Hello Genprev Activists!
This is a list of services and sources that are available to us as a way to stay informed. Knowledge and passion are at the heart of our movement and these sources can give you insight into the conflicts and make our advocacy even better. They are divided by conflict area and topic. Lastly, there are links to collection services and Twitter. I hope this will serve as a supplement to the weekly education updates and provide more comprehensive coverage of our work! Thanks and let me know if you have any others to add to the list!
Burma
Afghanistan/Pakistan
Registan.net is a blog focused on Central Asian politics and society, with a critical eye towards U.S. human rights advocacy in Central Asia, as well as the war in Afghanistan
Africa
A Bombastic Element is a blogger in DC, and he posts fantastic tidbits from contemporary African cultural developments
Alex Thurston, a PhD student at Northwestern, has a great blog on politics and security in Africa, largely focused on the Sahel region and Islamic portions of sub-Saharan Africa.
Deborah Brautigam, an American University professor and recent author of The Dragon’s Gift, posts periodically on new developments in Sino-African relations.
Elizabeth Dickinson and Maggie Fick are both indispensable freelancers–Elizabeth writes from West Africa and Mexico, and Maggie varies between Nigeria and Sudan.
Jina Moore posts infrequently on journalistic ethics and crisis reporting.
Texas in Africa‘s blog is a critical counter-weight to much of the messaging that comes out of the advocacy community
Jason Stearns best DRC blog in town
Chris Blattman‘s blog provides an economist’s perspective on the realm of conflict resolution focusing the majority of his research on child soldiers in Uganda. John Campbell‘s blog at CFR is a great spot for seasoned analysis of Africa’s crisis zones.
African Arguments is a project of the Royal African Society and the Social Science Research Council, and frequently features analytical essays on political risk, conflict, and human rights in sub-Saharan Africa.
Sudan
Nick Kristof is a mixed bag–he’s a good reporter, with a profound moral sensibility, but his depictions of African conflicts and poverty are often a bit oversimplified.
Sudan Tribune a counter-Khartoum newspaper run out of the West
Human Rights and Other
Human Rights Watch is good to follow, if only because their press releases/reports tend to be the best out there.
Waging Nonviolence features insightful essays on nonviolent resistance, social mobilization, and global activism.
Student Activism features favorable stories on student activism activities around the country, and provides some helpful case studies for STAND student organizing on college campuses.
Dan Drezner‘s FP blog approaches foreign affairs from a political-science perspective
RSS, Email, and Twitter (Very Important)
These are some of the best ways to collect all of the information listed above.
Google Reader and Caffeinated
- To set up a Google Reader account, make a Google account and then go to the "Reader" tab
- To set up feeds, go to a website you want to receive updates from and then click "Add Subscription"
- Paste the URL into this box and your Reader will post all updates from the website to that page
- If you have a Mac, there is an app called "Caffeinated" that allows you to browse, post to Twitter, Facebook, and email articles
Email
- Google Alerts send you emails with certain words in news articles. For example, if you want an email with all of the articles published that have the word "Sudan" in them, you can set up that particular alert.
- Again, you will need a Google account
- This one seems to get a bit of resistance, but Twitter is an extremely valuable tool for getting news and amplifying STAND’s efforts. If you follow human rights organizations, advocates, and academics you are sure not to get the "Just went to the bathroom" tweets like many people think. It’s very simple to set up. To get started, follow @standnow and @endgenocide to get your name out their on the anti-genocide Twittersphere.
Sean Langberg-Education Coordinator (education@standnow.org)