Take an electronic journey to Rwanda, Northern Ireland, Guatemala, India or even our very own New York City at Witness. The music, Peter Gabriel's Passion humming in the background, is familiar, but the scenes are not. Faces of solemn women, crying children and stoic men line the Web site. All have been subjected to violent human rights atrocities.
The proliferation of communications technology has provided a new tool for activists trying to combat human rights abuses worldwide. In the U.S., the increased penetration of broadband, high-speed Internet connections will allow viewers to see larger, higher-quality streaming video documentaries of these violations on-line and maybe inspire them to action.
According to musician and Witness co-founder Peter Gabriel, "There has been a gradual increase in reality TV," their footage can help satiate "the appetite for stuff [content] that has real meaning in broadcasting, kind of a Jerry Springer hits the Human Rights Circuit." Gabriel co-founded Witness in 1992 in partnership with the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and the Reebok Foundation in response to the Rodney King incident. To date, the organization has provided video cameras and training to more than 130 human rights groups in 47 countries.
As Witness Director Gillian Caldwell told the New York Times, after the Rodney King beating by Los Angeles police officers, "Peter was really galvanized--He had a very simple concept: give cameras to the world and enable people to right the wrongs they see."
Since then, the group has worked with local human rights group to create documentaries about abuses in the refugee camps in Rwanda, marches in Northern Ireland, massacres in Guatemala, military abduction in India and Burma's civil war.
But, not all of the violations are outside the United States. Witness has also monitored the situation at mental hospitals and factories within our boarders. In conjunction with New York City PoliceWatch and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Witness produced a Rights Alert on-line broadcast about the Amadou Diallo killing in which an unarmed black man was shot 41 times while entering his apartment building. "The Day after Diallo" highlights the realities of recurring police violence against people of color and shows the public outrage and political mobilization which resulted from this event.
Witness' involvement in the Amadou Diallo project proves the potential for the application of communications technologies to combat human rights abuses in our own communities as well as internationally. New technologies such as 360-degree cameras may shed new light on violations that would otherwise go unnoticed.
Many of the documentaries Witness produces cover themes common to many countries, such as children of war and violence against women. Oddcast, a Silicon Alley-based interactive design company, provides training on video and technology applications and produces the Witness Rights Alert.
In December, Arc: eConsultancy played host to Gabriel, Witness activists and private sector leaders at an open discussion on "How Video and Communications Technologies can Create Social Change and Advance Human Rights" downtown at their Wall St. headquarters.
As reported by the Silicon Alley Reporter, Gabriel said: "Human rights used to be something I just read about in the back columns of the newspaper. When you can see or hear the activists and watch their movies of their families slaughtered in from of them in the sitting room, it's something that becomes a very real issue. If we have, through this technology the capacity to put that in front of people in a real way, I think it really will change people--When most get on television the first question you ask is, how did I look. If you're an oppressor, probably not very good. Let's hope that is a deterrent."
At the December event, John Kelly, principal investigator at Columbia University's Interactive Design Lab, presented a vision of Witness' exciting future as a result of new developments in technology. Currently, the organization faces barriers such as limited point-of-view in visual and editorial coverage, problems protecting activist and media safety and security, difficulty of access and retrieval, limitations in editing documentaries and obstacles to reaching the general public with their difficult-to-digest but extremely poignant pieces. However, emerging wireless technologies, new smaller handheld devices and phones, and advances in encryption and digital watermarking offer new solutions for capture, storage, editing and delivery of footage. According to Kelly, these technologies will allow the training of a "21st century Peace Corps for young filmmakers."
Witness' work has been used as evidence in legal proceedings such as the International War Crimes Tribunal in Yugoslavia. They also provide an important resource for the United Nations, grassroots organizations, and even the commercial media.
In the end, Gabriel suggests, "Maybe this is about adding another human right--the right to have your story told."
In Other Technology News:
How many days until the West Nile virus outbreak in your neighborhood? How much snow did the last northeaster leave on your route to work? Here's an interactive map that can tell you all of this and much more. The New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications has created NYCMap (pronounced "nice map"), an interactive database of aerial photographs and geographic information, that will be available on-line this fall on the official city Web site. NYCMap, which cost $5 million to produce, covers 35 miles, can zoom in to a space the size of six VW Bugs and is accurate to 12 inches. There are many useful applications of the map for citizens and businesses. For instance, new functions could help you assess property values without leaving your home. NYCMap brings e-government one step closer to reality. An exhibition about the map is on display at the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery at Hunter College until March 17.
