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DigiActive trains in the Philippines

Last week  DigiActive members Mary Joyce and Lynn Casper took part in a 3-day training in Cebu City, Philippines called AOM 2.0: Intregrating Info-Activism in People’s Campaigns.  (AOM is an old Filipino activism slogan standing for arouse, organize, mobilize).  The training was put together by the Computer Professionals’ Union (CPU), a local Filipino tech empowerment NGO based in metro Manila.

DigiActive was only one of the partner organizations brought in by CPU to lead modules, which also included video empowerment group Kodao Productions and advocacy research group IBON.   It was an excellent event.  We met kind, funny, and talented activists and even got to see some tarsiers on neighboring island Bohol.  All and all a wonderful opportunity.

Participants work on a group activity during a DigiActive module on data visualization

More photos after the jump… Read more »

Interview: Tonyo Cruz on Digital Activism in the Philippines

I am in the Philippines this week with fellow DigiActivist Lynn Casper to participate in a training organized by the Computer Professionals’ Union. While here I decided to interview one of the country’s most prolific digital activists – Tonyo Cruz – and ask him about digital activism in the Philippines.

Tonyo Cruz (foreground) at a recent event in Manila on digital campaigning

Mary Joyce: You are a very prolific digital activist – president of the famous mobile activism organization TXTPower, prominent blogger at tonyocruz.com, and  founder of a Filipino bloggers’ organization. How did you first become  involved in digital activism?

Tonyo Cruz: I’d like to think that I started my activism in high school. I was among the students of Manila Science High School who published an underground paper called The MaSci Times in 1991. We used the old program Printshop to design this one page newsletter that poked fun at our school principal and voiced out our complaints, among others. We just had it photocopied and came out with about a dozen issues.

Bayan, the multisectoral group I worked for in 2000-2003, was among the first people’s organizations in the Philippines to go online. Their first website was hosted in Geocities. As Bayan media officer, I introduced email, email groups and text messaging as ways of quickly and surely reaching journalists. Bayan officials later used email,
email groups and text messaging as tools for managing the organization. These tools — mobiles and the web — later proved crucial in the mass actions that led to the People Power uprising of 2001 which ousted President Estrada.

Following Estrada’s ouster, a group called Plunder Watch pressed [now President] Arroyo to prosecute Estrada. The group held a big media event for the launch of its website which contained Estrada’s accountabilities and liabilities. I was also the media officer of Plunder Watch and oversaw the management of the said website.

That same year, my friends and I gathered in Quezon City to form TXTPower. The following years, I was also involved in trying to form Indymedia Pilipinas which gave way to Indymedia in Manila and in Quezon City.

MJ:  Social networking is very big in the Philippines and Friendster is the most popular. According to their Country Sales Manager, Narciso Reyes, there are about 14 million active Filipino users on the site, which is almost 70%
of the total online population of the Philippines. Has this large user base translated into Friendster being used for digital acitivsm in the Philippines? If not, why not

TC: We will see by late this year whether Friendster will get the attention of candidates and parties, or whether voters themselves would use Friendster for their choice of candidates or for election-related causes. I do hope they do so.

MJ: Although there aren’t figures yet available, there is a growing number of Filipinos migrating from Friendster to Facebook, particularly the tech-savvy urban middle class. You recently used Facebook to organize a blogger
meet-up in opposition to President Macapagal Arroyo. Why did you choose Facebook to organize this mobilization? Which is more activist-friendly, Friendster or Facebook?

TC: Friendster has provided limited use to political activists simply because Facebook has overtaken it as the preferred social networking site of the most articulate, most dynamic and most political segment of the lower, middle and upper classes. They may be fewer than Friendster but these Facebook users are more influential. Also, there
are more activists, journalists and politicians on Facebook than on Friendster. Read more »

Action Alert: Filipino Activists vs. the Cha-Cha bill

Background:  No, the cha-cha is not a dance move. The Philippine House of Representatives is planning to adopt House Resolution No. 1109, a bill that would allow it to convene as a constituent assembly and amend the Constitution (or, change the charter).   The measure is quite unpopular with Philippine citizens.  According to a statement made by a group of business associations, “The question all Filipinos should ask is: For whose interest was this action taken? Certainly not the Filipino people’s, as there is no widespread clamor to amend the Constitution, especially now that we are less than a year away from a presidential election.”  Activists are not only going to the street to protest but groups like the Computer Professionals Union (CPU) are also asking supporters to take action online using Twitter.

What:  Here’s how Twitter users can show their opposition to changing the Filipino constitution, and solidarity with Filipino activists on the ground in Manila:

1. Tweet a message of opposition using the hashtag #no2conass
2. CPU has developed a tool that posts tweets from SMS messages sent to +639071134503.  CPU invites everyone to send SMS messages to this number and they will repost them as tweets.SMS messages should have <no2conass><space><message> format.

When: Wednesday, June 10th

Why: To oppose amendments to the Filipino constitution which are not supported by the Filipino people.

image credit: filipinovoices.com

Tool: SMS

Tool Description: SMS (short message service) is the technical name for text messaging – notes sent between mobile phone users. Think of it as e-mail for mobile phones.

Activist Application: There are so many activist applications for SMS that we’ve put most of them after the jump. Here they are in brief: organize a protest in minutes, evade censorship by using SMS for communication that you cannot speak or e-mail (only true is some countries), election monitoring, activist security (“If I don’t text you every 2 hours, it means something is wrong), citizen journalism, and more to come….

Ease of Use: Easy. All mobile phones now have SMS built in. Just choose a phone number to send the message to, type the message, and press send. Pricing varies by country and carrier.

thousands of phones, thousands of uses for activists

Read more »