Since late 2015, WITNESS and FiSahara have together leveraged online videos to support more effective reporting on Western Sahara – a territory that is nearly invisible to the outside world. The two organizations have trained at-risk Sahrawi media activists and human rights defenders on safe and effective documentation, and utilized the curation platform Checkdesk to curate, verify, and contextualize online reports.

Watching Western Sahara Silk compiles nearly 100 online videos recorded between December 2015 and June 2016, and allows users to view them within the context of larger stories of human rights in Western Sahara. In addition to other issues, these videos collectively expose a pattern of police intervention of peaceful protests, a large social movement calling for economic opportunities, ongoing demands for self-determination, and women-led demonstrations addressing the treatment of political prisoners. Click here to explore interactive reports and find videos based on location, time of recording, and other data points.   

The United Nations considers Western Sahara one of the world’s last “non-self-governing territories.” The Sahrawi population has lived under Moroccan rule for more than 40 years, despite a 1991 UN-brokered agreement to hold a referendum for self-determination. Due to strict limitations on the press, foreigners, and international human rights monitors, very rarely does footage or other reporting from the territory come to the attention of the international community.

More on this project and media activism in Western Sahara can be found here.

Why did you decide to run the 2016 marathon?

Running through the city in the 2014 NYC Marathon was such a unique, spiritual experience, and I decided immediately afterwards that I’d do it again soon. For that race, my training period was abbreviated due to a soccer injury, so although I finished, I want to run it at a much better pace in 2016. I also like that it sets a good example for my two children, and they see the work it takes to achieve goals like this.

How did you first find out about WITNESS?

I actually discovered WITNESS the day of the lottery for this year’s marathon. I knew I wanted to run it no matter what, so I looked into charities that guaranteed a spot. WITNESS is an organization that has a message I genuinely believed in and could represent passionately, so I decided to join the team!

What impact do you hope to make by running for WITNESS?

Through my fundraising campaign, I hope to make people aware of WITNESS and their goals. I think right now, an organization like this is more important than ever, considering the current social issues in the USA. As a filmmaker, I’ve always believed in the power of the camera for artistic purposes, but it’s become an incredible tool for justice where there used to be none.

How did you start running?

When I was young, my uncle Louie ran the NYC Marathon, and I have fond memories of that inspiring our Italian American family from CT. Although I’ve had some periods of inactivity, it’s been a part of my life for a long time, from playing sports as a youth, spending time in the military, and getting back in shape after quitting smoking. Overall, it’s a big component of my overall fitness regimen.

How is training going so far?

Training is going great! I feel much better, healthier, and stronger at this stage than I did last time. Although a bit unorthodox, I’m still mixing in a lot of plyometrics, pick up soccer and weight training, but in the next few weeks, I’ll start to hit the really long runs and focus on the distance.

Do you have any tips for other runners?

There’s a lot of (conflicting) information out there, and every runner is different, but there are a few things I’ve found to be especially important for me over the years.

Proper shoes. I cannot stress this enough, spend the time and money to invest in a good pair. Go to a reputable running store. Your feet and legs will thank you, and you’ll avoid overuse injuries, especially when running the long distances required for marathon training. Don’t buy the cheapest pair that look shiny and fit. I made that mistake for you already.

For the last marathon, I cut out almost all dairy and added sugar and bread. That seemed to help my energy levels and kept my weight down during the time I was injured in training (I think it actually saved my marathon). I’m doing that again.

Spend the time to stretch afterwards. This has helped my recovery and keeps me loose afterwards.

Most of all though, have fun and switch up the routine sometimes. Take a different path. Get lost in the journey itself, and not the end goal.

Help keep Alessandro achieve his goals and donate to his campaign for WITNESS!

Every couple of months we will be profiling a runner to share a little bit about them, their regimen, and why they chose to support WITNESS. Here’s what our first runner, Carolina MacWright, an immigration lawyer and artist, had to share about her history with running and human rights:

Why did you decide to run the 2016 marathon?

Last year, I had the opportunity to run the NYC marathon. It was the best race I have ever ran. It was so incredibly inspiring to see all the athletes that worked so hard to fundraise for all the different causes. I decided the next time I ran the NYC marathon, I would fundraise for a cause that was close to my heart. Brooklyn was the borough with the most heart, so I decided I wanted to find an organization based in Brooklyn.