Laura Forlano is a doctoral student studying communication technology policy at Columbia University.
A witness at the City Council's first hearing on the city's creaky electoral system called it "a volcano getting ready to erupt." All witnesses agreed that this year's elections will test the system as never before, with more than 150 candidates vying for 35 council seats, four borough presidencies and the three citywide offices -- mayor, comptroller and public advocate. Most pointed out that last November's experience offered too many examples of what could go wrong, and all declared that too little is being done to prevent it.
"New Yorkers should not look with sanctimonious disdain on what happened in Florida," said Robert Abrams, the former state attorney general testifying as president of the Citizens Union Foundation. "New York's own election system is riddled with inefficiencies and disorders that imperil our ability to elect officials in an accurate and fair manner." The hearing was the first of a series planned by the Committee on Governmental Operations, chaired by council member Mary Pinkett, Brooklyn Democrat. It took place on Thursday (February 8) under the peeling plaster ceiling of the council chambers on the second floor of City Hall, and lasted most of the day.
There was near unanimity that the Board of Elections has been short-changed by the Giuliani Administration, which has proposed for several years to cut its funding. The council has restored the funds each time, but added nothing for the board's new needs. Since the mid-1990s, the full-time staff has shrunk from 363 to 312.
One witness called for an "emergency summit" to mobilize forces to fix the system, comparable to the task force that Mayor Koch created to good effect in 1985. Another witness pointed out that in the state legislature, where election law is written, the Republican-controlled Senate and Democrat-controlled Assembly have named separate election task forces, where they should be working together instead. Still others noted that Mayor Giuliani pledged last month to create a city task force, but has yet to act.
The best publicized problem in city elections is faulty mechanical voting machines [See story in Gotham Gazette from last July!!]. The city's 6,800 machines, each with 27,000 parts, were purchased in 1962. (Rochester's are even older.) Production of new machines ceased long ago. For replacement parts, old machines must be cannibalized. Daniel DeFrancesco, executive director of the city's Board of Elections told the committee that the board bought 14 old machines from Maine last year and mentioned that he had just asked the legislature for authority to buy 300 more. He faulted the legislators for restricting "our ability to use new technologies," and said support systems need upgrading, too -- for instance, the board's overwhelmed phone bank.
"Let's be perfectly clear," said DeFrancesco in his testimony. "We are just not going to change the system between now and November, so you have to deal with what you've got."
The hearing included a presentation of the optical scanner voting system installed in Rhode Island three years ago. The state's old mechanical system was the same as New York's. The new equipment is manufactured by Election Systems & Software, Inc., of Omaha, Nebraska, a 35-year-old company with systems installed statewide in a half-dozen states and smaller systems in several hundred counties and smaller jurisdictions. In this system, voters mark ballots by filling blank spaces with a special pen -- much like filling in a lottery ticket or a high school multiple-choice exam. The ballot is then fed into a machine, which scans and tabulates each vote. It rejects ballots marked incorrectly, which the voter may then correct.
The show-and-tell was not a committee endorsement. It just happened that two City Hall staffers who hail from Rhode Island knew that their home state had a new system that was working well, so they investigated and asked for the demonstration.
Any decision on new equipment for New York must be made in Albany for the whole state, and it will not happen overnight, much less in time for the city primaries and general elections this fall. Thus, the immediate benefit of the hearing was a public airing of ideas that can be put in place quickly.
Neal Rosenstein of the New York Public Interest Research Group focused on the need for better pay to attract more new poll workers, and better training. The board needs 25,000 workers for primary day and then again for the general election. It pays $130 for working 16 or 17 hours, from before the polls open until after they close. Several others suggested that the work be split into two shifts, observing that no one can be fully alert at the end of a 17-hour day. Citizens Union is launching a campaign through universities, businesses, unions and other organizations to address what Robert Abrams called "the acute shortage of qualified recruits." Rosenstein also pointed to the menace of mechanics who are no longer sharp enough to repair breakdowns on the spot, but nonetheless keep their patronage jobs thanks to political protectors. This was apparently a problem in two Brooklyn districts last November. NYPIRG has also urged the board to hire new foreign language staff; in Queens last November the Chinese language translations for some Republican and Democratic candidates were reversed.
