Youth to Use Digital Weapons to Counter Violence
Global youth groups and tech geeks will converge at a Dec. 3-5 Summit in
New York to discuss ways to use digital media to promote freedom and
justice, counter violence, extremism, and oppression. Facebook, Google,
YouTube, MTV, Howcast, Columbia Law School and the U.S. Department of
State will convene the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit.
These
young leaders will form a new group, the Alliance of Youth Movements,
which will produce a field manual for youth empowerment.
According to Howcast Media, the gathering was inspired by the One
Million Voices Against the FARC, a group started on Facebook.com by
young people in Colombia. Aided by social networking technologies, the
organization inspired 12 million people in 190 cities around the world
to take to the streets in protest against the FARC, an extremist group
that has been terrorizing Colombia for more than 40 years.
The
Colombian group will share their ideas with leaders of other groups that
use social and mobile technologies to promote freedom and justice and
oppose violence, extremism and oppression.
The New
York summit will bring together such organizations as One Million Voices
Against the FARC, Save Darfur Coalition, Genocide Intervention Network,
Burma Global Action Network and Invisible Children.
The
Alliance of Youth Movements Summit will take place December 3 to 5 at
the Columbia Law School in Manhattan. The event will also be streamed
live online by Howcast.com and on ThinkMTV.com. Howcast Media is
organizing the Summit with additional support from Facebook, Google,
YouTube, MTV, Columbia Law School, the U.S. Department of State and
Access 360 Media.
Speakers at the Summit will include:
-
Whoopi Goldberg, Host of ABC's "The View"
-
Dustin Moskovitz, Co-Founder, Facebook
-
James K. Glassman, Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public
Affairs, U.S. Department of State
-
Oscar Morales, Founder, One Million Voices Against the FARC
-
Luke Russert, MSNBC
-
Matthew Waxman, Associate Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
Panels
will discuss a variety of practical topics, including How To Build
Transnational Social Movements Using New Technology, How To Use New
Mobile Technologies and How To Preserve Group Safety And Security.
Summit
participants will also be honored at a red-carpet event with
entertainment celebrities, business leaders, and civil society figures
at the former home of MTV's Total Request Live ("TRL") overlooking Times
Square.
Howcast
will use the field manual for youth empowerment developed at the Summit
as the cornerstone of a much larger online "hub," where emerging youth
organizations can access and share "how-to" guides and tips on how to
use social-networking and other technologies to promote freedom and
justice and counter violence, extremism and oppression.
The hub
(http://howcast.com/youthmovements) will include instructional videos
and text guides, links to related online resources and discussion forums
for sharing experiences, ideas and advice.
