Chomsky lecture on the US and UNESCO
This is a lecture that Chomsky delivered last month at Kutztown University as part of UNESCO’s World Philosophy Day.
UNESCO, according to Chomsky, is one of the best programs of the United Nations. UNESCO promotes peace, multi-culturalism, free speech and independent media. Not surprising the US government has always been critical of UNESCO. Most recently the US discontinued its funding of UNESCO because the UN organization supported and advocated for Palestinian statehood.
The lecture by Chomsky, including Q&A lasts about 1 hour and 40 minutes. But is well worth listening to.
This article by Glen Ford is re-posted from Black Agenda Report.
The “Occupy” brand is a hit, having embedded its “99%” emblem in the popular consciousness like no other political slogan of the past two generations. And, no wonder. Among the movement’s core non-leaders are the skilled counter-corporate-culturalists of Adbusters magazine, the Canada-based outfit that turns the instruments of mass commercial marketing against their capitalist inventors. Occupy Wall Street flipped the script on the historical subordination of the Many by the Few by symbolically purging the 1% from the righteous community of the rest of us. In hardly the time it takes to “Flick my BIC” – the phenomenally catchy slogan of a classic 1970s ad campaign – Occupy Wall Street has become what some are calling the most significant social movement since the Sixties.
Only time can validate that assessment, and we shall see if there is still magic in the invocation of the “99%” in the spring and summer. One thing is certain: Occupy can only fulfill its promise to build on the contributions of previous movements if it decisively confronts the overarching issue of race, the Great Contradiction at the heart of American life and history that has always thwarted the development of an enduring Left movement.
The ultimate measure of Occupy’s capacity to combat white supremacy and privilege, is the degree to which the movement is seen as relevant to people of color – especially Black America, historically the nation’s most dependably progressive constituency and the group situated at the bottom of the economic heap in the current crisis. Black activists and the general African American public are keenly aware that OWS’s essential whiteness was key to its success in establishing encampments of borderline legality, and to the relatively favorable press coverage the movement has garnered. It is axiomatic that immediate and massive police repression would have been deployed to crush any such initiative by Blacks and browns.
White privilege is, of course, a fundamental fact of life in the United States, and understood as such by virtually every inner city Black child above a certain age, although the beneficiaries of privilege are most often blissfully unaware that they belong to a protected class. In the main, Blacks do not hold the existence of white privilege against Euro-Americans that engage in social struggle – indeed, white activists are often admired for risking their privileges. However, Black people do require that white-dominated movements offer the hope of specific impacts on the African American condition. We have learned through bitter and repetitive experience that campaigns advertised as serving the “common good” are no more to be trusted than the racially flawed slogan, “A rising tide lifts all boats.”
The Occupy movement’s “99%” mantra seems inclusive on its face, but can also subsume the aspirations and grievances of the darker constituencies within the super-majority. Therefore, Blacks are compelled to interrogate the movement’s relevance to their own conditions, including gross racial imbalances in relationships of power. At every juncture of the movement’s development, African Americans must be substantively assured of OWS’s relevance to them.
The vocabulary of Occupy, with its constant references to building “new communities” based on new “values,” can be unsettling to a people whose own, older communities are under siege by gentrification, Wall Street’s quintessential crime against Black population centers. Those of us involved with Occupy Harlem (on Twitter @occupyharlemnow) place the highest priority on ensuring that our people can continue to occupy these historic spaces in northern Manhattan, in numbers sufficient to allow them to shape their own political destinies. The battle against Wall Street is most vicious, and for the highest stakes, in the Harlems of the nation, where finance capital attempts to disperse whole populations to artificially inflate the value of corporate assets in housing and land. If there is any piece of ground where an anti-Wall Street movement should stand and fight, it’s Harlem.
Resistance to inner city gentrification is primarily a battle for renter’s rights. Harlem is overwhelmingly renter-occupied, as are most central city Black communities in the U.S. – virtually all of whom are under gentrifying pressures, or soon will be. As economic and racial targets of Wall Street’s predations, Black city-dwellers are the natural allies of Occupy Wall Street. They need to be convinced, through substantive and ongoing collaboration, that OWS is an ally of theirs.
