Talking Vs. Doing

Happy Human Rights Day!

Over the past 24 hours I have attended two human rights-related events. While their goal of awareness/abolition is the same, they were two very different experiences. I aptly named this post "talking vs. doing," because the two events of the past day seem to fall well on either side of this spectrum.

I was excited to go to an anti-slavery talk at Harvard last night, and even convinced my wonderful coworker and favorite Irishman John (@John_SHIFT) to go with me (bribery through Felipe's burritos may have been involved). We took our seats and listened to a discussion panel between a well-known activist, researcher, and professor. I ended up taking a bit of an early absence because the talking seemed to me to be mostly just that: intellectualized discussions on things like the misappropriation of the word slavery; its correct labeling vs. the word trafficking; the appropriate way to edit a book that features former slaves' stories and voices. After so many meetings with Love146, where we discuss the facts of the issue and then get down to the business of actually making something happen, the conversation felt a bit too removed and passive. I found myself thinking--I doubt that someone who is in slavery right now cares what you call them, as long as you are actively DOING something to help get them out of their current situation.

To be fair, as I mentioned, I left about 3/4 of the way through the talk, but I was hopeful that the conversation would have been a little less intellectual and a little more practical. From what I saw, the discussion was pretty heavy on semantics and pretty light on real, meaningful action; which I felt was a shame because there was a captive, willing audience of people interested enough in the issue to want to make a difference. What I took away from this experience was the realization that awareness is crucial--it is, after all, this blog's goal--but that those in educating roles also need to arm their listeners with something to do, and give us resources to be a part of bringing about the change.

The second event I attended was this morning's Social Media Breakfast on Social Media for Social Change in Cambridge, MA's Inman Square area. This discussion was a gathering of people who want to actively use whatever they can bring to the table to make a difference. As opposed to the panel from the night before, these presenters talked about the various ways we (the attendees) can use social media to actually DO something. I compiled a list based on this discussion, and a few of my own ideas, for your consideration. Let Human Rights Day inspire you to take even just one action over the next 24 hours!

Ways to Use Social Media for Good (and, in this blog's case, things YOU can do today to fight trafficking):
- Join a Facebook group (like Love146, for example), or feature a cause support application on your profile. Or make your own!
- Tweet about it. According to the Social Media Breakfast (#SMB11), retweeting is what makes Twitter so incredibly powerful. There are so many great people on Twitter to follow (funnily enough, Diana Scimone just posted on this. Check out her list here.) Adding to that, you can follow @worldvision (World Vision), @kanter (Beth Kanter, one of the speakers at this morning's breakfast), @digiactive (Mary Joyce of http://www.digiactive.org) or even @tysonfoods, for issues related to hunger.
- Subscribe to the RSS feeds for, or start following, Season of Light! :) Also, if you click on any of the "what you can do" tags at the end of my posts, it will take you to a whole list of other ideas I've written about before.
- Create your own fundraising page on www.FirstGiving.com
- Set up Google alerts for issues you care about to keep informed (e.g., I currently have one set up for "child sex trafficking"). Diana Scimone also suggests a number of different issues that you can think about adding to your list and getting informed on.
- Check out Social Media for Social Change (SM4SC)
- Start your own blog!
- Post a video or image on Witness.org's HUB site, as mentioned in yesterday's post.
- Watch/make/share videos related to trafficking and awareness on YouTube
- Put your message or cause on a sign, take a picture of it, and share it on Flickr
- Check out www.Idealist.org or www.volunteermatch.org to find volunteer opportunities near to your geographical--and skill--area
- Look into The Give List for more ($$-free) ideas: http://thegivelist.org/

And finally, in honor of today, you can read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights here.

Talking is important. But change will only really happen if the talking also inspires us to stop for a moment to think, and then start taking action.