Speech with Powerpoint

1. "Inclusion
and
Engagement:
Digital
Stories
as
Passports
to
Citizenship"
EUTunes
Conference,
December
14,
2012
Rome,
Italy
I
open
this
talk
with
a
feeling
of
being
honored
to
return
to
the
University
Marconi,
and
to
address
this
final
event
of
the
EUTunes
project.
I
realize
as
I
come
again
to
Europe,
to
assist
with
a
project
about
the
inclusion
of
EU
countries
in
the
process
of
expansion
through
accession
such
as
Bosnia
–Erzegovina,
Montenegro
and
Albania,
and
the
EU’s
newest
member
Croatia.
These
processes
are
part
of
the
historic
trend
toward
greater
economic,
social,
cultural
and
political
integration
by
countries
that
have
historically
been
marginalized.
The
work
of
citizens
of
these
countries,
and
the
work
of
their
European
colleagues
to
take
a
broad
and
expansive
attitude,
inspire
the
world
about
how
peaceful
and
deliberate
collaboration
between
a
community
of
nations
can
lead
to
mutual
benefit.
But
we
realize
that
this
is
occurring
at
a
time
of
increased
economic
and
political
uncertainty,
an
uncertainty
that
unfortunately
leads
to
a
common
problem,
of
the
marginalization
of
minority
populations
within
countries,
and
concern
and
marginalization
of
populations
across
borders
between
countries.
The
best
response
to
nativist
insecurity
is
understanding
and
awareness
of
our
shared
humanity,
and
I
believe,
Digital
Storytelling
is
a
powerful
tool
to
provide
that
understanding.
But
more
than
that,
it
is
a
way
for
people,
especially
young
people
As
you
look
across
our
20
years
of
work
in
Digital
Storytelling,
going
back
to
our
very
first
workshops,
in
the
Mission
District
of
San
Francisco,
you
will
find
a
common
theme
in
our
work,
the
effort
to
make
the
individual
stories
of
young
people
a
mechanism
for
their
greater
agency
as
citizens
of
their
country.
The
immigrant
youth
of
San
Francisco
who
filled
our
first
public
workshops,
faced
the
same
problems
that
all
newcomers
–
all
outsiders
–
to
a
dominant
culture–
why
do
their
stories
matter?
The
message
they
receive
is
that
the
dominant
culture
is
at
best
ambivalent,
and
at
worst,
hostile
to
their
joining
the
larger
culture.
The
marginalization
of
the
immigrant
is
produced
in
thousands
of
ways,
but
the
final
result
is
a
sense
of
silencing,
your
voice
does
not
count,
and
we,
as
the
dominant
culture,
do
not
want
to
hear
your
stories.
And
that
message
has
consequences.
About
the
time
we
were
initiating
those
first
workshops
back
in
the
1990s,
Canadian
academic
Charles
Taylor
wrote
in
"The
Politics
of
Recognition":
The
demands
for
recognition
[by
immigrants
or
cultural
minorities]
is
given
urgency
by
the
supposed
links
between
recognition
and
identity,
where
this
latter
term
designates
something
like
a
person's
understanding
of
who
they
are,
of
their
fundamental
defining
characteristics
as
a
human
being.
The
thesis
is
that
our
identity
is
partly
shaped
by
recognition
or
its
absence,
often
by
the
'misrecognition'
of
others,
and
so
a
person
or
group
of
people
can

2. suffer
real
damage,
real
distortion,
if
the
people
or
society
around
them
mirror
back
to
them
a
confining
or
demeaning
or
contemptible
picture
of
themselves.
….misrecognition
shows
not
just
a
lack
of
due
respect.
It
can
inflict
a
grievous
wound,
saddling
its
victims
with
a
crippling
self-­‐hatred.
Due
recognition
is
not
just
a
courtesy
we
owe
people.
It
is
a
vital
human
need.