At three months of age, it is essential that the Occupy movement demonstrate that it is a permanent feature on the political landscape, not a flash in the pan. African Americans are acutely aware that they can never “retire” from the struggle, as relatively privileged social justice activists might have the option of doing. The most rewarding relationship that OWS could forge with Black Harlem and all the Harlems of the United States, is by committing its human and material resources to the struggle to ensure that besieged African American communities are made permanent, viable, self-determining centers in the battle against the rule of money.
The Intersection of Race and Sexual Assault
Earlier today, the Kent County Domestic Violence Community Coordinated Response Team hosted a luncheon presentation by Kristen Moss. Kristen works with Girls Inc., at the YWCA here in Grand Rapids.
Her talk focused on the intersectionality of race and sexual assault, with emphasis on African American women. She began with some basic definitions of sexism and objectification, followed by several ads that underscored her point.
Kristen said, “The media and socialized ideas of gender roles continue to perpetuate the idea that women are merely objects to be used for sexual gratification.” This objectification impacts women of color in significantly different ways in media. African American and Latina women are often portrayed as dominant or sexually promiscuous, tempting and lewd.
Additional stereotypes for women of color in media are Mammy/Patriarch, animalistic, Jezebel, loud/big mouthed, outspoken and seductive. You can see the hyper-animalistic messages these ads portray.
Kristen states that this kind of media and societal representation of women contributes to women of color not wanting to seek assistance in cases of domestic violence and sexual assault. This is reflected at some level based on the most recent statistics from the YWCA on the racial makeup of women who sought assistance in 2009.
69.5% Caucasian
19% African American
5.7% Mixed Race
The presenter then gave numerous reasons why women of color are hesitant to seek treatment.
- negative perceptions about counseling
- financial hardship
- It is seen as white social workers being intrusive or nosy
- Lack of African American counselors
- There are built-in support systems and networks, such as churches, beauty salons, etc.
- Abuse should be kept hidden
- They have to protect the assailant (especially of the same race)
- They will not be believed
- The Superwoman Syndrome
“African Americans have not made addressing sexual assault and abuse a collective priority. Because people have been so ashamed and this is something that has happened to them, that it’s not something that is a pushed idea.” Ruth Sallee-Gresham
In addressing solutions, Kristen identified the following ideas. She stressed that it was important to go into the African American community, since those who work in sexual assault prevention and work with victims can’t expect the Black community to come to them. Second, education is critical in communities of color about the issue and what resources are available for people.
A third solution is to create a task force that involves community members and clergy. Lastly, people who do violence prevention work need to get the word out on the importance of prevention and not just services that are available for victims.
Regarding the role of the Black Churches, Kristen said there are some Black pastors who are willing to speak out on this issue and who genuinely want to support members of their congregation that are experiencing domestic violence and other forms of sexual assault. However, she said it tends to be the younger pastors who have expressed interest in this issue.
Can Snyder Be Stopped as He Targets Workers’ Comp?
Rick Snyder is starting to look like General Sherman, marching through Georgia burning down farms and shooting anything that got in his way. Snyder’s war on the poor and the workers of Michigan has been relentless since the day he took office, and now there’s more news to add to the growing list of his crimes against the citizens of Michigan.
His signing of a law that forbid anyone who owned a car worth $15,000 to collect food stamps (after putting a two-year lifetime cap on welfare payments) had thrown thousands of already food-insufficient families into crisis. Many poor people have cars that they have nursed along for ten or twenty years, and in a state with minimal public transport, those cars are necessary if family members are going to look for work. But if they couldn’t even get food stamps, their choice was between any hope for employment or feeding their kids today or tomorrow. This law was so outrageous that Snyder was forced to partially back down on it as it received national attention.
