los anjalis to anjuquerque

The sheer number of articles in mainstream press about the social networking platform “Twitter” are cause for nausea. (Twitter is a platform by which one can send out 140-character messages, known as tweets, to however many other people are following their page. Some call it “microblogging”).

I dig Twitter and I use it to share articles with friends, reflect on medicine and public health, and share thoughts / events / passions about Los Angeles and the world around me. I’ve learned a wealth of information and have been led to innovative web-based technologies regarding health, based on short communications on twitter. I follow folks on Twitter whose opinions and article-sharing I like, I receive feedback on questions I pose, and I have a healthy relationship with this kind of experimentation of newer models of information sharing and reflecting.

So back to these articles. Seriously? Aren’t there more important issues to cover in the world? Most pieces I’ve seen about Twitter proclaim it to be the Next Best Thing. It’s been placed on some grotesque pedestal, but then again, much of media is in the business of sensationalizing. But most recently the alt press site Alternet.org, a website I have much respect for and read regularly, featured a commentary on Twitter entitled, “Twitter Nation Has Arrived: How Scared Should we Be?” by Alexander Zaitchik. I didn’t expect Alternet to post a commentary like this. Not because it’s disapproving of twitter and attempts to make larger philosophical points. But because it’s so poorly written, not well fact-checked, and is FULL of spite. The seething hate emanates from the article in very non-subtle ways. And the assumptions are far-reaching and presumptuous.

In addition, his facts are not researched. For example, the author states that Twitter was based on Facebook’s status update model. Nope. Twitter was around for almost a year before Facebook started incorporating status updates into its model. One of several simple facts that the author had completely wrong.

The article makes some interesting anthropological points that I agree with (and I’m always interested in discussions about how we’re becoming post-human). He also reveals some of the silliness of Twitter (honestly I don’t always get why people share what they do, and oftentimes the TMI syndrome comes into play — Too Much Information about your personal life, I don’t care — but that’s easily remedied by not following that individual’s stream). But interspersed his otherwise interesting points are volcanoes of rage (ha! did I just say volcanoes of rage? awesome!) which dilute any point he’s trying to make. Anyway, here are some of the author’s rants that I thought i’d share: (more…)

(cross-posted at Cure This)

William Easterly — author of The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good — is now blogging over at Aid Watch. Aid Watch’s tagline is “Just Asking that Aid Benefit the Poor”. Interesting tagline, eh?

Exactly two years ago, I found a copy of his book at a hostel where I was staying when visiting and working with other doctors in Shirati, a small village on Lake Victoria in Tanzania. It immediately piqued my interest and it was no less immediately relevant. The book bitingly critiqued Jeffrey Sachs’ The End of Poverty and railed against multifaceted broad-ranging and top-down foreign aid programs. I only got through half of The White Man’s Burden before leaving Tanzania (and opted not to steal the book from the hostel), but I liked Easterly’s premise and found much of it refreshing (though I cringed at some of what he wrote — too cynical, a shoddy economic analysis, and attacks on some aid programs that were effective). I cannot make any larger comments on it since I haven’t finished the second half, but I just recently bought a copy of the book. Hopefully soon I’ll sit down with both the first AND the second half of it, but his blog will certainly be a space for ongoing discussion — as he’s already responded to several peoples’ comments on his first blog post. Off to a healthy start, I’d say.

The above is a small celebration of Women-of-Color feminism and bloggers. I’m blessed to be included in the prelim video that Sudy put together and know that there are many others more deserving of a place in this montage.

Sudy ends the video with this quote:

“Power is never given back. When it’s stolen, if you want it back, you have to take it.” – M. Caballero

Matt Compton says so very much, in his post “Jena and the Internet”:

When the Jena 6 does make an appearance on progressive blogs today, it’s little more than a passing nod. Huffington Post has a blog post buried below the fold; ThinkProgress gives it a two-sentence news brief.Now, in the wake of the protests, the bloggers are a bit more talkative about Jena, and Ezra Klein is one of those who commented on the late-developing coverage, saying: “[The silence] is telling as to the tenuous relationship between the online left and what’s more traditionally been the left.”

But outside the major blogs, the Internet hasn’t been silent on this issue. On Facebook, there are more than 500 groups, with thousands of members, which reference Jena. On YouTube, there are more than 1,600 videos that mention the town, including this one — which has been seen more than 1 million times. A Google Blog Search today yielded nearly 40,000 results. The Wikipedia entry is 2 months old, 3,000 words long, and contains 39 footnotes. In the progressive Christian community, the blogs are all over this. Obviously, Jena has been a lead topic on the African-American blogosphere (on sites that cover everything from politics to hip-hop) for months.

