[iDC] Intro: Melissa Gira Grant (was: Re: [Fwd: Re: [Radical-techies] twitter, anarchists])

[Melissa Gira Grant]

This seems as good a point as any to make an introduction with.

I'm Melissa Gira Grant, and I'm a writer (internet culture, sexual
politics, human rights) and I help people engaged in online advocacy
with their campaigns. I'm recently relocated to New York City from San
Francisco, where I wrote for the despicably fun tech gossip blog,
Valleywag, and built websites for community-based organizations,
grassroots political causes, etc.

My focus in online advocacy is strategy-setting in lo-fi/low-resourced
environments and the ethics of representation (ie, how do we shift
from "giving voice to the voiceless!" to "let's give the voiceless
video cameras!" to "why on earth do we conceive of some people as
voiceless, when it appears we're just ignoring what they're already
telling?"). I've done some work in this area with Open Society and
with Tactical Tech (http://www.tacticaltech.org), with whom I worked
on a multimedia guide to "info-activism" -- 10 tactics for turning
information into action using information/communication technologies
-- to be released later this year.