Yesterday we spent some time at the Open Society Institute Archives, studying their Samizdat collection.

Samizdat, which means “self-published” in Russian, was the underground literature that was illegally printed and distributed in Soviet Russia and other Soviet controlled countries, including Hungary.

As you can imagine it was incredibly dangerous, so the printers continued to come up with imaginative and ingenious ways of distribution. Here are a few photos from the collection:

Below is a tiny, full length book. This literature was illegal to have, so they printed it small enough to fit into you pocket, should the authorities come around.

We also looked through an extensive collection of letters and correspondence between samizdat authors and publisher and Radio Free Europe.

Ever looking for ways to evade the authorities, some samizdat artists created postal stamps! These were used to mail letters, which was quite a smack in the face since it was the government (postal service) that actually delivered the letters, and inadvertently the rebel material!

Since one of my main interests is the power of media (any media) to move people to action or make change, I thought this was an interesting story.

Have you heard of the Hungarian suicide song? In 1932, Rezso Seress wrote “Gloomy Sunday” - a song which would be implicated in over 100 cases of suicide.

THe song’s lyrics are poignantly depressing:

Gloomy is Sunday

With the shadows I spend it all

My heart and I

Have decided to end it all…

The song caught on (in a time when, well, life in Hungary WAS depressing and gloomy), and soon it became a hit that was played in coffeehouses throughout Pest. Hungary has the highest suicide rate as it is, so the contribution of the song is somewhat debated, but evidently it became not uncommon to find suicide victims with the lyrics to the song in the pocket or in notes left behind. Some shot themselves while listening to the song, others threw themselves into the Danube…and all on Sundays.

Fervor around the song only increased interest in it. Soon it spread through the rest of Europe and it generated such a hysteria that the BBC banned it for years, only broadcasting instrumental versions of it.

Seress, a holocaust survivor, suffered from depression himself, and never wrote another hit song. He died (by suicide) in 1968.

It was a Monday.

Despite what a few crazy internet shrines tell you, the song won’t kill you. It is a hauntingly, yet beautiful song. Billy Holiday, Mel Torme, Elvis Costello, Bjork, Sinead O’Connor, Sarah McLaughlin and Ray Charles are just a few who have covered it.

Here are a couple of versions that are especially good.

(Listen, but be happy!)

Sarah McLaughlin is great, in a particularly haunting way…

Billy Holiday is, well Billy Holiday- you can’t go wrong…

And Elivs Costello seems to have the right voice for it…

Which version do you like?

I arrived today in Budapest for a course called Media, Democratization and Civil Society. Its put on by UPenn Annenberg School of Communications and Central European University.

I’m really excited about it and will be posting about it (maybe live blogging a little, too) over the next couple of weeks.

There was a lot of required readings (most of which were not posted to the course’s website until a couple of days ago), so I spent a large part of the plane trip making my way through the 4 inch stack of papers.

I have to say, I have really enjoyed these readings! With the exception of one (which just got a little too ethereal for my poor tired brain at 10,000 feet) I have found myself getting excited about the content!

I was planning on writing about some of them, but of course I left them upstairs and my roommate is sleeping, so I;ll have to write in more detail tomorrow. But one that was interesting was from Politicotainment; Television’s Take on the Real (Popular Culture and Everyday Life) by Kristina Reigert.

One of the chapters dealt with the tv show, The West Wing, and studies how (or if) it affected American’s perceptions of the White House or of American politics in general. The chapter goes into interesting detail of just what made the West Wing so interesting, not only as an entertaining story, but also as a study of politics. And, would that study be lost on the viewing audience?

For the most part, people did feel like they learned a little more about American politics, and even though there’s no indication that the West Wing was responsible for people voting for the first time, or changin majors to polisci.

But the West Wing did make clear the struggle between ideology and pragmatic politics. Often characters were enthusiastic about a certain issue, but would run into roadblocks before they could veto the bill, or stay an execution, or bomb another country… They would deal with the roadblocks as best as they could, but more times than not, the next week those issues just kind of disappeared.

An interesting study the author did was to catalog (during the first four seasons) all of the ideological goals  that the Bartlett administration had (often given to the audience through arguments between characters or monologues). Then the author compared it the number of “solutions” to the problems.

Let just say, the show wasn’t about getting results, it just talked about getting them.