Why are you running for team WITNESS?

Finding a local organization fighting for a cause close to me was my main target. WITNESS fit the bill perfectly, as fighting for Human Rights has always been in the forefront of my life. The change that comes about when empowering people and giving them a voice, is truly one of the biggest gifts you can give someone. The time for change is now, as technology is allowing us to have multiple eyes in order to share human rights abuses around the world and bring about the necessary justice for those that couldn’t otherwise prove these unfair events. I feel passionate about all the work WITNESS has done and is currently doing worldwide.

How are you preparing for the race?

Running has been part of my life since I can remember, but most especially since I moved to this country. For my family, running became a sort of coping mechanism when we moved to the U.S. so we do a lot of races together and we all run every day. However, I am trying to dedicate my longer runs to different struggles and causes around the world and using those documented runs as a means to inform people of the work WITNESS does in order to make people aware of these problems as well as help raise funds.

What keeps you motivated to train?

We live in a beautiful world, which is the world I like to share with my two small children, but behind the curtains the world is not so shiny. Growing up in Colombia, I got to see a lot of what goes on behind those curtains.  What I saw motivated me to not only become an immigration lawyer here in the U.S., but also a visual artist. Running allows me to digest the information about these abuses so that I can transform it into artwork.  Running in the streets of NY, which carry so much history, is also something very powerful for me.

My favorite run includes going across the Brooklyn Bridge. The history of the completion of the bridge is extremely inspiring to me. The chief engineer of the bridge fell sick and for 14 years, his wife, Emily Roebling took charge. She basically convinced the board to let her take charge, so she did and continued until it was done. On opening day, she was honored and the bridge was said to be a monument and testament to her capacity and her devotion to a higher education that she was not privy to. She was astounding. So essentially a woman without formal education, finished the Brooklyn Bridge.

Help Carolina pursue her passion for human rights and running by donating to her campaign for WITNESS!

Last month WITNESS’ Victor Ribeiro traveled to Chile to conduct a series of video advocacy and video evidence workshops. Here are a few highlights from the workshops and the people he met along the way:

Workshops on Personal Safety and Video as Evidence in Temuco

These workshops provided guidance and practical skills around the use of video for human rights, and brought together human rights defenders and activists from indigenous Mapuche communities who are organizing to fight the rise of extractive industries in their region.

“Communications are an integral part of the struggle.”

In Temuco, Victor met with Alfredo Segue, founder of MapuExpress, who provided a short video summary about the struggles of the Mapuche peoples and the human rights violations they continue to face today.

He also met with Zuny, a woman who is dedicated to collecting and preserving seeds from indigenous crops in the region, and is also a member of ANAMURI: the National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women.

The visit coincided with the 4th Annual March in Defense of Water and Land, so the workshops included guidance on organizing in protests and working with legal observers. 

In Santiago and Cañete, Victor also hosted workshops on audiovisual memory at the Mapuche Museum, the Audiovisual Institute at the University of Chile and with Pikete Informativo – a Chilean independent media collective.

“We understand that this is a super important moment for independent media and alternative communication outlets because by disputing memory we are shedding light on these situations, we are countering the norms of the hegemonic press and mainstream media outlets.”

It was an intense week of video activism that brought WITNESS’ work from Temuco to Valparaíso to Santiago.  The trip finished off with a protest in support of Felipe Duran, a Chilean photographer who was arrested for documenting violations against the Mapuches.

“It’s necessary to prevent and generate security protocols … especially in this region which has invested heavily in militarization.”

While most of New York rolled over in bed and snuggled up under their covers, twelve dedicated bikers refused to be daunted by cold, wind, or rain. Instead, they took on five bridges, 40 miles, and – you guessed it – five boroughs in the 2016 TD Five Boro Bike Tour. And they did it all in the name of human rights defenders around the world.

