I was inspired to review the past two months through photos. Enjoy!

A view of city from the 12th floor of the University of Guadalajara.

We see so many incredible sunsets from our rooftop.

We were given a tour of a water treatment plant in Guadalajara.

Every Tuesday there is a free Theatre by Bike (Teatro en Bici) event. It was an excellent performance!

Guadalajara has some incredible murals!

This complex is located next the sewage and factory waste canal (previously a stream) called the “Canal Ahogado”,

The river just before the water fall in Juanacatlán.

Rodrigo explains the contamination of the Río Santiago as his son (far left) covers his face due to the smell.

This incredible has been the focus for our social media workshops for the past two months.

According to a Juanacatlán resident, this playground was installed along the Río Santiago as part of a campaign to offset the societal effects of the river.

I filmed for IMDEC at a dam conference in Oaxaca

We're filming an interview at a the dam conference in Oaxaca.

Gustavo Castro taught the informative "about dams" workshop.

This is where they want to build the dam, a kilometer from the conference.

"If you had the opportunity to change the world, would you take it?"

Saturday we went on a moving and rich tour of the Ahogado watershed and a portion of the Santiago watershed with two classes of students from Iteso, a Jesuit college located on the outskirts of Guadalajara.  While we are still wrapping up our workshops in Juanacatán and El Salto, we began workshops with approximately 50 students at Iteso in collaboration with the professor and our friend, Étienne.  There are some great photos of the journey, click here to peruse them all.

The zest and enthusiasm many students demonstrated was inspiring, respectfully approaching community members on every step of the tour to capture their points of view and learn from their lived experiences.  For many students, it was their first or second time witnessing and interacting with communities just a 20 minute drive away, however separated by much more than physical distance.

We are excited to help them realize their potential as digital storytellers. This project will allow them to step outside of the normal rhythm of academic paper assignments to communicate their visit and reflections in a new medium.  Together, these two workshops will be very interesting to compare – one group of students a few years younger living in the affected area, and the other group a few years older visiting for the first time (or second, or third..) and coming to grips with the relationships of power and destruction between Guadalajara and the surrounding area.

Watching students make films and witnessing the transformational process from the first time they turn on a camera to when they share their finished products has given me so much hope amidst a situation of incredible environmental devastation and human suffering.  The future is in our youth and it is so important to reach them and share tools so they can begin to create the change they want to see in the world.

Stay tuned.  Each week we will be sharing a video created in our workshops.  Last week, in the blog post below, we shared the first finished video of the workshops by Karen, Lety, and Cristian.  Check it out, they have a lot to share and they do so in a very compelling manner.

And in case you missed it the first time, here are the photos from the tour.

We are incredibly excited to share the first of many videos created in the popular education workshops we are running in Juanacatlán and Guadalajara.  Karen, Lety, and Cristian live in and around Juanacatlán, and are students at the local high school.  Their video is moving and they worked very hard to piece it together.  We are so proud!  Please ost the video and share it; they made the video to make positive change for their communities and we want to help spread the word.

To learn more about the process, watch the video we created on the workshop process.

While most of our blog posts have been focussed on our experiences here in Mexico, our community organizing and the documentary, a crucial portion of our work happens behind the scenes in front of a computer. We are also building and extending software tools to help people connect, produce and share digital media. And, while it might seem like a bizarre notion to extend the ideas behind our ethos to the process of developing software, we’re absolutely doing it.

You’ve likely heard of Open Source Software (OSS), at least in passing. It can be summed up as a transparent, community-based approach to software that promotes freedom and unrestricted access to information. OSS is always free (in terms of freedom) and generally speaking (but not necessarily), OSS is free in terms of cost. There are a lot of different interpretations of the OSS definition, but the basic, generally agreed-upon ideas behind OSS include:

• The source code of the software (the written logic that makes a program go) is freely available and visible by anyone. With many commercial software products (eg Microsoft Windows), you are not allowed to see the written logic that makes the program go. This means that you are not able (at least not legally) to learn from, fix or reuse any of the actual code.
• A decentralized, community-oriented model of development; meaning, rather than the development of the software happening behind closed doors with a select few programmers [eg at Microsoft], development can happen in whole or in part by any single individual anywhere in the world, at any given time.
• A non-discriminatory approach to platforms for running the software, persons who can develop, or persons who can use the software. For example, with the Apple operating system OS X, your are legally prevented from running OS X on non-Apple hardware, regardless of whether or not you legally own the software.