Snyder’s emergency manager laws are terrorizing people across the state as EFM appointees from Snyder’s cadre of robber barons seize public lands, close schools, fire elected officials, and privatize public utilities. Michigan Forward is currently waging a battle to keep Detroit out of the hands of an EFM—their own current, corrupt mayor has bid for the job and looks like he has the approval of Lansing—but there’s been no recent news from them on their effort to repeal Public Act 4.
And now Snyder is turning his attention toward workers’ compensation. This law protects workers who have been injured on the job—allowing them to collect partial wages and pay for doctors’ bills after being examined by a workers’ compensation doctor and having their case reviewed by the Workers’ Compensation Appellate Commission in the case of disputes.
Snyder’s plan is to eliminate the impartial review in order to achieve an annual savings of $1.2 million. So who will review the cases? Why, Snyder appointees, of course. He has already made some appointments—with all three of his new appointees in the pocket of the insurance industry, and all three right-wing conservatives. 
Yesterday, the state senate passed Snyder’s bill, which requires injured workers to return to work before they have completely recovered from their injuries, and puts them at risk of losing all their benefits if they cannot do the job assigned to them. They also have to accept whatever job is assigned, even if the pay is significantly less than their former wage. The law further states that benefits can be docked based on the possibility of wages that the injured employee could be earning at a hypothetical job, even if there is no such job available.
The bill, HB5002, also puts more power into the hands of the review board by requiring workers who want a second opinion or be cared for by their own doctors during their recovery to pay for those expenses themselves. Of course, these changes have been heartily approved by the Michigan Chamber of Commerce for the way they take “employers’ needs” into account—even though the employers are frequently the ones at fault for allowing conditions that caused the injury.
The Senate Minority Leader, Gretchen Whitmer, said, “It seems like every week, Senate Republicans find a new way to attack Michigan workers and roll out another bill to erode their rights and the benefits they depend on to survive.”
And Karla Swift, president of Michigan’s AFL-CIO, commented that the bill “would turn the system on its head by changing the law so that employees would not only lose their workers’ compensation by the wages they earn when they return to work, but by the amount of wages they could possibly earn at a job not even offered to them.”
In other words, it’s business as usual for Czar Snyder as he dismantles every citizen protection he can think of to put more money in the pocket of the capitalists.
And that unemployment rate he promised to improve? Well, it’s improving…because more people are leaving the state permanently rather than suffer any more under this fascist regime. Michigan’s job market improved a whopping 1 percent during Rick’s first year in office…and 1.8 percent of able-bodied workers have left the state or taken early retirement. Doing the math on that one is easy, and accounts for the drop in unemployment claims that Governor Snyder has been singing praises over this holiday season.
But Snyder’s not singing about this: Only 2,000 people this year in Michigan found full-time work at a living wage as Rick continues to transfer bundles of cash, tax cuts, cost eliminations, and state funds to industry leaders.
Protest image from FightBackNews.org
Czar Snyder image used by permission from artist Linda Robinson
Bill to destroy partner health care benefits heads to Snyder’s desk
Yesterday, Equality Michigan sent out a Media Release announcing the Michigan Senate passed House Bills 4770 and 4771 by a vote of 27-9. One Democrat (Sen. Tupac Hunter) joined all 26 Republicans to vote in favor of the measures.
“The bills would eliminate health care benefits for unmarried partners of public employees. HB 4770 originally prohibited any government entity in the state from providing such benefits and HB 4771 prohibits unions from including them in collective bargaining agreements. In a last minute attempt to silence opposition, Senate Republicans passed an amendment that exempts public universities from the legislation.
Anti-gay Republicans Representative Dave Agema (sponsor of the bills) and Attorney General Bill Schuette have been trying to strip away health care benefits for gay and lesbian couples since February of this year.
Equality Michigan Director of Policy Emily Dievendorf added this statement in the Media Release:
“This is yet another step in the wrong direction for Michigan. The only motivation for these bills it to make Michigan a more hostile state for gay and lesbian couples. We call on Governor Snyder to do what’s in the best interest of our state and immediately veto these measures.”
