Kickstarter

In September 2011, activists occupied Zucotti Park and gave birth to a social movement that aimed to unite and empower those affected by increasing systemic inequality. It gave activists, concerned citizens and community members a space to voice their concern about the direction our society continues to go in.

At the same time, social upheaval was continuing around the world, in the middle east with the Arab Spring, across Europe with social movements against austerity, with the Chilean Student Movement and more recently with the massive student protest movements in Canada and Mexico, and in many, many other places around the world.

Modern social movements are of a new breed, infused with new technology, citizen journalism, social media, and powered by an equally new breed of internet-savvy young people. And as the international-left becomes more and more self-aware, for the first time in this new internet-age, new forms of resistance are taking shape and growing. Many organizations with long histories of resistance are adapting to modern movements and growing accordingly. Hacktivism is increasingly becoming one of the most relevant vehicles for modern political resistance, and the global community created by the internet in the twenty-first century allows for unprecedented international solidarity. The Occupy Movement sent out a flare demanding something different and communities around the world responded with messages of support, solidarity and in many cases with the establishment of an occupy camp.

That’s where we come in. We’re two citizen-journalist bloggers who want to spend the next six months traveling across North America blogging and collecting content so that we can create a serious print publication (or two). We’ve been working on the project for months already, and have built a modestly sized audience at thepeoplesrecord.com. This Kickstarter project could help us take that blog, grow it into something bigger, and create a publication that documents and celebrates the people, communities, places and spaces of resistance that exist across the United States and Canada today.

With a crooked, biased corporate media, these groups and their issues have continually gone unnoticed or worse, have faced libelous coverage. We are working to capture important struggles against oppression that are otherwise misrepresented or neglected entirely by the corporate media. Some areas of focus for the publication will include: anti-war communities, women’s struggles, LGBTQ issues, the movement growing against the new Jim Crow and other anti-racism movements, immigrant struggles, environmentalist groups, student movements and much more.

Our blog will continue to have an international focus although this first publication is going to be limited to cities in the United States and Canada. If we can squeak out the most meager of successes from it, then we plan to continue the adventure internationally.

With your help, over the next six months we’re going to travel across the west coast, through parts of the American south, and up the east coast of America. Money raised from this Kickstarter campaign will help pay for six months of travel expenses. If we surpass our goal, it can keep us active for longer so we can continue to illuminate the thriving activist movements around the world.

We’ve saved up to eliminate as many of our expenses as possible, but because this is such a big project, we need your help to get started. Your support will help fund multimedia equipment which will allow us to livestream major protest events, collect high-resolution video, images and audio for our interviews with activists fighting oppression, leftist-thinkers and social-movement-leaders. And of course contributions will also help offset the costs of gas and travel.

In exchange for your support, we’ve put together some prizes that we hope can begin to thank you for your support. They are listed to the right. So please join us on this adventure, support our campaign generously and help us create something that can help amplify the stories of today’s new and developing international communities of resistance.