Authenticity in the Era of Information Wars

I RECEIVED AN EMAIL on a list-serv I’m on, and the email was calling for “Stories of Decisive Moments From Immigrants” and the idea was that you submit your story to this site/group and they will at some point (soon?) make a documentary from them. The person who passed it on is someone known to me, I trust them, and so do I trust the list. I checked out the link announcing the project, and it felt okay. I went to the site itself…and I was reminded once again of how easy it is in this day and age of representational identity, of virtual reality, to “become” something or present as an entity…but without any verifiable or worthwhile connection to anything. A site asking for your most personal stories (and you may not even be documented, or may be living with or related to those undocumented) and offering you NOTHING in return as far as safety, identity, history, agenda.

I’m seeing more and more of this, and in an age where all you need to “be” something online (now a world unto itself) is a web designer, an artist, a writer, and a check-writer.

Lately I am very much on my guard to protect both the integrity of the Latin@ movement (as I define it of course) and my community. More and more so as the days go by.

We are now in what I jokingly (O and NOT bitterly!) call “The Second Gold Rush,” as everyone and their brother suddenly realizes the market is in All Things Immigrant or All Things Latino, and everyone from well-meaning advocacy groups to entrepreneurs to opposition groups are panning to Hit It Big in SOME way.

Yeh, “panning” is a reference to the original rush in Califas which was, of course, once part of México and shortly after it “became” the US’s (thanks to a Bush-like Polk who launched such an unethical land-grab war as to provoke Thoreau into refusing to pay taxes to support it) proved to be so lucrative as to finance much progress and early US beginnings while so many Mexicans, Chileans, Chinese, and others bled and sweat behind that only to be obscured and robbed and forgotten.

Now, not even much later in the land of redacted history, we are in an age where nobody thinks much about the US invasion of Mexico, and very few refer to it as a time when “the United States took control from Mexico in an imperialistic war in the 1840′s.” It’s basically unAmerican to talk about how the US stole half of Mexico, and what that move did for “US”…and while many people are aware of the vampiric tradition of draining madre México (and Latin America todo) still rolling on in shapes like NAFTA and CAFTA (not to mention the vile Ronald Reagan’s Project X) the Right Wing Media Capos lean on any pundits who suggest these treaties aren’t the Greatness de Shiz. At this moment, I’d have to say that the USGOV is not too much like Germany—a nation with demonstrable conscience for global deeds. A nation that feels sorrow and even enacts laws behind that sorrow and collective shame for actions unbefitting a great power that have scarred global neighbors.

Oh…! But wutsup I’ve gone on a tangent, haven’t I? Hardly accidental, as this is history I factor into my political awareness. And so you are aware of why a part of my spirit bristles at the fractals. Why I get sniffy when I see the horizon suddenly thick with  marketers and New Shiny Latino Site!s and offers targeted (often very clumsily) to us, or those rising up to claim to represent us. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not condemning love and support and good souls joining a fight. I hope that’s clear.

I’ve written from time to time of the Love-struck Locust, and that’s why this phenomenon gets under my skin. All this attention to any ethnic group always comes hand-in-hand with growing assault or demonization or exploitation of that same group. So while we have children left without parents and crying because they can’t understand a world that we find acceptable, one that yanks the dearest people away from them and calls it “Justice for All,” we also see a horde of “pro-latin@” or “pro immigrant” groups&orgs fighting over petition signatures and power in a way that interferes with the campaigns ostensibly designed to help gente.

At times it makes me feel a bit ill. Second Gold Rush. (I will have to add this and the Love-Struck Locust (finally) to The Glosario.) Anyway. Back to the Choosing America site which is—let me stress—doing nothing inarguably deviant, or evil. Just being bright and airy and asking for Your Story.

Peep it. The site is all stars, flags, rainbows, USA shapes, happy children, and clouds. Crisp, white, red, blue. Airy design, readable font. Welcoming…in a way. Like a sterilized countertop, or brand new patriotic poster. Okay, fine. Standard US Patriotic vocabulary of iconry and design. Very safe.

But the site is scrubbed clean of any personalizing info, of any bios, of…anything. Except one link to a German heritage pride website.

The About Us page:

The Choosing America Project is a creative initiative, not affiliated with any organization.

What we are interested in gripping human interest stories that will reflect the diversity of the American immigrant experience, past and present. Among the people involved in this project are journalists, writers, documentary filmmakers, editors, screenwriter, producer and more….

Really? Affiliated with NO organization? So you’d think it was just individuals. And if so, you’d think they gathered together due to a common interest or cause, no? How else to individuals gather around a project? I’ll get to the bios and backgrounds in a bit. “Put a tack” in that badboy, as they say. Bios and backgrounds.

Also, can I just say…”What we are interested in is…” I have to laugh. At the rhetorical device. Anyway.

From the Our Vision page: [my emphasis]

We don’t have any political/social perspective. We have placed no value judgment on the stories we hope to elicit and subsequently film. We are open to hearing everything, good bad, angry, satisfied. We want the stories to be true, diverse and colorful to reflect reality and of course – to be interesting.

Let me interrupt. Having no political/social perspective is reserved for the dead and the heavily sedated or utterly apathetic. And filmmakers and communicators most certainly DO have points of view and “social perspectives,” and often more defined and active than most. Which is…why they make film. Unless they are only doing it to cash in. In those craven instances, okay. Maybe no social perspective needed.