As you might expect, this year’s team was an impressive bunch. We had four returning biker’s from last year’s event, two WITNESS Board members, and our fearless Executive Director leading the charge. We had eight proud New Yorkers biking their hometown, two San Franciscans in for a whirlwind tour of New York, and two Irish invaders to laugh in the face of this ‘light rain’. And of course we can’t forget the three young people taking their parents out for a spin, all the while taking an impressive stand for human rights.

Admit it. You’re impressed…and you wish you were out biking with the cool kids. Check out these awesome pictures from race day, and show your support by helping our bikers smash their fundraising goals!

WITNESS couldn’t be prouder of our amazing team for their hard work, dedication, and commitment to human rights. On a gloomy gray day, Team WITNESS brought the sunshine with their smiles and irrepressible good cheer. We hope you’ll join us in celebrating their accomplishments…and wishing them a well earned week of relaxation!

https://youtu.be/kAOt3R9l-QY&w=640&h=480

“Of the 56,000 homicides in Brazil every year, 30,000 are young people aged 15 to 29.That means that, at this very moment, a young person is most likely being killed in Brazil. By the time you go to bed, 82 will have died today. It’s like a small airplane full of young people crashing every two days, with no survivors. This would be shocking enough by itself, but it’s even more scandalous that 77 per cent of these young people are black.”

Check out this post or this New York Times Magazine feature on us to learn more about how we’re working to expose police violence in Brazil. We also co-authored to a report with partner organization Article 19 about how video can be better used for justice and accountability in Brazil. And here you can find a host of resources in Portuguese.

Karen Stevenson, WML Curation Fellow

The WITNESS Media Lab Fellowship is a 15-week program designed to support the innovative curation of eyewitness video to support human rights documentation and advocacy. Karen’s winning proposal focuses on the distribution of eyewitness footage of violence toward transgender and gender non-conforming people. She plans to audit, index and contextualize online and social media channels that host and promote eyewitness videos of violent acts against these communities as entertainment. She will begin in mid-April.

Karen has previously served as BRIC Arts Media’s Co-Director of Community Media where she launched Brooklyn’s first 24×7 community cable channel that includes the borough’s only live, daily news show and several other Emmy-nominated programs. She has also served as Senior Director of Digital Media at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

She has founded several technology companies and co-founded a non-profit media institute that has trained journalists and media entrepreneurs in the U.S., Poland, Albania, Turkey, and the Pacific Islands. She’s been a digital media consultant to the American Chambers of Commerce to the European Union and was selected to be the Digital Media keynote speaker at their Annual Plenary Meetings in Warsaw and Istanbul.

The WITNESS Media Lab is dedicated to advancing the role of eyewitness video in human rights documentation and advocacy through innovative video curation as well as resource development and thought leadership.

WITNESS will again be participating in the three-day convening, and ensuring that issues surrounding video are included in broader dialogue concerning how today’s digital systems impact human rights defenders. Part of our involvement will be contributing to panel discussions and presentations. The full schedule can be found here and descriptions of WITNESS’ participation is below:

The Promise Video: Documenters, Technology & Accountability
Wednesday March 30th, 12:00pm – 1:15pm
Panel: Yvette Alberdingk Thijm  (WITNESS, Executive Director), Alexa Koenig, Christoph Koettl, Linda Walter
Description: Thanks to the global proliferation of inexpensive mobile devices, video captured by citizens and on-the-ground human rights activists can be instrumental in drawing attention to human rights violations. But many of these frontline documenters want their videos to do more. They have the underlying expectation that footage exposing abuse can advance investigations of human rights and international crimes and bring about justice and accountability. And it can.

In many situations, these citizens and activists are better positioned to collect evidence of human rights abuse than professional investigators because investigators almost always arrive after-the-fact when evidence has deteriorated or is gone. However, the quality of citizen video and other content rarely passes the higher bar needed to function as evidence in a court of law.

This panel brings experts together to examine the importance of the game-changing role that frontline documenters are playing in transforming the fields of justice and accountability as well as the concrete steps they can implement to capture, organize, and manage the rich information they collect via video cameras in the field. In turn, this will ensure investigators and lawyers have better evidence to successfully hold those most responsible for crimes, systemic discrimination, and mass atrocities accountable.