“Tens of thousands of public and private employees in our state have access to health care benefits for unmarried partners. Policies that provide such benefits are used throughout the country to treat employees fairly and retain talented workers. Leaders from Fortune 500 companies, public school districts, and municipal governments across the country know that their workforces are stronger when employees are able to take care of their families.”
“Governor Snyder prides himself on being a pragmatic moderate. We can assume that, like all of us, he has friends he would do real harm to by approving anti-equality initiatives. He also has a personal investment in strengthening Michigan’s business climate. In order to promote both fairness and economic growth in our state, he must allow local governments to offer benefits that help recruit and retain top talent.”
“The State Civil Service Commission has confirmed that costs for other ‘eligible individual benefit programs’ are minuscule, so it’s clear that these bills have moved through the legislature simply because of malice toward gay and lesbian families.”
You can read the language of HB 4770 and HB 4771 to determine how these bills, if adopted by Governor Snyder, will be a defeat for equality in Michigan.
There is a great deal of activity and resistance happening at the United Nations Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa.
A few days ago roughly 1,500 farmers and farmworkers marched in the streets of Durban to draw attention to how small farmers practice agriculture that actually cools the planet, while agribusiness is one of the major contributors to global warming.
Via Campensina was the main organizer of this event, which included the release of a major declaration from the Assembly of the Oppressed. The declaration reads in part as:
For all countries to stop trying to save capitalism and making the people, including small farmers, pay for their economic and financial crisis. We as La Via Campesina, demand the implementation of the people’s global agreement on climate agreed on in Cochabamba. And here in Durban and in a thousand Durbans, we strongly reiterate our solutions to the climate crisis.
– Further global warming must be limited to a rise of 1 degree Celsius only.
– Developed countries must make domestic emission reductions of at least 50% based on 1990 levels, without conditions and excluding carbon markets or other offset mechanisms.
– Developed countries must commit to payment of their climate debt and give funding from at least 6% of their GDP. All funds for this climate finance must be public and be free from the control of the World Bank and private corporations.
– All market mechanisms must be stopped, including REDD, REDD++ and the proposed carbon markets for agriculture.
We reiterate that there will be no solution to climate change and the predatory neo-liberal system that causes it, without the liberation of women, and rural women in particular, from age old patriarchy and sexist discrimination.
We also came across a good analysis article by long time activist and writer Patrick Bond. Bond fully expects that whatever agreement is reached by the international community, it will be imposed on them by the US and its international partners. Bond states:
The biggest problem is obvious: COP17 saboteurs from the US State Department joined by Canada, Russia and Japan, want to bury the legally-binding Kyoto Protocol treaty. Instead of relaxing intellectual property rules on climate technology and providing a fair flow of finance, Washington offers only a non-binding ‘pledge and review’ system.
This is unenforceable and at current pledge rates – with Washington lagging everyone – is certain to raise world temperatures to four degrees centigrade, and in Africa much higher. Estimates of the resulting deaths of Africans this century are now in excess of 150 million. As former Bolivian Ambassador to the UN, Pablo Solon said at last week’s Wolpe Memorial Lecture, “The COP17 will be remembered as a place of premeditated genocide and ecocide.”
Between 125 – 150 people gathered at the Calder Plaza today in Grand Rapids to support the principles of free enterprise.
According to the event organizer Tommy Brann, owner of the Brann’s Steakhouses, Free Enterprise is what made America the nation it is today. Brann began the event by reading off what he called Ten to Defend, 10 reasons why American Capitalism is so great. Here are the ten reasons:
- Creating jobs is a compassionate thing to do.
- Billions of dollars are paid by Free Enterprise when an entrepreneur owns a commercial building and pays property tax. (This helps local schools, police and Fire.)
- The employer and employee are the backbone of Free Enterprise. Three’s a crowd so Government can sometimes get in the way.
- Anyone with good work ethic and makes an honest effort can participate in Free Enterprise.
- Free Enterprise even provides for the unemployed. Businesses pay 100% of unemployment insurance.