Arthur J. Fried, executive director of the Center for Excellence in New York City Government at New York University, drew the danger starkly. "Last November a single state senate race [Sen. Roy Goodman vs. Liz Krueger] that required the counting of paper ballots took nearly 7 weeks to resolve. What would happen if two, or five or seven primary races were that close? The Board of Elections might not be able to determine the winners in time to put them on the ballot for the general election in November."
The center at N.Y.U. was first to hold a public forum on election preparedness, where the message was clear, Fried said: "If you want to avoid disaster in the fall, we need to act now." Fried was the witness who called for an "emergency summit." and one of several who implied that management at the board needs fixing, too. "We should see that the board gets not only the resources, but the management assistance it needs" for this years unique election workload.
NYPIRG, Citizens Union and four other civic groups sent a letter to Mayor Giuliani pointing out that the forthcoming elections "will stress the city's election system as never before," and endorsing a half-dozen of the boards "reasonable requests" for immediate help. The other signers were Common Cause/NY, The League of Women Voters of the City of New York, the City Club of New York and The Women's City Club of New York.
Richard Mooney, who wrote about the city's outdated voting machines for Gotham Gazette last July, is a former editorial writer for the New York Times.
Susan Reefer is a Republican pollster and media strategist. She is based in New York City.
Arts folks are not happy that in his new budget, Governor George Pataki has proposed a nine percent cut in funding for the State Council on the Arts, whose budget is already only $48.4 million.
As recently as mid November, at the annual Governor's Arts Awards, Pataki offered glowing words of strong support for the arts. Some in the crowd seemed unaware that the governor's actual record is not quite as supportive as his public remarks. Including the current budget proposal, his administration has recommended cuts in three budgets, level funding in two, a miniscule increase one year and a significant increase in one year. He also decreased funding mid-year during his second year in office, and vetoed a legislative increase of four million dollars in 1999. At best, this is a checkered record.
So, why do arts folks feel they are better off under this administration than under his Democratic predecessor, former Governor Mario Cuomo? Simple. In 1992, admittedly a difficult budget year, then-Governor Cuomo cut the arts budget by 41 percent, reducing it from $49 million to $29 million. No other state agency went through such destruction. And, it was destruction. Given the delay in passing state budgets, arts groups are often mid-way through their budget year before they know what the State Council on the Arts will provide. The delay plays havoc with planning, and costs money as groups have to borrow money. But, when a cut of this magnitude is absorbed in such a short time and after a budget year has started, it creates deficits that cannot be avoided. Cuomo continued the cuts in 1993 with an additional $5 million. After that experience, only complete annihilation would seem worse.
Recovery for the arts started as the legislature forced increases in 1994, and as Cuomo prepared to run for another term.
None of this excuses the current governor for his recommending such a large cut, nor are arts groups and their boards planning to quietly accept the proposed decrease. The reality is that it is the state legislature that restores and protects the arts year in and year out, and it has done so both in this administration and in the prior one. That restoration and increase has traditionally been primarily the responsibility of the Republicans in the Senate, which is why the potential loss of Senator Roy Goodman in the recent election was of such great concern to the arts community. His re-election brought a collective sigh of relief from the arts field.
The Assembly has over the past few years begun to participate more in the process of providing arts funding, but there too there are changes. The arts committee was chaired for the last three years by Paul Tokasz of Buffalo, who recently was promoted to majority leader. The new arts chair is Joseph Morelle from Rochester, formerly chair of the small business committee. Given the size of this cut, Assemblyman Morelle is facing a difficult year as he starts this new chairmanship.
In the midst of the proposed cuts to the State Council on the Arts, Pataki was busy announcing three large capital gifts to New York City cultural groups. The Rose Center at the American Museum of Natural History is slated for $13 million, which has some people asking just how much that project actually cost. The Intrepid Museum is targeted for $7.5 million so it can "remain one of the New York City's top tourist attractions." (A comment fit for analysis on The Spin Room!) And, $1 million is going to the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Local Development Corporation.
Despite these sops, the bottom line is that the arts community is deeply upset by the proposed cut. The funding level currently equals 1987 in actual dollars, and the governor proposes reducing it even further. Factoring in inflation, the arts community is being funded at 1977 levels. This is in a state where arts are a major export product, a major tourist attraction, a significant part of the economy, a larger employer than construction, and for many an important reason for putting up with the otherwise often frustrating and expensive living conditions of New York City. So, in a year of unparalleled budget surpluses, why cut the arts.
Norma Munn is Chair of the New York City Arts Coalition, founder and President of the Artists Community Federal Credit Union, and former Chair of The City Club of New York.