Zcom_simple

Hello,

Blogs are a familiar feature on the internet - where users post content in an accumulating manner, with comments, and search options, etc. They facilitate expression and exploration, and via attached comments, also debate and synthesis.


Reading and
Navigating Blogs

Our blogs are quite powerful. Each writer can post, as is typically the case. Sustainers who have the option can also post, however. All Blogs appear in the blog system, and sometimes also in content boxes the top page of ZNet - and always via the left menu of the top page - and can be found via searches, etc.

Commenting on blogs follows the blogs, attached at the bottom, and blog comments, like all others, are also visible in many places that show comments including in the forum system. In addition, the entire blog system gathers content for everyone - but one can look at the accumulating content in many ways.

  • For example one can look at one writer's efforts - so one is seeing what is effectively a blog system for that one writer, or Sustainer.
  • One can also look at the content by topic, seeing blogs that are tagged as being about a certain topic - or place, as well. Thus, when doing that, it is a blog system about a topic, or a place, with many contributors.
  • One can look at only writer blogs, or only sustainer blogs, as well.
  • One can look at blogs for particular Groups, too.

All this is easily done using the left menu. Searches allow even more variables and refinements.


Creating Blog Posts

If you are a Sustainer with permission, and are logged in, you will see a link in the left menu for you to post a blog - and you can use that to post one, and then tag it various ways (such as with a topic or place, or a group tag), and once you do, it is in the system with you as the author.

You can also use the console button to the left to post a blog - anytime and from anywhere in the site, as long as you are logged in.

Meanwhile, enjoy the blogs - and, by the way, if you are a Free Member or a Sustainer with a ZSpace page, of course you can put one or more content boxes on it, pulling blog links of any sort you may want to filter for, for example, by you or by your friends or by others - and by topic, about places, for groups, etc.

Blogs

Creativity and resilience in Detroit

By Toban Black at Sep 25, 2010


Change Text Size a- | A+

"Detroit is a window into the future. Through this window we see an inspiring site of deeply grassroots and living visions of a just and democratic community. Community resistance to corporate polluters in Detroit, including oil refineries, coal power plants and the world’s largest waste incinerator, continue to hold the frontline against the destruction of the planet. Meanwhile resistance to such corporatization strategies such as predatory lending, water privatization, prisons and police brutality are matched with equally powerful models of resilience; such as community gardens, cooperative economics, freedom schools and transformative justice. Detroit can be a model of the Just Transition to sustainable communities that we require; one in which exploitive jobs that cause ecological devastation and compromised health are replaced with meaningful work in our own interests; restoring our labor and our resources to the web of life."

Those words are from an Eco-justice declaration.

An activist and hip hop artist from Detroit talked about some of those community self-help and poverty issues in an audio interview with myself, and another local activist. Here's that interview -- with the summary that we've posted with it -

---

We interviewed Invincible, a Detroit hip hop artist and activist, after her show at the LOLA music and arts festival in London, Ontario, Canada. At LOLA, Invincible performed with Miz Korona and DJ Dez.

You can listen to the interview here -- on the Media Co-op.

During the interview, Invincible shares her views about the role of hip hop in cultivating social change. Experiences and wisdom from communities in Detroit, Michigan are communicated throughout the recording.

Some of what Invincible had to say revolves around the "Detroit Summer" / "Emergence" single which she recently released with Waajeed.

This interview was recorded and edited for the Media Co-op, and a local radio station (CHRW).

The SafeSpace project that Invincible mentions is a local support centre for sex workers, and women in crisis here in London, Ontario. The SafeSpace "model is one of empowerment with the goal of meeting women where they're at and helping sex workers operate with safety and with dignity."

Loading_border