So why did the big progressive sites take so long to focus on Jena? Ezra’s take that this was an “issue of the traditional left” is off-target. The big-name civil rights figures had to scramble to catch up with Jena. There wasn’t a central planning committee directing yesterday’s protests — the organization came together from the bottom up. The protests in Jena were the result of conversation and debate on the social networks, in blogs, over message boards, through email, and on African-American radio shows. It looked like a true, decentralized, “people-powered” movement.

The big progressive blogs missed the story initially for a variety of reasons, including their and their readership’s demographics, but also because of their focus on developments in Washington and in electoral politics. As the Jena story reached a critical point last week, most blogs were overwhelmingly focused on the Kabuki theater of the Senate debate on Iraq and MoveOn.

Ten thousand people marching on Jena is pretty substantive proof that the online left is bigger and more diverse than readers of Daily Kos. In fact, it extends beyond blogs altogether, as illustrated by the role of social networks in creating and channeling energy towards the Jena protests. The Rev. Al Sharpton said that the protests marked the start of a 21st century civil rights movement. Jena might also mark the start of a new phase in online progressive politics as well.

VERY interesting that 1) most of the nationwide organizing around the Jena 6 was done online and was done through bottom-up organizing (instead of top-down). And 2) most of the major (shall i say mainstream?) progressive blogs did not cover the issue like the mass mobilization movement it was.

There’s a similar post about this issue on DailyKos, and the comments to that post are VERY telling. Seems like people of color and whites see issues quite differently.

On another but similar note, BFP wrote a post entitled “The ‘Nobody’ posting about the Jersey political prisoners” and goes on to share a number of blogs that have written about the queer women of color in Newark, NJ who were targeted for hate crimes when they were actually ATTACKED as part of a hate crime (similarities to the Jena 6). Looks like it’s mostly people of color who have blogged about it, mobilized around it. Apparently it must have been stated somewhere that nobody was writing about this issue. BFP responds with:

The erasure of work through the creation of “nobody” discourse = the continued marginalization of the worker.
Or: It’s funny how “nobody” is always so damn colored.

Reminds me also of the question that arises every few months, predictably, in the progressive blogosphere — “Where are the women of color bloggers?” and “Where are the people of color bloggers?”

Carnivals are cruise ships.  Carnivals are also blog roundups on a variety of issues.  I’m a big fan of the recently created “Carnival of Radical Action”.  Other than just sounding kickass, it’s a powerful blog roundup of posts that speak to effective actions, education, and radical thought.  Here’s the latest carnival (number 3), which is, even more excitedly focused around the Allied Media Conference from last month, in Detroit.  I was slated to go, speak, but was most excited to meet some of these people i hope to always surround myself with — energetic media makers, radical thought-sayers and beautiful booty shakers. Alas, I wasn’t able to make it, but thanks to the carnival that Nadia put together this month, I (and you too) can get a taste of the delicious deliveries of the conference. It’s posted at No Snow Here, so check it out.

Welcome to the third edition of the Carnival of Radical Action! This installment is inspired by the recent Allied Media Conference, and themed on media as a tool for organizing, education and social change…

In putting together this collection of blog posts, articles, poems, photos, videos and zines, I am even more convinced that we are populating the world with our messages by all means available to us. We aren’t just using media, but redefining media, to communicate with each other, speaking our truths, documenting our experiences, and recording our movements.

I realize that I mentioned Cure This on this site recently but made no mention of what it was and why. Here’s a quick description:

For two and a half years, “Cure This” was a pipe dream shared by just a handful of us. We envisioned a grand goal: to create an online space to discuss health in its broadest sense, share personal stories, creatively make positive change, and build an online community along the way — connecting us locally, nationally, and perhaps internationally. We envisioned a humble beginning: here and now.

Cure This has now transformed into a reality, and we’re excited beyond words. We welcome it into this world with a loving, gentle nudge and an encouraging whisper in its ear. Let the beautiful journey begin.

Yes! We have 25 users so far and quite a few posts. Lively discussion has begun on the site. We hope it may be a “home” of sorts for important discussion of broad health issues, and a place where stories can be shared and strategy discussed. We hope to feed people to organizations that are doing amazing work, and possibly connect smaller groups who thought that nobody else in the world was doing similar work :>

New features are being implemented daily, thanks to my wonderful, wonderful brother Nalin, who’s doing all the programming and creative design for the site. We’re rolling out a “recommended diaries” section where the most highly voted posts will hang out. We’re rolling out profiles for users (so others can understand some of the context of where they’re coming from, and which will serve as a mechanism for folks to network with each other). A few “how-to’s” will also be posted, for those wondering how to write posts, how to navigate around the site, etc. We’re also down with any suggestions you may have.

