The Caribbean's first podcast - Almost live from Trinidad & Tobago!
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After repeated requests for an interview, I finally got the author of The Secret Blog of Patrick Manning to agree to talk to me via IM in the wee hours of this morning. The transcript of our chat is below, lightly edited, with typos corrected and relevant links inserted. I’m none the wiser as to who this person is, but s/he types like the wind and is evidently a night owl.
GP: I’ll start with the question you’re least likely to answer. Who are you?
PM: I’m Patrick Manning, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago.
GP: OK. Let’s try it from a different angle. Are you a journalist? A columnist?
PM: I am Manning.
GP: Some people think you’re a member of the COP.
(more…)
[A version of this entry with a slightly different text was cross-posted at Global Voices]
In the pages of CFR she’s known as “the Dread”, but to most other people Atillah Springer is a Trinidadian journalist, activist and blogger and a member of a protest movement which, earlier this year, succeeded in driving the aluminium industry giant Alcoa out of a community in rural Trinidad where they had proposed to establish a smelter under somewhat dubious circumstances.
In this podcast I talk with Atillah about the movement’s use of the Internet in their organising activities.
Some useful links:
No Smelters in T&T web site
Rights Action Group blog
Smelta Karavan web site
Saving Iceland - web site of anti-smelter allies in Iceland
Portrait of Atillah by caribbeanfreephoto
Other images courtesy Attillah Springer
I’m in Louisville, Kentucky to attend the Idea Festival. Arrived here yesterday evening a bit dazed after the 11.5 hour journey (via Houston) from Trinidad, and so far have only ventured within a couple of blocks of the hotel to have dinner in Fourth Street, a pedestrianised entertainment hub lined with the likes of TGIF and the Hard Rock Café and where having a huge and blinding neon sign is evidently part of the zoning guidelines. My Global Voices colleague Amira Al Hussaini and I had a very good dinner, however, at an establishment specialising in bourbon, where I had my first ever mint julep. I suspect it won’t be my last either–they’re not as good as mojitos, but close.
On the way here I also had my second experience of being recognised as the person who does CFR, which was rather shocking, as I’ve begun to think that I barely qualify as a blogger any more, far less as a podcaster. The recogniser was Maurini Strub, a Trinidadian transplanted to Detroit who tells me she has a neglected blog on Vox (don’t we all) but didn’t offer the URL. Thanks, Maurini, for making me feel like I’m still part of the blogosphere.
I landed here around 8pm yesterday evening, so my impressions of the city are vague, but the feature of the landscape that made the strongest impression as we glided over the city were the bridges spanning the Ohio River. Hence the choice of the photo above, which was taken from my 17th-floor hotel room. I believe that’s the George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge. (More photos will be posted here, though no need to rush there just yet, as I’ve only posted two so far).
Off now to see what the Idea Festival is all about, and to find some eye drops, as I’ve been plagued with hay fever ever since I landed on US soil. Could I be allergic to America?
Sep 6, 2007, MIAMI and NEW YORK – The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and MTV announced today the Knight News Challenge “Young Creators Award,” a new digital journalism grant program for young people age 25 and under anywhere in the world. The contest will award up to $500,000 to young creators with compelling ideas for using digitally delivered news and information to enhance physical communities – improving the lives of people where they live, work and vote. The new award is a component of the Knight News Challenge, an annual competition awarding $5 million for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news. (more…)
To follow up on my previous post, and also the piece I wrote on Global Voices about the role of the internet in the Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago elections, here’s an excerpt from a comment left by Liz Henry on a Global Voices post about the build-up to the general election in Guatemala (which takes place today):
People sometimes bring up the digital divide, or low literacy rates, as a reason not to care about putting political information online. But we’ve got to support good, clear, thorough information about elections and candidates — and history and law — online. Then it can spread, through whoever does have the means to read it, print it, distribute it, and do what it takes to get the information out into the world.
All of this is enough to make me think that the population is really politically savvy and educated despite the lack of structured civics education in our school system. What I worry about is whether the online community, with ready access to computers and the Internet, are an accurate representation of the general population. What about the political opinions of those on the other side of the digital divide? And it may be that the Internet is just the latest forum for Trinis to do what they do best, talk. How much this translates into action is another question. Like a friend of mine, wary of all the online talk that has been taking place, recently wrote: “While we, ‘the future’, sit and occupy our time amusing ourselves with all these…discussions, the true leaders in the real world are doing as they please.”
Blogger Shivonne du Barry, expressing some healthy skepticism about the “alternative spins” on Trinidad and Tobago politics being provided by blogs and social networking sites. And now it’s my turn to play devil’s advocate, and a highly optimistic one at that!
Juxtapose the 12% internet penetration rate and Danah Boyd’s infamous findings about Facebook and class (assuming they apply to Trinidad and Tobago) and you conclude that Shivonne’s concerns are well taken, as of course they are - they’re the concerns perennially expressed in discussions about the role/value of the the internet in “developing” societies. But they also assume that, in the absence of Facebook and its equivalents, the political dialogue/activity taking place among this select group would have taken a different (and possibly superior) form (as well it might). Or taken place at all.
They also assume (more than likely correctly) that there’s not some innovative parallel activity taking place “on the other side of the digital divide” using cell phones and SMS. They also assume that all online political activity will necessarily be partisan. Might we not see some serious citizen reporting this upcoming election season? Might some ordinary person not happen to capture some priceless image or bit of footage on a cell phone camera that the jaded media practitioners have missed?
