Ten years ago I was in grade school, music, books, and newspapers were bought in stores, and if anyone wanted information about charity work they had to go looking for it. Today all of these things are available at the tip of my fingers all because of digital media. Social justice is the fairness and equality in all ways of life for all people. As free citizens, it is our obligation to inform ourselves about acts of injustice and work to bring justice where there is not. While on the internet I discovered organizations like Charity: Water and Invisible Children these organizations exemplify how digital media can be used to achieve social justice.
Charity: Water is a non-profit organization that brings clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. They have used digital media to complete 4,282 projects and have helped 2,060,000 people to get clean water. Charity: Water uses Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook to inform and promote its work. They use Google maps and GPS coordinates to show where every dollar is going. Members of their staff all have blogs to talk about ways to donate. In Le Guin Ursala’s The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas she talks about the differences between those who hide and shielded themselves from the problems of others and those who are brave enough to try and help others. Charity: Water is a good way of testing people to see if they will hide from the problems of others or if they will reach out and help. On the Charity: Water website you can create a profile, fundraise money, and then they use their GPS technology to see how your money is being put to work. Ursala talks about how the people that walked away from Omelas were challenged by the fact that they were alone. Charity: Water is also a challenge because it challenges people to give up their money and time, but in order to achieve social justice it has to be done.
Another example of how digital media has been used to work towards social justice is the work of Invisible Children. Invisible Children uses digital media to attempt to end the use of child soldiers in Joseph Kony’s rebel war and restore LRA affected communities in Central Africa. Joseph Kony is the head of the Lord’s Resistance Army which is a guerrilla group engaged in a violent campaign, to establish theocratic government in Uganda. He has forced 66,000 children to fight and forced the internal displacement of over 2,000,000 people since the rebellion began in 1986. Like Charity: Water, Invisible Children uses social media to promote their work. In order to raise money, for Invisible Children anyone can create a fundraising page. Invisible Children created their fundraising page through a website called stayclassy.org. Stayclassy is a nonprofit fundraising cite. Through the efforts of Invisible Children an FM radio tower has been built which sends “come home” messages to LRA members. They have made great strides in working to create rehabilitation, family reunification, and post conflict recovery for the child soldiers. They have also done a lot of work to promote the arrest of Joseph Kony and other top LRA leadership. D. Miller defines distributive justice as “A fair distribution of benefits among the members of various associations (1).” This is what the organization Invisible Children is trying to achieve. The Child soldiers have no benefits or voice, that’s why they are called invisible. Invisible Children is working to give them the rights they deserve and take away the power from the unjust.
Organizations like Charity: Water and Invisible Children are what social justice in digital media means to me. They give us opportunities to achieve justice and we are called to act. They give a voice to those who have none and as a free citizen we are called to help those in need.
Sources:
http://www.charitywater.org/
http://www.invisiblechildren.com/
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