Of
course,
as
a
humanist,
I
believe
there
are
ways
people
with
shared
culture,
in
our
local
communities,
our
neighborhoods,
our
schools,
our
families,
can
marginalize
and
be-­‐little
each
other,
and
silence
each
other
stories.
But
I
believe
our
learning
to
listen,
and
understand,
our
shared
humanity,
starts
with
the
degree
of
tolerance
and
understanding
we
demonstrate
with
those
with
quite
different
cultural
perspectives.
Why
This
Is
Important
to
Me?
Let
me
digress
and
share
a
story
about
my
own
experience,
growing
up
in
Texas.
Perhaps,
I
believe
you
can
understand
the
roots
of
the
Digital
Storytelling
movement,
from
knowing
a
bit
about
my
history.
I
grew
up
the
son
of
two
social
activists
in
the
South.
My
first
digital
story,
20
years
ago
this
February,
was
about
their
marriage.
They
came
together
in
San
Antonio
during
a
social
uprising
in
the
immigrant
Mexican
community
over
the
exploitation
of
Pecan
Shellers,
people
who
shelled
the
pecan
nut
for
the
local
candy
industry.
Their
strike
was
one
of
the
largest
and
most
notable
efforts
of
Mexican
workers
to
oppose
“Dickensian
conditions”
in
the
workplace
in
20th
Century
US
labor
history.
My
parents
were
married
at
a
rally
of
these
strikers
in
1938.
They
spent
much
of
their
life
working
with
Latino
and
other
immigrant
workers
to
gain
political
enfranchisement,
labor
rights
and
civil
rights.
I
remember
them
taking
me
in
1966
to
a
March
in
Austin
for
improving
the
minimum
wage
of
farm
workers.
The
stories
of
these
Latino
activists,
and
the
youth
in
the
Latino
community
always
filled
me
with
inspiration,
and
as
I
became
a
youth
activist
in
San
Francisco
in
the
1970s
I
found
myself
attached
to
Asian
and
Latino
communities
demanding
rights
and
recognition.
My
decade
work
in
theater,
was
also
deeply
connected
with
providing
stages
for
immigrant
communities
from
the
Phillipines,
from
China,
from
El
Salvador
and
Guatemala,
to
express
their
stories
and
lives.
All
of
this
informed
our
first
steps
into
the
Digital
Revolution,
we
understood
that
one
part
of
that
revolution
was
to
democratize
access
to
people
to
create
and
publish
their
stories,
but
that
if
barriers
existed
for
immigrant,
poor
and
disenfranchised
communities
to
access
the
tools
of
digital
expression,
we
would
be
erecting
yet
another
fence
to
full
participation
and
citizenship.
CDS
was
founded
as
a
direct
act
of
resistance
to
the
“white
flight”
of
the
technological
frontier,
building
a
bridge
for
local
communities
to
follow.
So
it
might
be
no
surprise
that
our
Center
started
out
of
the
Latino
community
in
San
Francisco,
and
that
our
interests,
from
the
very
inception
of
this
movement,
was
to
provide
a
venue
for
young
multicultural
youth
to
cross
not
only
the
divide
of

3. recognition,
but
the
digital
divide
as
well.
Our
work
in
Digital
Storytelling
has
always
presupposed
a
determined
perspective
about
agency,
personal
and
social
agency.
How
can
youth
feel
that
they
can
take
control
of
the
way
they
are
described
and
understood,
and
the
role
of
youth
developing
self-­‐knowledge
through
reflection
in
narrative,
in
providing
a
person
a
greater
sense
of
confidence
in
performing
a
public
self.
We
recognized
that
the
projection
of
these
digital
stories,
on
home
televisions
with
their
parents
and
grandparents,
the
screens
and
the
walls
of
schools
and
churches,
onto
the
world
wide
web
as
it
came
to
be,
were
providing
these
youth
with
an
active
identity
of
citizenship,
and
helping
them
to
gain
a
sense
of
belonging
and
recognition,
but
also
of
responsibility,
For
these
communities,
we
have
learned
that
Digital
Storytelling
could
do
many
things.