- Michael Jordon, the best basketball player ever, is often applauded because of his skills. Successful business people should be applauded too. We don’t take away from Jordon’s accomplishments, please don’t take away our successful accomplishments.
- Free Enterprise is not free – participants work hard to create jobs and pay by spending long hours away from their families working to be sure they can meet a payroll.
- For every hour a person works in a Free Enterprise business a portion of their Social Security and Medicare taxes are paid by the business owner.
- When Steve Jobs was 24 years old he told his girlfriend he was going to become a millionaire someday. Free Enterprise is for dreamers – don’t take that dream away or America’s future will be a nightmare.
- After Steve Jobs died admirers laid flowers at his home. They respected him as a businessman and a participant in Free Enterprise.
To anyone who gives a few seconds to such a list, one can see that much of it is not true or doesn’t even make sense. Billions of dollars are paid by homeowners and working taxpayers in general. Tommy Brann didn’t say anything about government getting in the way to bail out the banks, to provide billions in corporate subsidies every year or the legislative push over the past 30 years to deregulate industry.
What do Michael Jordan’s skills have to do with business people? What would be more relevant is that Jordon would not take a stand against Nike’s sweatshop practices while he was marketing their shoes around the world. Likewise, businesses don’t want the public to scrutinize their practices, such as worker treatment, health/safety issues and environmental impact.
Also, what is obsession with Steve Jobs? Sure people are elated with Apple products, but we cannot forget that Jobs made millions off the labor of others, often in extremely exploitative conditions.
Brann was followed by four speakers, with a bit of music in between speakers. The first speaker was Tim Doyle, a local businessman who used to work for Tommy Brann and now owns several restaurants and a catering business in the area. Doyle talked about how Grand Rapids is the epicenter of Free Enterprise, with names like DeVos, Van Andel, Meijer and Seechia great visionaries.
The second speaker was Tim Doctor, a local radio talk show host. Doctor made numerous points that were so unsubstantiated. First, he said that no one gets into the 1% by force. Really, apparently Tim didn’t learn about US slavery and how many people and businesses made millions with that kind of force. His comment also ignores the numerous responses from both business and government to workers trying to organize for better pay, a 40 hour work week and workers compensation, which resulted in violent repression from both the private and public sector. One of the best books on this topic is Jeremy Brecher’s book Strike!
The third speaker was former State Representative Fulton Sheen. Sheen said that Free Enterprise built this country. He also said that the US government doesn’t produce anything and that if the US government was VISA they would have gone under years ago. Beyond the anti-government rhetoric, Sheen had nothing substantial to contribute to the rally.
The last speaker was Denny Gillem, another host of a local radio show, one that is hyper-patriotic and pro-US Military. Gillem seems to like speaking at pro-military and pro-Capitalist events, since he was a speaker at the pro-Israel rally this past summer in Grand Rapids.
Gillem said that it is fitting that today was the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, since the US won WWII because of Free Enterprise. He also said the US has a “Cowboy mentality and that is why we get things done.” Gillem ended his comments by saying, “we are here to occupy Grand Rapids for one hour and then get back to work, because that is what we do.”
It should also be mentioned that Grand Rapids City Commissioner Dave Shaffer and Kent County Commissioner Harold Voorhees were also present.
Black America at the Bottom
This article by Margaret Kimberley is re-posted from Black Agenda Report.
The nation’s economic news is grim indeed, and is the grimmest of all for black Americans. Recently released census data shows that while the median yearly income in this country is $50,000, it is only $32,000 for black people, the lowest of any other racial group in the country. Hispanics had a median income of $37,000, whites $49,000 and Asians $64,000.
Simply put, black Americans are at the absolute bottom of the economic heap in a county still teetering from the effects of a seemingly endless recession. The term recession is something of a misnomer because it does not adequately describe the worldwide crises endemic to capitalism. As western nations take their citizens on a dizzying race to the bottom with various austerity measures, the fate of people already on the bottom grows more precarious by the day.
