John Edwards & Rielle Hunter’s unsuccessful video shorts

Yesterday the Los Angeles Times column Webscout looked a little closer at the videos that Reille Hunter made for the Edwards campaign. As you know by now, John Edwards recently admitted that he had an affair with Hunter.

Putting aside the public’s prurient concerns, I’m most interested in how Hunter managed to convince the campaign to hire her and what they hoped to achieve with the technology. Apparently Hunter met Edwards in a bar and some cynics might argue that the video contract was a way to formalize their relationship. But I think they were genuinely interested in using video to reveal something about Edwards.

Webscout says that “The four short episodes are usually referred to as “campaign videos,” which might explain why they have not drawn much of a crowd.” But why weren’t they successful? It seems that even though Hunter and the Edwards campaign were interested in new technology, they still had a very “top down” way of using it. Instead of something dynamic, they went for some sort of stale “Reality-TV” style.

Ultimately Webscout thinks that Hunter used video as an excuse to get close to Edwards:

Hunter is revealed as not simply a videographer hired by the Edwards campaign but a member of a much older profession: a groupie. And “Inspiring Politics” represents one of the most inventive ways a groupie has ever gained unlimited access to the power guy of her dreams.

Watch the videos and decide for yourself:

• Episode 1, “Plane Truths”
• Episode 2, “The Golden Rule”
• Episode 3, “Plight of Uganda”
• Episode 4, “Plugs”

Language and text on the Internet

Another interesting article in the New York Times Magazine (I do read other outlets, I swear) was by Virginia Heffernan in her “The Medium” column. Heffernan chronicles her experience with non-English websites, comparing how Japanese and French websites treat strangers like herself.

I thought the article was interesting since it turns the tables on English speakers and makes us wonder how the “Anglosphere” treats non-English speakers. For organizations that work with new immigrants in the US, this is an interesting question and raises my own concerns about text-based communication on the Internet.

Many nonprofit organizations have jumped into the Web 2.0 world in spaces that rely heavily on text-based forms of communication (i.e. e-mails, blogs, etc.) but it may not always be the panacea for all their communications challenges. These spaces that often require above-average proficiency in English and savoir-faire in technology-based spaces.

Text-based communications technology such as e-mail is also infinitely replicable and consequently can become effectively meaningless to policymakers. Folks like Clay Shirky have pointed out that groups like MoveOn have had limited success in influencing Capitol Hill. Anonymity in creating text on blogs and bulletin boards also allows users to be contentious and intransigent in ways that do not promote true dialogue. Wikis, a form of on-line collaboration that allows users to edit text together, have shown the most promise in fostering new forms of collaboration. Yet even wikis require a common language, an extensive vocabulary and higher than average technological knowledge.

This makes me wonder if non-text-driven tools like video are easier for new English speakers to access. Heffernan’s experience on the Japanese website kind of backs this up. Video also requires more conceptualization and pre-planning, perhaps making it less spur of the moment and perhaps malicious. Also making decisions about framing and effective messaging provide a learning process for video creators.

More on this soon…

Beware of the Trolls!

Did you see the recent New York Times Magazine article on “trolls” on the Internet?

It was very interesting. I’m kinda afraid to comment more lest this blog becomes a target. Half joking here.

See this quote:

“Bloggers are filth. They need to be destroyed.”

But the most comforting quote in the article

So far, despite all this discord, the Internet’s system of civil machines has proved more resilient than anyone imagined. As early as 1994, the head of the Internet Society warned that spam “will destroy the network.” The news media continually present the online world as a Wild West infested with villainous hackers, spammers and pedophiles. And yet the Internet is doing very well for a frontier town on the brink of anarchy. Its traffic is expected to quadruple by 2012. To say that trolls pose a threat to the Internet at this point is like saying that crows pose a threat to farming.

What’s interesting is that trolls rely mostly on text-based communication and it makes me wonder how they would interact with image or video-based media. Just a thought…

Can Recognition of Gay Marriage at the State Level Help Immigrants?

With all the excitement and hoopla over gay and lesbian weddings taking place in California and Massachusetts this summer, there was renewed attention to the challenges face by “bi-national” couples: Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) couples in which one partner is a U.S. citizen and the other is from another country. These couples face a unique form of discrimination since, unlike straights, LGBT U.S. citizens cannot sponsor their same-sex partners to stay in the United States. The challenges faced by these couples have been chronicled in films like “Through Thick and Thin” and “Maple Palm” .