How the show dealt with foreign policy was particularly interesting. For a long time there was no foreign policy team. No advisors from the State Dept, no Secretary of State - there was just Leo and the Joint Chiefs. That changed after the show started focusing on more foreign affairs issues in some of the later seasons. The show had 2 fictional countries - the Republic of Kundhu (Rwanda) and Qumar ( an Afghanistan of sorts)- and it used these to portray atrocities such as genocide and some terrorism.

But the show also names real countries, and lambasts them - Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, to name a few. The monology from CJ was one piece of script that was examined in this chapter:

So how about it, did you ever feel like you learned something from the West Wing? Or felt closer to American politics? Or felt like you understood the nature of politics a little better?

Have you emailed your congressional representative? Did you feel like it did any good?

Congressional offices are receiving hundreds of millions of emails every year, and the workload on staffers is enormous! As the number of emails has increased over the years, the staff size and technology budgets have not.

The Center for American Progress will be discussing this issue and posing some suggestions in it monthly Internet Advocacy Roundtable. As ususual, I’ll be live blogging!

You can follow along here!

Today I get to attend the New Politics Institute’s forum called New Tools, New Audiences.

The event is all about how web 2.0 tools is being used in politics. There is a great collection of campaign people, techies, and every shade in between.

There will be breakout sessions on social networks, video, mobile and more, and I’ll live blog as much as possible.

Click here to follow along and participate.

Due to the unprecedented nature of the 2008 election, communities of color are being actively sought after and their role and influence scrutinized by the media and political pundits. In an effort to add depth to the national conversation about the important role these communities are playing and will continue to play in ‘08 and beyond, the Center for American Progress Action Fund is bringing together noted experts from the Asian American, Latino, Native American, and African American communities to discuss how these communities view this process, how they are working together to advance a common agenda, and about the role voters of color will play in November and beyond.

Click here to follow the live blog of this event.

Politics and Religion come together today in an event at the Center for American Progress. “From the Pulpit to the Polls; The Role of Religion in Politics” will be held today a 12:30 (Eastern). I’ll be live blogging from the event -

you can follow along here.

Make sure to post questions and comments! An “instant replay” will be available after the event ends (at 2:00pm).

Featured panelists include:

E. J. Dionne, Jr, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, syndicated columnist, and author of Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith & Politics After the Religious Right
Amy Sullivan, Nation editor at Time magazine and author of The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap
Jim Wallis, President and Executive Director, Sojourners, and author of The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America

There’s been a lot of buzz about using maps in advocacy, and its been something I’ve been meaning to explore further. I knew about the use of maps to see that damage done in Darfur (you can track as village go missing, and as communities are destroyed in Zimbabwe). And as neat as these were, they didn’t really do anything more than show me what I had just read before I click on “see map.”

But today I came across a completely engaging use of maps.

Buried somewhere in the Oceana website (it really should be easier to find) there is a fun tool for getting people involved in increasing awareness of mercury in seafood. If you visit Oceana’s Green List, you are asked to enter in your zip code. The site will then show you a map of your area with all the local grocery stores marked with either red or green map pins. The green pins indicate the store posts warning about mercury levels in seafood. The red ones indicate stores that have yet to post these warnings. They are on the so called Red List.

If you click on one of these pins, you get the sotre’s name, logo and address and a link that says “Help us get to your store to hang signs.” and “Sign up to speak with your store manager.”

When you click on the link, you fill out a quick form (name, email address) and then you are given a link to a printable comment card that you can drop into the stores comment box.

Personally, I found this very fun and engaging. I would have never thought about lobbying my grocery store on this issue, but now I can ‘t wait to drop this thing off!

(This post was originally posted on my blog at NetCentric Campaigns.)

The Center for American Progress holds a monthly event called the Internet Advocacy Roundtable. Today’s roundtable is called “Party On…line with the Republican and the Democratic parties.

I’ll be attending this event and invite you to follow along! Please feel free to post any comments of questions.

If you are seeing this after the fact, you can still read through the blog’s Instant Replay.

To follow along or see the Instant Replay, please click here.

While searching for a different Ted Talk, I came across this one. It is a fascinating example of how technology can be adapted for different purposes. But I love that in the end the speaker, Johnny Lee, credits online video distribution for the spread of his product. It only took 5 months to go from prototype in his lab to a major commercial product.

Now, to find the kids’ Wii remotes and start tinkering….