OSS as a philosophy and way of creating/sharing software has been around since the dawn of computers – the movement has been growing rapidly since and has been enormously successful. In part because by its very nature, OSS promotes community – from the people who develop the software, the people who use it and the people who contribute to it. It’s generally much easier for the average user of a piece of OSS to communicate directly with the person (or people) who wrote it. And anyone can (indeed, is encouraged) to find problems with the code, alert the community to the issue and/or fix it herself.

And of course, as with any community, being a part of the open source movement comes with a degree of responsibility. The software and technology cannot improve without active participation by community members. From reporting bugs and issues with the software to actively fixing the issues or otherwise improving upon the software. The open source commons is, in effect, an ecosystem of its own.

Because the open source ethos is so in line with our own, we strive to use OSS wherever we can. Our website is based on an open source platform and the software tools that we develop are released under the GNU GPL, an open source licensing scheme. We also actively contribute by way of code fixes, enhancements or bug reports to the open source tools that we actively use – either directly in our work or as a base for the tools we are building. We stridently believe that if we wish to build a better world based on open participation and freedom of information, the tools we use to get there must also reflect our dreams.

Last week the Secretary of Health sent out a declaration stating that the Río Santiago was not effecting the health of the inhabitants of El Salto and Juanacatlán. He insisted that the contamination levels were within the requirements of a river in Mexico.

Politics are an interesting phenomenon and, although I believe the statement to be an incredible fallacy, I don’t fault the Secretary. I think any other official would have likely been forced to say the same. It’s bigger than the Secretary of Health; it’s bigger than Mexico. I believe current politics are a result of what a relative few, and fortunate, have demanded from the earth and consequently other human beings. I write to you from a machine that requires the contamination of thousands of gallons of water. I am reminded of my choices evey time I cross the El Salto/Juanacatlán bridge.

I am also reminded that we are all responsible when I speak to the residents of Juanacatlán. For example, Don Carlos, lifetime resident and metal smith, spoke to us slowly and deliberately of the days when they had dances and picnics along the Río Santiago. Mañuel from the pharmacy told me that even the poorest residents could simply go down to the river and cast a net and have more than enough for dinner “And now…now, what!?” he said incredulously. With all of my immediate indignation towards the contaminators of the Río Santiago, I remember that I also contributed to the loss of the ten kilo carp. We are all connected by many, many threads.

Living in Guadalajara, I am often made aware that U.S. consumption negatively impacts the quality of life of Mexicans. I asked the town veterinarian of Juanacatlán what his message was for his neighbors of the global north, the United States. “Don’t forget about us, we welcome you as friends, please extend the same in return.” he said. “Open the borders,” said Ismael the Guadalajara-Juancatlán bus driver. “Be more human, focus on something other than a big house, and a nice car. Remember to live.” said yet another interviewee.

What can we do to support our neighbors, and fellow citizens/creatures of earth? We must consider this question if we are to change the Río Santiagos of the world. It behooves us to look at our own “need” for comfort and resources. Our government officials are merely magnified manifestations of our demands. They are the less flattering reflections of our dizzying obsession to consume. The Secretary is not the only one at fault.

Regards,

Steve

Well, we are applying for the youtube nonprofit program (again, we were accepted once but with a funky account so we need to start over), in touch with the good people at WITNESS and International Rivers, two powerhouses of grassroots mobilization, and I have been reading up on the matter.  Any social media gurus or online campaigners out there?  The trouble is, with all of the material generating we are doing, we don’t have the time to adequately address the issue. Perhaps it is time for another intern.

The internet is a tricky omnipresent but elusive creature. I am constantly impressed by its power and strength yet still struggling to harness it for the social good.  A2S has come a long way on this path (thank you, growing network, we love you), but I would like to push it further and I am unsure how. Thoughts, suggestions, and advice would be greatly appreciated.

In other news, we have a beautiful new website in its final stages (a nice new website should help in our social media crusade), and we are interviewing and filming like mad.  Arthur is going to post on our steady cam soon – lets just say we can move quickly and capture smooth footage, and we had a lot of fun building it. Video workshop final products coming next week!  The social media experiment continues, y la lucha sigue.

This week I talk about my experience as a videographer covering IMDEC at a National Dam Conference, and I included a few photos. I also discuss an impromptu tour of the Río Santiago on a day when there was nothing but white foam covering the expanse of the river. You’ll see Flip camera footage by a friend, Rodrigo, who brought me on the tour.

I look forward to hearing from you all!

-Steve

We wanted to share some photos from our video workshops, the town of Juanacatlán, and the Río Santiago waterfall we often mention.  If you click on any photo, it will enlarge and you can easily peruse all of them.  To view our whole photo collection, click on this link.

Video workshops

Views from a hilltop in Juanacatlán

Waterfall on the Río Santiago

It was an incredible, powerful week!

I look forward to your feedback.

-Steve