Day 478: You

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.  — George Bernard Shaw 

Siddhartha of Sepia Mutiny has penned another great piece, this time about the importance of “little” people in achieving the tipping point, whether by accident or conscious action. He uses the choices of Person Of The Year by Salon.com and TIME (more specifically, S. R. Sidarth a.k.a. George Allen’s Macaca) to illustrate this point, while I find his essay quite weighty and applicable in the context of us, the New Orleans bloggers.

It’s interesting to compare the interpretations that each of these outlets apply to Original Macaca. Salon, the established survivor of first-generation Web journalism, sees in [Sidarth] less the agent of a brave new world of representation than an embodiment of an America undergoing demographic and attitudinal change. Time, a behemoth of a pre-Internet era when The Press told The Public what to know and believe, now celebrates Sidarth as one of a non-organized army of little people upending the plans and certitudes of the great.

Both treatments have in common, however, that ultimately they are not about Sidarth not the real Sidarth, biologically and spiritually unique, but what he seems through various filters. It was the year of You perceived and revealed, by your own doing and by that of others. That trend will continue, as attested by the fact that you read this blog, perhaps comment, perhaps have established an identity here and elsewhere on the Web.

[emphasis mine]

2006 really was the year that many New Orleanians became the newest identities in the growing digital democracy. This is not just from a Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, Flickr, LJ, MySpace, YouTube and Facebook perspective; they are mere tools and can limit us if viewed as the end. What I refer to is the emergence of a populace with the communication tools and skills to document, debate, analyze, broadcast and work towards something momentous, inflamed and of great impact – the recovery of an American city and its people from an all-but-complete program of federal abandonment and self-inflicted apathy.

My favorite example of the new digital New Orleans is Karen Gadbois, the one-woman administrator of Northwest Carrollton and various other projects. Not a computer or web geek, Karen has waded through cancer, a flooded home, unemployment and a continuing host of problems to make things happen in this city. Be it Walgreens, the City Council, UNOP, historic preservation or what-comes-next, she is a large reason Orleans Parish has any real say in its own redevelopment. People like Karen are technology in action, not fancy websites, taggers, communications setups and jargon-ridden forms and press releases. In other words, Karen is Web 2.0, not that other tinsel.

2007 cannot be the year we fade into obscurity, not with the strength in numbers and capability we’ve built since those horrible days in 2005. Many of us are tired of the fight and like Wang XiaoFeng, another one of TIME’s Yous Of The Year, don’t “have some big, catchall solution” and, like in China, “there’s nothing that can be done about a lot of things” here in southern Louisiana. Some things can happen, however, and one of them is sustained active citizen participation. If one Karen can do so much, think of the achievements of five, ten, twenty such people … and then multiply that by a hundred. This is why I call for the tide to rise again, but this time with less talk and more action. While many of us are involved in much around the city, together we can lobby and achieve more in the way of the positive.

Consider Edgar Allen;
He cannot write or read;
But he can tell you everything
The various nations need.

And there is Benny Blevitch,
Who goes into a trance
And tells you what his vision is
On money and finance

And yet of all the people
Nobody says, “I heard . . .”
For every one is talking,
And no one hears a word.

This morning, Blair sent me the above poem by Franklin P. Adams with these words attached, “That was in the Thirties. The web has not improved anything.” Initially annoyed by my friend’s take on the web – so much has been achieved because of this technology, and the occasional rant into the ether is quite therapeutic, even if no one is listening – I simmered down when I considered that everyone, especially a New Orleanian, loves to opine, but we have to go farther than doing it with the help of a new toy. Even I love the sound of my own keyboard staccato, but it’s useless in the face of not having achieved more and more everyday. It’s not the sound of survivor’s guilt when I say that my words are nothing in the face of this ongoing tragedy. For, as Fu Yu Ling once said, “If what you did yesterday still seems big today, then your goals for tomorrow aren’t big enough.”

With a new year comes a new round-numbered resolve. With it, let’s go forth and teach New Orleans (and ourselves) how to fish.