Back to “their vision”: [my bolded emphasis]

As for copyright and intellectual property issues: by sending us their stories, the writers do not waive intellectual rights or copyrights. If and when the project moves to the next stage, professional individual contracts to formalize these issues will be created and signed with every writer who will take part in the project.

The bios of the developers of this project do not  appear on this site  simply because we don’t want the project to be affiliated with any particular background or country. All we are prepared to say at this point is that we ourselves are immigrants to the US.

I mean, are you serious? Do you really need me to point out that you are going about this ENTIRELY the wrong way? I don’t even know where to begin. But let me just pick the point that led me to the title of this post.

We know the nation’s dialogue is stacked against immigrants. We know there are rising currents of racism in our nation, the likes of which haven’t seen such popular platforms since perhaps the civil rights era. We know there is death and murder and assault happening behind these currents. We know the government spies on us. We know they read our emails. We know cops can kill you now with electricity even if you are innocent, disabled, old, in a wheelchair, etc. We know that ICE breaks down doors (like others who are in the business of hunting the undocumented or those who “look” undocumented), we know they ride in unmarked vans, we know they operate on quotas, we know they can be very cruel and inhumane, we know that detention is a horrible and deadly thing in many cases. We know all this and we understand the requirement for trust and community in light of this, in any area involving immigration or belonging to a group not included under the safe umbrella of Dominant Culture in the US.

So,

what on earth would make you think you can vacuum up information, possibly sensitive information, in an era where information is GOLD, in an era where immigrants are hunted—without giving up any info as to who you are or where your money comes from, or what you have done in the past?

I mentioned the Related Links page. There is only one, and only one person connected visibly to the site by name: [Their italicized emphasis]

This link was recommended by the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, who has provided assistance for the project.www.germanoriginality.com is a web site for German American heritage

Interesting. Not foreboding, though not extremely comforting or revealing in the context of all the rest of the site and what is missing.

Finally, the Contact Us page asks for a lot—your address and phone number information—but it will send without your filling that in.

SO.

Back to our story.

Trusting the sources who sent me this info for the most part, I almost simply reblogged the paragraph without thinking much on it. (And if it all feels fine to you, by all means, go visit and tell your story!) But I find the site too bare, and the wording in a few places frankly, freaks me out a bit. I mean, “All we are prepared to say at this point is that we ourselves are immigrants to the US”??? Prepared to say? Who do you think you are?

I’m a bit more sensitized now, because this is not the first time that I’ve bumped into this thing, where a few people put up a site that looks hot, they smartly leverage trust, smoothly lay their fingers on top of the zeitgeist, and present themselves as some large and powerful entity working for the people—when there is hardly any roots to feel out or history to track at all.

The last time was an incident with Presente.Org, and I went to bat for them 100% before slowing down and asking myself how I got so knee-deep in pushing them with the weight of all my credibility and reputation without really knowing a ton about them. [Note: I am not saying Presente.Org is nefarious or that I regret doing outreach for them; just that I learned a lesson about what I back with my own voice, or what process I need to go through before doing so.]

Thing is, anyone can throw together a site. Anyone can begin a Google Group. Anyone can open a Twitter account. Anyone can hire an artist to tie it all together and brand it. (Hello!) Everyone lately is hungry. For cash, for work, for power. This is being a human, and a human right now, right here. Due to all this, those of us who do care about the community need to be careful about whom we give our trust to, whom we lend our resources to, what information we give up.

I use this era, this time, these days of intensity and increased scrutiny and intensified curiosity as a time to draw closer to those en la lucha who I already know are tried and trusted. And a time when I put more distance in between myself and those who refuse to identify themselves or prove their history and connections, if not immediately visible or verifiable. I don’t mean to be closed or suspicious, but I’m no fool about human nature.

What you do in this (or of course ANY instance!) is up to you. But when I have these feelings, I also feel I owe it to you to talk about them. I don’t know what they mean or what they are worth in any empirical or absolute sense. What might they mean combined with your own thoughts and intuitions? It gets interesting.

As a final (and admittedly lesser) note on filmmaking itself (I’ve a little experience), I also find this whole “soliciting stories” shtick a bit lazy and off-putting. Yes, I know that a huge part of Building an Internet Empire these days involves using the readership to examine documents, crowdsource, do research, give tips…there’s two sides to that. One is that it’s great. The people are involved, its’ “Web 2.0″ which goes both ways, it leverages the power of the crowd. The other is that it’s not really so cool because it builds the power of the entity without really paying back the people for their work aside from getting a nice warm feeling. (From what I’ve seen so far.)

So, see it as you like, but as a filmmaker, I don’t understand why you don’t grab your camera and just talk to the people in your community. There are so many stories out there. If you want to make films, especially documentary films, you really ought not sever yourself from the human contact of it. That is what makes these films strong, to my way of thinking. Not some person with a blank face, blank history, blank agenda anonymously asking for heartfelt googah.

But who knows. Maybe all this human and authentic concern is the “old” way. After all, it’s a brand new mishmashup, digitally-lifted, utterly-appropriated, and instant-upload type of world now, qué no? Find your way….