The problem for bi-national couples is that immigration is a federal issue and right now the debate over gay marriage is at the state level. As you know, every four years around election time, President Bush and other Conservatives in Washington threaten a Constitutional amendment to bar same-sex couples from marrying. As a result, state legislatures and courts are hashing it out. So even if a couple could marry in a gay marriage-friendly state today, their union would mean nothing to federal immigration officials.

Organizations such as Immigration Equality and Out4Immigration have been seeking a remedy for this situation. They have proposed the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA) that has been introduced in the House and in the Senate . So far they have 99 cosponsors in the House and 13 Cosponsors in the Senate . The bill does not hinge on gay marriage, however, since it seeks to make it possible for someone to sponsor his/her “permanent” domestic partner. This legislation would make the U.S. part of a global trend on the issue. Such sponsorship is already possible in Canada, 13 European countries, Brazil, Israel, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. So when will the U.S. join this ever-expanding list by recognizing LGBT bi-national partnerships?

ACTION STEP: Contact your Representative and your Senators and ask them to support this important legislation. To reach them by phone, call the Congressional Switchboard: (202) 224-3121.

New documentary OPERATION FILMMAKER raises interesting questions

Recently National Public Radio did a story on a new documentary “Operation Filmmaker”. I haven’t seen it yet but it sounds very interesting. Actor Lieve Schrieber decided to help an Iraqi filmmaking student by offering him a position with the film he was directing (“Everything is Illuminated”). Then Schrieber hired a documentary filmmaker to film the experience and what they experienced was not what they expected.

The film’s website describes it this way:

Do-gooder intentions go disastrously wrong when Hollywood gives a young Iraqi film student the chance of a lifetime. Operation Filmmaker tells the fascinating and riveting story of Muthana Mohmed’s odyssey in the West, with uncanny parallels to America’s recent misadventures abroad.

My question is why did Schrieber hire someone else to film it? Why not give a camera to the Iraqi filmmaker rather than have him fetch coffee? To me, this illustrates how Americans sometimes fail to give everyone the chance to make their own media.

OK, OK, maybe I should see the film first before I comment further.

Here’s the trailer for the film:

more about “New! OPERATION FILMMAKER trailer“, posted with vodpod

YouTube dips its toe in the cinema world

Here’s an interesting article in the print edition of the Los Angeles Times that was hard (if not impossible) to find on their website. I wrote to the author and got him to send me the link.

At the Henry Fonda Theater on Hollywood Boulevard last night, YouTube introduced its new “Screening Room,” an area of the site devoted exclusively to selected independent films. The Screening Room will feature four short films every two weeks, as well as the occasional full-length feature. The first several slates of films are chock-a-block with recognizable names and Academy Award-nominated filmmakers, but as the program continues, YouTube expects to include films submitted to a kind of cinema slush pile, to keep at least a modicum of the “You” in YouTube.

The first four films showcased both the flexibility of the short form and the way it seems to lend itself to limited-attention, online viewing. “The Danish Poet,” a precious animated love story by Torill Kove, won the 2007 Oscar for best animated short, and the mind-bending puppet opera “Love and War” won the same award at last year’s Los Angeles Film Festival. Miranda July’s “Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?,” starring John C. Reilly, represented Wholphin, the quarterly DVD magazine from McSweeney’s. Rob Pearlstein’s “Our Time Is Up,” starring Kevin Pollak, was nominated for an Oscar in 2006.

In a panel session after the screening, the filmmakers talked about the potential upside of having their films on YouTube.

“It’s difficult to get a mass audience for short films via the film festival route,” said Pearlstein, speaking of YouTube’s (theoretical) capability to focus millions of eyeballs on these shorts in a way that Sundance, say, never could.

Nor does the festival circuit act as a living library the way the Internet can: “Typically a short film has quite a short life — if you’re lucky, a year or two,” Kove said. “And I think this is a really good way to prolong that.”

(A disoriented July did not have as much to contribute to the discussion. “I thought this was the Screening Room,” she told the audience, referring to the room where the event was taking place. “I didn’t realize it was on YouTube.”)

Films shown on the (virtual) Screening Room will be eligible for YouTube’s revenue-sharing program, whereby filmmakers split some of the income from the advertising that accompanies their movies. YouTube never says much about what this can amount to, but stories circulate about the odd person who can make a living by stringing together enough million-plus-hit video clips.

