Tactical Tech’s Info Activism Camp 2013 was a unique opportunity to sample the experiences and reflections of activists about the promise and perils of protest for activism. We invited five participants to a ‘Protest Salon’ – Lobna Darwish (Egypt), Sami ben Gharbia (Tunisia), Jake Levitas (USA), Marcelo Marquesini (Brazil) and Ozlem Kaya (Turkey). We asked them to bring with them a song, a slogan and an image as starting points for their thoughts on the nature of protests and what they have meant in each of their own contexts.
What made it a ‘salon’? Well, probably the comfortable couches and the audience sitting on mats on the floor and the (mostly) un-moderated flow of conversation. We definitely wanted to move away from a plenary-style discussion. Also, our intention was not to draw a linear narrative or arrive at a holistic analysis; we wanted to listen to individual narratives of protest and the relationships between activism and politics. Clips edited from the Salon are showcased in this, our last issue of the Micro-magazine. We hope you will share and enjoy the discussions here.
[Thanks to Mathilde, Toby, Anjali for sound and camera at the Salon]