On Carrotmobs and Election-Stealing: An Edu-Activism Fantasy
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After watching the following video on Dean Shareski’s blog (thanks to Kate Tabor for the alert):
Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.
–and then watching this immensely disturbing clip from the Uncounted documentary about election theft in the 2004 USA elections:
–and in the 2006 elections:
–it should be no wonder that I fantasize that, on election day 2008, students and teachers take cellphones and video cameras to the voting centers, and show what a smart mob can do to defend democracy.
You can see ten more clips from Uncounted here, and order the DVD here.
I never had a civics class in school. Are they still taught in the US? And are educators either practicing or modeling politically engaged behavior in their own lives? What’s our ratio of communicating to our elected officials in proportion to tweeting our networks, for example? Do we need to reflect on that?
The elections are just around the corner. What a learning opportunity for our students and ourselves - especially if we act to ensure our votes are counted.
If you like this post, please spread it: 
(But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)
Good one Clay.
I have always (well, since their use really began to accelerate) thought that the existence of cellphones requires us to be more accountable.
Schools ban cell phones because (for one reason) some students are posting videos to youtube of angry teachers. So we ban cell phones instead of dealing with the fact that we have an angry, abusive teacher in the classroom? (I wrote about this last year, if you are interested: http://leadingfromtheheart.org/2007/05/14/and-nowyoutube/)
We are just being held accountable. Perhaps in a sneaky way, but whatever. As a teacher I am ALWAYS in the spotlight and my behaviour should reflect that. Actually, my behaviour should reflect my core values and my assumption is that most teachers do not value anger and hatred and belittling of those in their care.
We are in an age of uber accountability - look at recently reported implications of facebook use –> http://tracyrosen.tumblr.com/post/42742982/implications-of-facebook-use
I agree - we need (well, Americans need, I’m a Canadian bearing witness) to make this upcoming election play out in that spirit.
[Reply]
Tracy Rosen
25 Jul 08 at 8:59 pm
I’d like to think that this is going to be one of the more interesting venues where on and offline activism meet. Perhaps spectators and citizen monitors will organize and spend time at known trouble areas via Meetup? I worked for the Democrats in 2006 and we had lawyers that we could call just in case anything tricky happened. It would be more helpful, though, if that action were crowd sourced.
[Reply]
Alex Steed [of Make
25 Jul 08 at 9:38 pm