“It’s important to be able to enable others by helping them finance their next project,” said Jordan Hoffner, YouTube’s director of content partnerships. “We’ve seen that a lot with Google,” he said, alluding to its advertising system for websites. “People were able to quit their day jobs and do the things they were really passionate about.”

I’m not ready to believe that this project is going to allow thousands of auteurs to hang up their Starbucks aprons and start cranking out movies. And though the Screening Room’s debut was mostly flash and hype (three of the four films still have fewer than 500 views), there was a definite sense that YouTube had set up its first serious outpost in the world of cinema, and that more than a few of us are going to be watching.

Voting records of Presidential Contenders document their stance on Immigration

The 2008 presidential campaign is different than any other in recent memory. It’s the first in time in 48 years that two sitting Senators are vying for the presidency. It’s difficult for senators to win the post since their voting record on national issues is there for public scrutiny. Since 1968, Americans have elected governors or “outsiders” to the Congress. Now with two clear contenders in the ring for 2008, McCain and Obama’s legislative positions on immigration policies are on display for all to see and debate.

Immigration has been a thorny issue for John McCain. Over the past few months, he seems to be playing both sides of the issue. As co-author of the 2006 “McCain-Kennedy” bill , his primary opponents assailed McCain as being for “amnesty”. To counteract this perception, McCain was often quoted as saying that he would secure the border first before making any other immigration reforms. Now that he’s wrapped up the nomination, the Republican Party is casting him as pro-immigrant. National Public Radio broadcast a story this past week suggesting that Latinos might support McCain because of this. Also this week McCain met with Latino leaders on Wednesday in Chicago. One Latino Republican in attendance was quoted as saying, “He’s one John McCain in front of white Republicans. And he’s a different John McCain in front of Hispanics.”

Obama on the other hand has promised immigration reform during his first 100 days in office. Even so, Latino congressional reps are worried that Obama isn’t doing enough to court Latinos.

There was also news this week that Democrats are playing both sides of the issue by pushing for more funding for strong-arm enforcement measures.

Immigration is one of those “Alice in Wonderland”-type policy issues where normal positions seem to warp and change at random. With the national elections less than five months away, we’re sure to hear a lot more about the issue.

ACTION STEPS: Check out your candidate’s website to see what he says about immigration policy: McCain or Obama . Contact your candidate and tell him what you think of their position: Obama or McCain

“Broken” or “Out of Date”? Words We Use in the Immigration Debate

Over the past two years, we’ve heard a great deal about our “broken” immigration system. Both sides of the issue use the term but for distinctly different meanings.

Anti-immigrant groups and journalists like Lou Dobbs use “broken” literally and often use images of the border where holes allow “illegals” to slip into the U.S. It also evokes “breaking” the law, which many opponents claim when they hurl statements into the debate like “What part of illegal don’t you understand?”

Pro-immigrant advocates on the other hand often use “broken” to evoke broken families and disregard for human rights. Fixing the system in their minds means making it more just and fair not repairing literal holes.

Due to this double-edged nature of the word, I’m concerned that both sides of the issue never get down to what they’re really talking about. If an immigrant rights advocate uses “broken system” in a press release, opponents may see a validation of his views since it is so strongly connected in our mind’s eye with a broken border wall.

I’ve been trying to substitute the adjective “out of date” to describe our immigration system. It is the 21st century after all and our current laws are so “retro.” The bulk of the law was written back in the 1986, well before the U.S. signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, a treaty that has had a profound impact on our continent. More than 3 million agricultural workers lost their jobs in Mexico as a result of NAFTA and the US-subsidized corn we dumped there. Add to that the Mexican government’s ballooning foreign debt and how it prevents them to institute job creation programs. Is it any wonder Mexicans come to the US in search of ways to feed their families? Since 1986, there have also been civil wars throughout Central America that have caused significant refugee flows. Not only do our current laws fail to reflect the economic reality in our 21st century “globalized” world, the bulk of the changes made to immigration law have only made it harder and more restrictive to work and live in the U.S.

To encourage the adoption of the adjective “out of date”, I’ve brought it up in several fora of immigrant rights advocates. I even made a video short with friends on this topic “Thru the Plexiglass.” I’ve pointed out to folks that it might be the antidote we need for white-haired Lou Dobbs who is so “out of touch”, “last century”, and “just plain old.” Some folks have agreed. Others think “broken” is a point of agreement between both sides of the issue.

