These last couple of months, I keeping being reminded of something one of my professors in Chile said:
"Democracy means an increase in conflict, not less"
The context of the quote was that when we are truly free, there are more voices heard, which may be in conflict with each other, something which usually brings about an end that is ultimately good. I wonder what he would have thought about this current budget lunacy.
With so much of the other kind of conflict lately, the destruction of human life for selfish ends, its hard to not become cynical and hardened about our prospects.
But while I was looking through some articles for my crisis mapping class today, I found two really cool projects, bringing the opinions of people around the world together to report on stories and secondly, to keep their leadership accountable. It's these kinds of things that are what democracy truly represents to me, a forum that has the potential to be a lot purer than a bunch of old white guys in suits bickering while pretending to truly represent the needs of the constituents of an amazingly culturally diverse nation. Of course, technology as democracy has its downsides, access being first among them, vulnerability as we share ourselves with audiences we may not even realize and the empowerment of hate alongside the empowerment of discourses of justice and freedom and fairness.
Anyway, these give me hope that we can create a different world, slowly, click by click.
http://globalvoicesonline.org/
http://transparency.globalvoicesonline.org/
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