For Your Eyes …

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I am a very private person, plus I am pretty committed to being co-dependent with the planet, so I probably waste more psychic energy and time trying to give other people their privacy than I spend on maintaining my own. Especially in those moments when it seems that people around me are oblivious to their horrible and immediate need to simply keep things to themselves. Or to warn me of imminent over-sharing.

I could blame cell phones, blame Facebook and Instagram, think some thoughts about the effect of self-help groups and therapy on the culture at large, but after thinking all those deep thoughts, I do not care about your details, unless you are my dearest, most intimate friend(s). No. Not even then. Even then, there are things I do not really need to know. The details.
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A Thank You from Movements.org

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The website Movements.org was launched last year as a tool to “crowdsource human rights.” It is a great idea. In the last five years or so, many crowdsourcing sites have been started and most of them are geared toward raising money for specific projects. Movements does not raise funds, but awareness.

If you know about a human rights violation and you think the world needs to know about it, you post a statement about it there in your language. Activists read about it and take it from there. On the other side, if you are an activist looking for a story that has not received much attention yet, several dozen new ones are posted each day. If you are someone who cares about human rights as an issue, as a philosophical idea, but you do not know where to begin, who to contact, or what to say, Movements.org is a fine place to start. In certain ways, it puts the human back into the phrase “human rights,” because the cases featured on the site are stories of individuals, not the usual eye-tiring and heart-saddening litany of overwhelming numbers.

Readers of this website know that I have recently featured the story of a photographer named Shawkan, who has been in prison in Egypt for two and a half years now. Today, Movements.org cited TheGadAboutTown.com in a section of the website called “Success Stories.”
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Inside Anonymous: Covering The Collective

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

For the first time in its two-year history, The Gad About Town is presenting a guest post. I am profoundly happy about this, and I hope to present more in the future.

In recent weeks, I published four pieces about two different operations launched by the Anonymous movement (#OpParis, #OpParis, Day 2, and #OpKKK), and they are written from my perspective as an outsider looking in but with some trusted sources guiding me. I am an informed outsider.

Walter Yeates, also known as Smooth, is a reporter who has interviewed, on the record, leaders of and participants in the operations against Daesh under the banner of #OpParis.

Thank you, Smooth, for writing this and asking me to publish it. It’s an honor. What follows is his own account.—Mark Aldrich, The Gad About Town
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