I shared the website and the idea with quite a few people at the United States Social Forum last weekend, and the response was total excitement. sweet…

Please check out Cure This and feel free to create a free user account and comment or post as you’d like, on issues of health, activism, SICKO, well-being, neighborhoods, etc. it’s free reign for now! Organic evolution!

Today I fly to Atlanta for the first ever United States Social Forum! It’s a huge gathering of thousands of people (from all over the country, and some from other countries) who believe that indeed, another world is possible. Earlier this year, in January, I participated in the World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, and it was beautifully inspiring and chaotic all at the same time, and I expect more of both at the US Social Forum!I’ll be representing Cure This and also talking to folks about National Physicians Alliance, and will present a workshop there on Saturday, entitled “From the NetRoots to the HealthRoots: Powering up Health Justice Movements Online”.

I hope to “live blog” from there, if wireless internet is easily accessible. Please check back here in the next few days for live updates from a gatheration of dreamers and change-makers!

I’m off to the Allied Media Conference in Detroit — it’s the conference that used to be called “Your DIY guide to everyday revolution”!

I’m absolutely honored and humbled to do a session with others on using online organizing to bolster offline organizing efforts, especially on issues that pertain to women of color. I’ll be on a panel with some amazing women of color (Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Serena Sebring of UBUNTU and Broken Beautiful Press, and myself, and moderated by Brownfemipower my heroine!) Here’s the description of the panel:

Saturday, 2:00pm-3:20pm — Hijaking the Masters Tools

Technology as an organizing tool is often presented as only accessible to people with privilege. The reality is that working class and poor women of color organizers are using the internet in powerful ways– through blogs, vlogs, community forums and podcasting. However the belief that technology is inherently inaccessible is deep-rooted. As a result online / offline organizing efforts are often detached from each other. How can the media projects and organizing work of women of color online strengthen the work taking place in the streets, and vice versa? What has already been done to bridge this gap? What do we need to do moving forward?

This panel will put forward a vision for how the combined forces of online organizing and offline organizing can build a movement to end violence against women of color and create a new society based on liberation and love. Then it will invite lively discussion around the nitty gritty of what we need to do to make it happen.

Exciting! Can’t to hear peoples’ stories, do some scheming with others, and meet some inspiring folks. I hear the conference is wired, so i’m hoping to do some liveblogging from there this weekend (starting saturday morning).

And mmmm Detroit! I’ve never been there, really looking forward to setting foot in this vibrant city with so much history, culture, and grassroots energy…

From “Doctors, Legislators Resist Drugmakers’ Prying Eyes” (Washington Post, may 22, 2007)

Seattle pediatrician Rupin Thakkar’s first inkling that the pharmaceutical industry was peering over his shoulder and into his prescription pad came in a letter from a drug representative about the generic drops Thakkar prescribes to treat infectious pinkeye.

In the letter, the salesperson wrote that Thakkar was causing his patients to miss more days of school than they would if he put them on Vigamox, a more expensive brand-name medicine made by Alcon Laboratories.

Rupin’s one of my co-board members from the wonderful organization the National Physicians Alliance! If the above two short paragraphs don’t incense physicians (and the public), I don’t know what does. It’s a vulnerable position that doctors in the United States occupy — we are watched and peddled by pharmaceutical companies; we are slaves to the insurance companies that decide to deny or accept the standard of care that we provide to our patients (how many countless hours go into calling insurance companies to get approval for the medicine that your patient needs or the procedure that your patient needs); and we are screwed by the financial disencentives of taking more than 5 minutes to actually explore what’s contributing to patients’ health or sickness.

“It’s a key weapon in determining how we want to tailor our sales pitch,” said Shahram Ahari, a former drug detailer for Eli Lilly who is now a researcher at the University of California at San Francisco’s School of Pharmacy. “The programs give them [doctors] a score of 1 to 10 based on how much they write. Once we have that, we know who our primary targets are. We focus our time on the big [prescription] writers — the 10s, the 9s, and then less so on the 8s and 7s. . . . We’re dealing with individual physicians who might give us the biggest dividend for our investment.”

I’m trying to cut off my puppet strings!

Please check out the blog of the National Physicians Alliance! A few of us thought it would be a great idea to give greater voice online to this collective physicians’ voice, and the blog was created. I just redesigned the look of the blog. There are a few glitches (working on fixing them), but any thoughts/suggestions on the blog? Hey, and you can post comments on any of the posts there too :>