Direct Action

Municipal Democracy in Action

- Adam Clare

City Idol is a campaign being run in Toronto that encourages civic participation. Contestants are competing for the chance to run for city council with the backing of the volunteers (and perhaps the other contestants) from City Idol. This idea is run by concerned citizens with no funding from the city.

Everyone is encouraged to come out and vote for the contestants.

City Idol is trying to make democracy fun and engaging!

Disclaimer: I’m running for City Idol, so please come vote for me on June 1 at the Kathedral

Amnesty International Invites Webmasters to Defeat Censorship

- Benny Powers 5 Comments

Worldwide human rights group, Amnesty International has begun a project called irrepressable.info to monitor and circumvent internet censorship.

The website gives visitors the opportunity to place a small box on their own sites which contains a snippet of censored information.

Groove With Humpbacks, Win an IPod!

- Vanessa King

The International Fund for Animal Welfare and stopwhaling.org have put together an awesome song writing contest. They supply the real life whale samples, you supply the creativity and music and help raise a little awareness all at the same time! All the whale song remixes will be voted on by a panel of celebrity judges and the grand prize winner will recieve a brand new 60 GB IPod!

Points will be given for creativity, use of whale sounds, memorable content and overall delivery. If you think you’ve got what it takes to make a radical song for the humpbacks enter soon! The contest ends on June 11th at midnight.

MTV Helps Youth Think

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

A study done by none other than MTV has found out a few reasons why youth are disengaged from activism. The results of “Just Cause,” a research study that deconstructs how youth perceive “activism” and explores the motivating factors and barriers in their decision to become involved in social causes.

The study includes more than 1200 young people, including expert interviews, ethnographies and a national poll of a representative sample with participants ages 12 to 24. Findings deconstruct youth activism and find an “activation gap”, showing a strong disparity between interest in and involvement in social causes. Anecdotal responses from respondents also offer clues into successful strategies into closing the “activation gap”

It is one thing to complain that youth are disengaged, it’s another to know why they are disengaged, and now we have a better idea to engage youth.

Spontaneous Rebellion Against Starbucks

- Adam Clare

A Canadian blogger was taking some pictures of a Starbucks and an employee ran out and told her that she can’t take pictures of Starbucks! An argument ensued.

A large group of tourists overheard this exchange and decided to rebel against Starbucks by taking a whole lot of photos!

Kate writes:

“However, the large tour group standing outside had heard all this and started collectively grumbling “you can’t take a picture of a starbucks? it’s public property!” and they all whipped out their cameras and started snapping shots, while the manager looked at us from inside the store, quite clearly in a huff.”

A fun story!

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