•Support
community
development,
giving
voice
to
the
full
range
of
youth
and
youth
groups
that
weave
social
fabric
and
build
community
life.
•Enable
democratic
activism,
youth
stories
play
a
critical
role
in
helping
to
engage
a
larger
public
in
social
agencies,
think
of
the
role
of
youth
and
their
stories
in
the
Arab
Spring
•Drive
citizen
journalism,
allowing
youth
to
bring
policy
questions
to
life
and
enabling
them
to
see
themselves
as
part
of
history.
•Support
a
real
national
conversation,
using
stories
in
social
networks
to
raise
and
address
urgent
issues.
•Heal
trauma,
young
people
that
are
survivors
of
personal
or
social
trauma,
learn
to
reframe
memories
as
bridges
to
empowerment
and
tools
for
promoting
human
rights.
•Promote
public
health,
where
youth
stories
of
environmental
and
behavioral
problems
serve
to
reframe
private
troubles
as
public
issues
that
can
be
addressed.
And
I
would
like
to
share
a
more
recent
story
from
our
work
in
Seattle
with
refugee
work.
The
piece
is
called
Confidence
by
a
young
Eritrean
about
her
finding
her
voice.
I
am
of
course
presenting
this
work
in
the
context
of
the
discussion
here
in
Europe,
and
the
particularly
wonderful
work
of
the
EUTunes
project.
That
the
project
occurred
at
the
border
of
Europe,
at
the
place
where
20
years
ago
the
great
“border”
war
of
former
Yugoslavia
took
place,
providing
us
with
the
most
recent
European
example
of
how
invisibility
and
marginalization
can
lead
to
genocidal
hatred,
seems
like
no
accident.
Digital
Storytelling
belongs
most
in
places
where
the
healing
process
of
historical
truth
telling
is
critical
to
the
project
of
sustainable
society.
CDS
finds
ourselves
in
Northern
Uganda
with
Child
Soldiers,
in
the
Congo
with
victims
of
gender-­‐based
crimes,
in
Bangladesh
and
Nepal
addressing
human
rights
violations.
And
of
course
what
makes
many
of
the
stories
of
the
youth
of
these
places
so
profound,
is
that
they
are
not
about
the
historic
crimes,
but
about
a
sense
of

4. normalization,
of
normal
citizenship
and
belonging,
not
as
victims
or
the
children
of
victims,
but
as
youth
interested
in
sports,
and
movies,
and
community,
and
a
sense
of
pride
of
belonging.
As
it
should
be.
The
best
stories
are
not
of
what
might
have
happened
that
was
terrible,
but
of
what
promise
there
can
be,
of
what
hope
there
can
be,
and
how
a
future
can
be
constructed
from
these
places,
where
invisibility
meant
conflict.
But
I
speak
today
as
an
American.
As
you
can
imagine,
immigrants
in
the
US
are
both
part
of
continuum
of
American
identity
as
a
land
of
migrants,
and
part
of
a
global
problem
of
anti-­‐immigrant
backlash.
Our
mass
media
will
still
paint
pictures
of
immigrant
youth
as
the
source
of
crime
and
anti-­‐social
behavior,
as
an
economic
threat
to
naturalized
youth
in
jobs,
as
a
strain
on
the
already
weakened
social
safety
net
and
healthcare
resources.
As
you
may
be
aware
in
the
recent
US
election,
the
issue
of
anti-­‐immigrant
nationalism
fueled
much
of
Mitt
Romney’s
effort
to
position
himself
in
the
Republican
primary
as
worthy
of
conservative
support.
Fortunately,
the
November
election
sent
a
message
that
Latino
and
other
more
recent
immigrant
populations
(Asians
and
Pacific
Islanders),
are
no
longer
to
be
simply
marginalized.
In
our
country,
the
voice
of
youth
and
their
dreams
of
opportunity
are
being
heard.