, Dec 16th in Cairo.

Q: Has the app changed as a result of feedback from users, particularly activists in the Middle East? If so, what modifications have been made?

Hans:   It has not changed, but it has evolved – most obvious is that we’ve been optimizing the app for streaming over poor connections. We’ve also recently launched record video offlinemode when you have very poor or no network at all. These have been outright requests from activists. We always listen to feedback and requests from our users and try to include as many useful and great ideas as we can.

Q:  What safety settings are available for users of Bambuser?

Hans: Geo-positioning is always opt-in and it’s up to you as a user/broadcaster to decide if you want to share your location or not. We also allow for anonymous registration. It’s important to remember however, the less information you provide, the harder it is to verify location of the video footage and in the end it’s harder to verify the authenticity. It’s a trade off. The user has to make a choice, but safety is always most important.

Q: The New York Times recently published an article about the growing potential of livestreaming as a way for viewers to be connected to events as they happen. Do you have any predictions or hopes for how mobile livestreaming will be used in 2012?

Hans:  2012 is the year when mobile live streaming will boom. One of the main reasons is that mainstream media is starting to understand the power of the medium as it’s been used by people all over the world, to share exceptional moments and unparalleled stories in real time. From the upraise in the middle east and north Africa, to the Occupy movements around the world  - via child births and wedding ceremonies – everyone has a story to share with their world. More and more people understand how apps like Bambuser can be used in so many ways to interact and communicate with the world as well as with friends, family and followers. The infrastructure is of course important too, with handsets becoming better and better, data plans getting cheaper and the mobile data networks are improving by the day. Many factors coming together will help mobile live video broadcasting going mainstream and spread to the masses next year.

The report provides a powerful counterpoint to the official narrative often repeated by local authorities and decision-makers, many of whom like to say that “nobody is being removed by force” and that “no families are being resettled without proper compensation.”

If you follow our forced evictions campaign on this blog, you know that’s just not true.

The most powerful way to prove this, however, is to let those directly affected speak for themselves.

Watch what happened when our local partners in Rio tried to speak directly to Olympics organizers during a field visit on November 11th. And watch what unfolds as Antonieta, a 31-year-old single mother who was forcibly evicted from her community in May, confronts the group to personally deliver a letter and video-dossier on forced evictions in Rio (click here if you want to see the video in English):

I first met Antonieta during a 3-day fact-finding mission led by Brazilian human rights groups in May. Then, I got the chance to know her better as we spent one week together in our Rio video advocacy training in July (see her at 1:20min of this video). Since then, we’ve been working with her and many other allies in Brazil to ensure her story is not silenced, denied or ignored.

As this week’s new report shows, Antonieta is just one of many thousands that need to be heard.

What you can do

While we wait for an official response from Olympic organizers in Brazil and Switzerland, you can add your voice to the campaign and join us in demanding no more evictions for Olympics in Rio and World Cup in Brazil.  You can:

• Share these videos with bloggers and members of the media.
• Leave your comments of support in the fields below.
• Support the local coalition of groups working with affected communities on the ground to monitor evictions.

On Twitter? Help us tweet the International Olympic Committee @IOCMedia, local Olympics organizers in Rio @Rio2016, and the mayor of Rio @eduardopaes_ and ask them to respond to our call!  Here are some suggested tweets just under the 140-character limit…

English:

@IOCMedia you must condemn #ForcedEvictions conducted in the name of the @Rio2016 #Olympics: http://tiny.cc/NoEvictions #Brazil #HumanRights

@IOCMedia @Rio2016: respond to @Amnesty @witnessorg +@ComitPopularCop letter on #ForcedEvictions in Rio #Olympics http://tiny.cc/NoEvictions

Português:

@eduardopaes_ @Rio2016 precisam responder às denúncias de #RemoçõesForçadas no Rio para as #Olimpíadas de 2016 http://tiny.cc/RemocoesZero

@eduardopaes_ diz que #RemoçõesForçadas estão dentro da lei no Rio; vídeos provam o contrário: http://tiny.cc/VideosRemocoes #Olimpíadas

The new twitter setting available is called, “Tweet Media,” and has two options. The first option is important to activists because selecting to check or uncheck this option will either display or not display media (i.e. videos and photos) determined by a user as ‘sensitive content.’ The second option available allows a user to set their account to be categorized as ‘sensitive content.’ Twitter gives this explanation: “If you tweet images or videos that may contain sensitive content, please check this box so that people can be warned before they see it.” Learn more »

Here are the steps to editing the settings to your twitter account:

1. Login at twitter.com
2. Select ‘settings’ from the drop down menu available on your username
3. Scroll down to the bottom of the ‘Account’ tab.
4. Review selections.