It is not coincidental that the dismal economic prospects for black people has occurred at the same moment that black politics limps along on life support. Black politics traditionally affirmed a right, indeed an obligation, to speak directly to the needs and aspirations of the masses of people. It has been substituted with feelings of vicarious joy when a black person reaches a high office.
Enter Barack Obama, the beneficiary of both black loyalty and a system which he assessed astutely as being ready for the right black man to come along. He fills the duel roles perfectly, giving good feelings about his presence in the White House but this presence is a result of promising to do nothing that the 1% would find inconvenient.
“The dismal economic prospects for black people has occurred at the same moment that black politics limps along on life support.”
Sadly, the bloom is not yet off of the Obama rose, with a continuation of bizarre poll results indicating that the group doing the worst has the greatest degree of optimism. But the income and other indicators don’t lie and don’t change because most black people still love the president who looks like them but who goes out of his way to ignore them and their needs.
While phony government figures claim that employment numbers are improving, more than 46 million Americans are now receiving food stamps, a record. As the leaders of European countries struggle to keep the crises of Greece, Italy and Spain from spinning out of control, it is tempting to anticipate the post capitalist world. The thought experiment is interesting, but one thing is clear. When the dust eventually settles, black people will be at the bottom of a destroyed system.
If Barack Obama is re-elected, it is likely that black support for him will also continue, and the downward spiral will continue too. What is the future of a group always living on the cusp of disaster when a huge disaster takes place? No one can predict if the world economy will collapse Armageddon-like, or whether it too will limp along, under performing and slowly putting millions of people in ever more dire conditions.
It is difficult to imagine a worse scenario, but imagine it we must. The Obama phenomenon has silenced a people who were once the most likely to speak out against inequality and injustice. The death of movement politics has made black people the perfect victims of the descent of their nation’s and the world’s economies.
“The Obama phenomenon has silenced a people who were once the most likely to speak out against inequality and injustice.”
Barack Obama’s role in exacerbating the crisis goes unnoticed while tangential characters are given needless attention. Every hateful statement from the mouth of Newt Gingrich is dissected and railed against but Gingrich has not been in power in this country for a long time. He played no role in the bank bailout and he did not declare that Social Security would be placed on the budget cutting table. Obama did those things and put an already suffering group further and further behind.
There has been a ray of hope lately provided by the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The group condemned for a lack of focus has focused on neighborhoods with high housing foreclosure rates and acted to put people back into their houses. The Occupy Our Homes actions are doing what movements have always done, forcing the powerful to respond to popular demands.
Black Americans do not have to continue acting like sheep going to the slaughterhouse. They can remember their history of bold action. They do not have to continue being last on the income list, and the political list. If movement politics can be resurrected the group at the bottom now does not have to stay there. There is hope for a different future, if people are unafraid to remember how great changes came about in the past.
7 p.m. Saturday Dec. 10
At The DAAC, 115 S. Division · Heartside , Grand Rapids, MI · 49503
$6 – $10 sliding scale, no one turned away
Sponsored by The Bloom Collective
Fresh from playing Europe and Occupy! cities acorss the US, Ryan Harvey will be hitting up the Midwest in December with his new album Ordinary Heroes, a collaborative album with violinist/journalist/documentarian Michael Fox. The recording, dedicated to historian and activist Howard Zinn, emphasizes and celebrates social movements as a means of overcoming injustice.
Harvey has been writing and performing hard-hitting political folk songs for more than ten years. A part of the Riot-Folk Collective, his music is aimed to support those working for positive change and to educate people about issues of peace and social and economic justice.
When he’s not on the road, Harvey supports Iraq Veterans Against the War through an organization he co-founded, The Civilian-Soldier Alliance that helps members strategize, do outreach events and stay sane in the half-crazed world of trying to fight for justice.
His writings are posted on his blog, Even If Your Voice Shakes, and he also writes for the Baltimore-based Independent Reader, has been published by The Nation, TruthOut, Common Dreams, ZNet and others.
