Mine is.

Zimbabwean trade unionists Lovemore Matombo and Wellington Chibebe are being tried on Monday 23 June for ’spreading falsehoods prejudicial to the state’ (ie talking openly about the state-sponsored violence). To let them appear in public around the world, 2,000 trade unionists combined their photos online to make this giant mosaic portrait.

digg story

This just in from John Wood and Derek Blackadder:

Subject: Your mugshot could make a difference!

Hi everyone!

Derek and I would like you to send us a photo of yourself.

We want it as the two leaders of the Zimbabwean unions, Wellington Chibebe and Lovemore Matombo were arrested for talking about the political situation in Zimbabwe on May Day and are going to be tried for ’spreading falsehoods prejudicial to the state’ this coming Monday.

The idea is of course to shut them up over the course of the re-run elections. They are out on bail, but are prevented from appearing in public or making public statements, in contravention of their human rights, and they’re being very brave in going voluntarily into court next week even though they are no strangers to being really badly beaten up in police custody.

There are demos being called now in a number of countries (inc the UK) on Monday, and to help get some more attention to their case, we are trying to make a giant photo mosaic portrait of them, made up of supporters’ photos from all around the world. So we have only 2 days to get as many mugshot photographs as possible.

Your photo would end up 1 inch square on a big mosaic at the London demo, and we’ll be using the image for as much media and publicity as we can get with it. The idea is that if they are being prohibited from appearing in public, international solidarity from thousands of people around the world can make them “appear” around the world on Monday.

If you’d like to support a fairer environment for the coming elections in Zimbabwe, please help out by sending a mugshot photo of yourself to zim@tuc.org.uk or MMS it to 07546 229055, and circulating this to friends or colleagues who you think might be willing to help out too.

Best wishes and many thanks for helping!  :)
John

Read more on the TUC site

digg

Here’s another great story from Ethan Zukerman on how political activists are using technology to balance the advantage of the organized state. I think that’s what Clay Shirky means by here comes everybody.

… All this is useful context in considering the project that activist organization Sokwanele announced today: a Googlemaps mashup of election-rigging incidents. Each icon on the map corresponds to a media report of an incident that controvenes SADC standards for a free and fair election. Clicking on an icon will take you to the issue of Sokwanele’

digg story