Suggested settings for activists (new settings in bold):

• For Tweet Location:  uncheck ‘Add a location to your Tweets’
• For Tweet Media:  check ‘Display media that may contain sensitive content’
• For Tweet Media:  uncheck ‘Mark my media as containing sensitive content’
• For Tweet Privacy:  leave this unchecked ONLY if you want your account to be public
• For HTTPS Only:  check ‘Always use HTTPS’

Other settings that have been available, but an activist should review regularly:

• Mobile tab:  if you use this to be able to SMS messaging be sure to uncheck ‘Let others find me by my phone number’
• Applications tab:  review and revoke access to applications that you do not want to have access to your twitter account (check at least every two months)
• Password tab:  change your password every one to two months

This post is part of our Human Rights Day Series: Resources for #Video4Change Activists. You can access other posts in the series here.

By Chris Rogy 

At a desk densely populated by monitors in downtown Manhattan, I met Josh: Occupier, trendsetter, livestream aficionado. Josh was laid off on September 16th, the day before Occupiers arrived at Zuccotti Park. In the following days, the newly formed movement began to capture his imagination.  He was incensed while watching the pepper spray events of September 24th and after was determined to get involved.

You may be asking yourself, what is livestream? And what exactly is Josh curating? Livestream is an emerging technology that allows users to broadcast and view continuous video on the internet. Josh is a livestream curator (but not in the museum sense), more like a TV programmer, the one who coordinates and embeds streams for viewing on a website.

I spoke with Josh about his role curating livestreams for the Occupy Wall Street movement and he agreed to share some insights and tips about livestreaming.

Interview with a Livestream Curator

Describe your knowledge and/or expertise of livestream before your involvement?

Josh: In my previous job I was livestreaming concerts 4-5 nights a week.  Livestream has fascinated me for a couple years as a new, revolutionary media form.  It enables the further democratization of media, as it puts the power of live broadcasting in the hands of the people.  Livestream’s ease of access and low barrier entry, compared to institutionalized media conglomerates and news crews with satellite trucks, make it scalable worldwide.

Highlight your objectives and main tasks:

Josh: In the beginning, I was primarily concerned with the actual camera operation of livestream – running down the streets or up the Brooklyn Bridge and letting the world see what I was seeing.  Since then, we’ve had talented people join our team, so I’ve stepped back slightly from that role to build infrastructure.  Right now, we are brainstorming new ways of editing and curating content.  I am focused on decentralizing and improving our data/video systems and building a more cohesive network of citizen journalist/livestreamers.

Do you work collaboratively or in a team?  What are the roles of your teammates and how is labor divided?

Josh: Yes, we work collaboratively in a team.  Roles include:  producing, shooting, and support.  People take on all roles as we teach them to each other.  In this way, we maintain horizontal structures.  In the future I would also like to explore having on camera personalities who could be an interface between viewers and participants.

To what extent do you coach or direct videographers?

Josh: I’ve been teaching people about the theory behind the tech we’re using, so that they may understand and use it better.  But, other than asking them to keep the camera steady or narrate for our viewers, there isn’t too much coaching.  We trust and therefore allow the videographer to cover the event as they see fit.  Sometimes we re-deploy our videographers as an event develops based on information we get from contacts on the ground as well as social web.

How do you determine what feed to curate?

Josh: That is up to the individual producer.  Again, we trust and therefore allow our producers to use their best judgement.  When we first started our livestream coverage simultaneous multi-camera mixing wasn’t possible.  Since then, we’ve refined our process to allow viewers to watch several angles at once.  In the future, I’d like to let users curate their own viewing.

What apps, programs, or software do you use?

Josh: Procaster – for basic video encoding and broadcast to livestream server.  Also used for screen capture to enable simulcasting of other channels. Wirecast – used in conjunction with Desktop Presenter and a network of computers to do multi-feed displays and more flexible editing. Bambuser – dead simple application for Android and iPhone that allows anyone to livestream.  Even works on 3G networks.  Mobile streaming is, in my eyes, the future of citizen journalism.  Twitter/TweetDeck - to set up alerts and to track events and livestreams around the country.

In which ways and to what extent are you concerned about your safety and  security?

Josh: Well, we are usurping Mainstream Media’s power structures with ad hoc gear and shoestring budgets, so I would imagine we’re pissing off some executives.  We’re also able to broadcast police repression in real time which, when severe, sets off a chain reaction of social trending.  It’s also evidence that is a lot more difficult to destroy or suppress.  I’m sure that pisses off police departments and the Feds.  But, citizen journalism is not a crime (yet) so I guess I should have nothing to fear, right?  I understand the risks I am taking, but I do not fear them because for me it is more important that the truth of this movement be told.

What do you wish someone had told you before you started?  In other words, what advice do you have for others creating content like yours out there?

Josh: Keep the camera rolling.  When I shoot edited pieces, I pick and choose what I record.  Early on, I made the mistake of ending my recording because I thought the stream would be saved.  A server error caused a beautiful interview to be lost forever. You can do it.  Livestreaming is so much easier than people think.  I encourage anyone who may have thought about it, to download Bambuser on your smart phone, head down to your local Occupation to be a live citizen journalist.

***