This week, I attended an event at the Santa Monica Public Library where George Lakoff talked about the “Political Mind” , the topic of his new book. Lakoff, the Progressive strategist who also wrote “Don’t Think of an Elephant” regaled the audience with the 21st century’s research findings on “real reason” and how it relates to current political debates.

Somehow Lakoff chose me to get the first question right out of the gate. I presented my concerns over the use of the adjective “broken” and my proposal of “out of date”. Lakoff didn’t seem to think that contested meaning where a problem since “freedom” is used by conservatives and liberals to mean different things, such as “Freedom FROM…” vs. “Freedom TO…” He thought it was still worth fighting over. Lakoff was more disturbed by the lack of gratitude that most Americans have for undocumented immigrants since they make their current lifestyle possible. Lakoff also riffed on the use of “illegal” and why it’s so inaccurate. “No one calls you an ‘illegal parker’ if you get a parking ticket,” he pointed out. Since Lakoff teaches at Berkeley, he may have heard his colleague Geoffrey Nunberg who’s pointed out the same problem with the term.

So I’m left wondering which term is better. I invite you, dear blog reader, to add your two cents in the comments section below. Do you vote for “Broken System”, “Out of Date Laws” or some combination of the two?

Happy Loving Day!

In our work to reform out-dated immigration laws, it’s important to remember previous struggles against unjust and retrograde laws.

Only FORTY-ONE YEARS ago today, the U.S. Supreme court overturned bans on interracial marriage in the case Loving vs. Virginia: http://www.lovingday.org/

(I find this amazing since it was only 3 years before I was born…).

La Luta Continua!

New Release: 1,000 Voices Archive

From the Creative Counsel and the Opportunity Agenda

Creative Counsel, the arts and media group and sister organization of The Opportunity Agenda, is pleased to announce the launch of the 1000 Voices Archive.

This multi-partner project brings together award winning filmmakers, some of the nation’s largest advocacy networks, and creative professionals to showcase 1000 stories, told by advocacy heroes, that elevate the core values that are central to a just and equitable world. The stories will be used in town halls, training rooms, organizer meetings, local media, policy briefings, and classrooms across the country.

The 1000 Voices Archive is Creative Counsel’s debut multimedia project intended to tap the tremendous power of stories to shape community dialogues and drive policy change. Many of Creative Counsel’s stories will be promoted through the outreach efforts of the 1000 Voices Archive team and communications networks, to ensure that they reach the largest, strategically-identified audiences possible. And in the coming weeks, Creative Counsel will announce their Facebook and mySpace pages, and postings on dozens of other sites, to launch the Archive’s social networking community.

Key content includes:

• The “crown jewel” — The Interactive Map of the Archive’s stories, searchable by Core Values, Issue Areas, and zoomable to key cities;

• A Toolkit accompanying each video, including zip code specific letter writing tools to contact elected officials and local media, with dynamically generated letter templates allowing the viewer to “shape public dialogue” by sharing viewpoints and a link to the video;

• Dozens of resources; factsheets, screening tools, recent news articles, facilitation guides, weblinks, and Share It tools related to the storyteller’s themes;

• A One Stop Policy Education Shop for viewers to learn about legislation, local public representatives, and to receive email updates on issues related to the storyteller’s themes.

Many Voices, Authentic Voices:

The archive emphasizes storytellers with diverse voices and backgrounds, including:

Timothy Hill, a Black Youth Vote! leader from South Carolina;

Merle Bell, an older Iowan farmer;

Heidi Pascual, an Asian American publisher;

Marina Caeiro, a Latina organizer;

Donna Land Maldonado, a Native American media leader;

and in the coming weeks, stories of the undocumented.

…all united by core values that have informed their lives and drive their work and life choices. At its best, the Archive reminds us that there are still many who care deeply and are working hard for the values of community, voice, and justice.

In 2008 and 2009, the 1000 Voices Archive will produce a significant number of stories on the themes of health care, immigration, racial justice, and women’s leadership. If you would like a customized tour of the 1000 Voices Archive platform or to learn more about the Creative Counsel, please contact info@1000VoicesArchive.org.

www.opportunityagenda.org | (212) 334-5977