Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Recycle yer laptop
Make it available to indigenous activists. Dr. Fred Hosea is gathering up old but still usable laptops, intending to give them to these native leaders to help them fight for justice. Get all the details behind the "Read more!" link...
If you're about to make the move to a new laptop, I'd like to invite you to donate your old laptop (fully functioning, internet capable, power cable, mouse, preferably
with MS Office installed) to support indigenous activists (initially in Latin America, then expanding worldwide).
This is something very concrete and powerful that we can do with existing resources. A laptop can be tremendously helpful in supporting indigenous efforts to network
and communicate with media and each other, to organize regional and hemispheric alliances, document and disseminate congress proceedings, maintain websites, and
serve as portable offices for their organizing efforts. They can also be used for more specific purposes, such as documenting territorial maps (to establish a legal basis for fighting oil and mining takeovers) and inventorying biospheres, managing legal cases for indigenous rights, and coordinating efforts to support indigenous elders and preserve indigenous culture.
I think that GP support for indigenous movements around the world is one of the most "grassroots" things we can do -- not only for the inherent human rights and environmental issues involved, but also because many grassroots issues don't fit into existing political jurisdictions and require a new model of stewardship that the GP worldwide is uniquely suited to create with our various international GP counterparts. Many indigenous cultures and issues extend across national boundaries, presenting opportunities for the GP to form trans-national project coalitions and build visibility and clout for indigenous projects that might not otherwise be possible through traditional nationalist politics or legal frameworks.
More and more conflicts around the world have strong indigenous cultural and ethnic components that don't fit into traditional (often colonial) political jurisdictions; so this could become an area of special expertise for the GP to develop, working with over 300 million indigenous people worldwide.
Back to the laptops: So if you'd like to donate a laptop, please (a) notify me by email ASAP that you plan to donate, so I can anticipate how many laptops I'm looking at total, and (b) bring it to the national convention in Tucson, or send it with someone who is coming,or (c) mail it to me at my home address. I'll work with the International Committee and my indigenous leadership contacts to develop a formal process for allocating the laptops and tracking them through delivery to the
recipient. In the meantime, I'll be finding out if we can make the donations via a non-profit organization so the donation will be tax deductible. If you'd like to
include a 1 page profile of yourself with a picture, to include with the laptop, that would be cool.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me, and also let me know if you're interested in being part of a GP workgroup focusing specifically on Indigenous Issues.
Fred Hosea, Ph.D.
Green Party of California (Alameda)
California Delegate to the Green Party of the United States
Coordinator: GPCA International Protocol Committee
Activator: Diversity Outreach, Speaker/Entertainer Bureau
If you're about to make the move to a new laptop, I'd like to invite you to donate your old laptop (fully functioning, internet capable, power cable, mouse, preferably
with MS Office installed) to support indigenous activists (initially in Latin America, then expanding worldwide).
This is something very concrete and powerful that we can do with existing resources. A laptop can be tremendously helpful in supporting indigenous efforts to network
and communicate with media and each other, to organize regional and hemispheric alliances, document and disseminate congress proceedings, maintain websites, and
serve as portable offices for their organizing efforts. They can also be used for more specific purposes, such as documenting territorial maps (to establish a legal basis for fighting oil and mining takeovers) and inventorying biospheres, managing legal cases for indigenous rights, and coordinating efforts to support indigenous elders and preserve indigenous culture.
I think that GP support for indigenous movements around the world is one of the most "grassroots" things we can do -- not only for the inherent human rights and environmental issues involved, but also because many grassroots issues don't fit into existing political jurisdictions and require a new model of stewardship that the GP worldwide is uniquely suited to create with our various international GP counterparts. Many indigenous cultures and issues extend across national boundaries, presenting opportunities for the GP to form trans-national project coalitions and build visibility and clout for indigenous projects that might not otherwise be possible through traditional nationalist politics or legal frameworks.
More and more conflicts around the world have strong indigenous cultural and ethnic components that don't fit into traditional (often colonial) political jurisdictions; so this could become an area of special expertise for the GP to develop, working with over 300 million indigenous people worldwide.
Back to the laptops: So if you'd like to donate a laptop, please (a) notify me by email ASAP that you plan to donate, so I can anticipate how many laptops I'm looking at total, and (b) bring it to the national convention in Tucson, or send it with someone who is coming,or (c) mail it to me at my home address. I'll work with the International Committee and my indigenous leadership contacts to develop a formal process for allocating the laptops and tracking them through delivery to the
recipient. In the meantime, I'll be finding out if we can make the donations via a non-profit organization so the donation will be tax deductible. If you'd like to
include a 1 page profile of yourself with a picture, to include with the laptop, that would be cool.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me, and also let me know if you're interested in being part of a GP workgroup focusing specifically on Indigenous Issues.
Fred Hosea, Ph.D.
Green Party of California (Alameda)
California Delegate to the Green Party of the United States
Coordinator: GPCA International Protocol Committee
Activator: Diversity Outreach, Speaker/Entertainer Bureau
// posted by Gregg Jocoy @ 3:45 AM 