Yesterday afternoon, a packed house attended a luncheon talk at the JW Marriot, by former Facebook advertising guru, Kevin Colleran.
Colleran was hired by Sean Parker and took over for Eduardo Saverin, people whom Colleran referred to sometimes by the actors name, which played these individuals in the Hollywood film The Social Network. In fact, Colleran referenced the film quiet often when speaking about his former employer. Colleran eventually spoke about the evolution of the company in the era of social media.
In 2006, Facebook launched what was called News-feed, which was overwhelmingly opposed by one million members on Facebook. Despite the opposition, Zuckerburg refused to give in to public pressure and kept the new look up, which Colleran says made Facebook even more “popular.”
The next major change was to make Facebook accessible in multiple languages. Colleran shows a video that presents this service as multi-cultural and inclusive, which in some sense it does. However, it ignores the overwhelming market-focused and culturally hegemonic approach to what they do. The beauty of the effort to “translate’ the site was that it was done by members of Facebook, where no one was paid for their labor.
Colleran then talked about the next step in the evolution of Facebook, which was the expansion of applications, such as Farmville. The former Facebook marketer said this created numerous jobs in the US for people who were creating applications, but did not mention how such games have become a huge time-suck for people.
The next point that Colleran presented was that Facebook created forums that created new directions for the company, such as Hackathon. When Hackathon was announced, thousands of people posted video as an application outgrowth from the Hackathon “project.” The guy who led the Hackathon project had actually hacked into Facebook, since it didn’t at the time allow the kind of applications that MySpace did. He was contacted by Facebook and was flown to California, where he was offered a job. The ultimate co-opting of dissident culture, when a hacker goes to work for a corporate behemoth like Facebook.
Colleran then said the next shift with social media was instead of people looking independently at and for content, people now tend to go to content that their “friends” like or recommend. Colleran said the TV/cable industry is working on is to make the TV menu operate like Facebook, where instead of searching the menu it will direct you to shows/channels that your “friends” are watching.
The speaker when on to argue for the social benefits of Facebook, such as how people are creating organ donors on Facebook. He also mentions how Facebook was the mechanism that got Betty White on Saturday Night Live. Colleran showed the SNL clip with Betty White who actually says, “Facebook is a big waste of time.”
Colleran then talked about the use of Facebook in the Arab Spring and showed a video of Egyptians protesting the Mubarak regime. One Egyptian on CNN discussed how social media was one of the mechanisms that allowed people to communicate in the resistance campaign. It is now widely known that social media played a significant role in the Arab Spring uprisings, but what usually omitted from such comments is that it was only effective because people have been organizing for years for revolution and it was their organizing at the grassroots that made the difference.
Facebook and the Profit Motive
The promotional material for Colleran’s talk was centered around the idea of how Facebook and other social media can be used brand your business. Colleran only spent about 10 minutes on this theme.
Colleran said that marketing has always been a mix of three kinds of branding – paid, owned and earned. Getting corporations to create fan pages and have people “like” them on Facebook has been huge. Colleran cites Starbucks and Coca Cola as good examples of how the corporate fan page has been successful. “Liking” a fan page gets people to go to sites that some of their friends are “liking.” People utilize this application because they are being marketed to with very sophisticated PR campaigns.
Another way to market your products/brands on Facebook is to publish in the News Feed. Colleran referred to this as the “conversational calendar,” where people post in the News Feed as an additional mechanism to direct people to individual fan pages and engaging consumers on a regular basis to “build relationships” with them. One example was what Coca Cola did every Tuesday, which was tattoo Tuesday. This was a way to communicate with coke consumers that helped to develop brand loyalty, according to Colleran.
The former Facebook marketer speaks from experience on these matters. While at Facebook, Colleran helped guide major corporations—including such Fortune 100 companies as Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Walmart, and Coca-Cola—through the process of becoming present and engaged in the online space. In fact, Colleran was one of the main forces behind monetizing the site, which is the primary function of Facebook……to make tons of money.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 