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The Visual Communication Explosion Online: Where do Human Rights and Human Rights Users Fit?
Thursday, March 31st, 10:30am – 11:45am
Panel: Sam Gregory (WITNESS, Program Director), Amanda Conway, Munya Dodo,Mona Kareem, Julie Nelson 
Description: YouTube, Facebook and Twitter native video, Snapchat, Periscope and Meerkat…. More and more online and digital tools are becoming photo and video centric. This past year we saw the rise of ephemeral photo and video, live video, and the beginnings of VR. These are increasingly being used by both the ordinary citizen as a tool for free expression and the human rights defender from Ferguson to Rio to the conflict areas of Syria, as well as by perpetrators from ISIS to far-right extremists. How do we consider the particular human rights usages, human rights challenges and human rights value implications of visual media tools ranging from Snapchat, Facebook, Periscope to YouTube?

What are the particular censorship, surveillance and free speech concerns around video and photo tools and products? What are new approaches to how contentious visual content be best handled? How should live video content be handled? What are the particular anonymity concerns around visual media and how should issues of visual anonymity be handled? What does anonymity look like in a video­-mediated world, and how can privacy by design and user­-centric options help enhance this? Where does facial recognition fit in this map? When these visual technologies intersect with potentially ubiquitous wearables and enhanced sensors what are the rights implications and the human rights usages and pitfalls? What are the pros and cons from a human rights perspective of metadata-­rich images and video? What are the human rights and consent implications of live video, and wearable-­mediated live video?

We’ll have a focused, candid conversation on how we handle these issues.

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Witnessing Police Violence On and Off the Internet
Thursday, March 31st, 12:00-1:00pm
Panel: Morgan Hargrave (WITNESS, Systems Change Coordinator), Malkia Cyril, Taina Vargas
Description: In case after case, video footage is exposing police abuse to wider audiences but not always delivering justice, and questions about the effectiveness and ethics of those images and the ways in which we share them are only gaining importance. This panel will look at the tools+platforms that people use to document police violence, the ways in which witnesses and police are sharing footage, and how we can better make an impact. Participants will discuss the ways tech and media can overcome obstacles to justice, how to protect the rights of those on both sides of the lens, and the coming challenges for online organizing towards police accountability in the US and abroad. Beyond eyewitness media, we will also address the privacy, access, technology, and accountability issues tied to the most prevalent policy response to date: body­worn cameras.

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Mobil-Eyes Us: Using Live Video and the Power of Networks for Smart Activism
Thursday, March 31st 4:00-5:00pm
Lightening Talk Speaker: Sam Gregory (WITNESS, Program Director)
Description: ‘Mobil-Eyes Us’ uses the power of live mobile video to connect you to direct experience of causes you care about, and then use disruptive tools from the collaboration economy to provide you meaningful ways you can act by doing what you do best. We know that millions of people globally take actions for issues they care about – but frequently their only option is a click to donate or sign a petition. Often they don’t feel connected to the issues or the actions ­and usually the available actions are also not a good use of their skills, leverage or capacity. What if we could create a ‘witnessing’ corps of people ready to tune in live? What if, using live video, we could bring supporters into a human rights or other social justice situation at the right time to fully experience the reality? And then ask them to use their unique skills, leverage, or networks to take action – for example to deter illegal violence by their group presence, to rapidly share a stream or invite others to act as well, or to provide direct legal guidance? Through an effective integration of technologies with storytelling and movement­-building, we are building out prototypes and doing pilots to help people feel more experientially connected to causes they care about and then take actions that matter. Join us!

Don’t believe us? Check out this highlight reel from last year’s event. We challenge you not to get a little misty eyed.

WITNESS is proud to be an official charity partner in the 2016 TCS New York City Marathon for the seventh consecutive year. On Sunday, November 6, five dedicated runners will represent Team WITNESS and run for human rights change– and you can be one of them!

WITNESS welcomes runners of all levels and backgrounds, from dedicated multi-marathon champions to first time runners. Cumulatively, our past teams have raised close to $100,000 in support of human rights defenders everywhere. They have empowered thousands of activists and average citizens to fight for change on some of the most pervasive human rights issues of our time – from war crimes in Syria to police brutality in the United States to sexual and gender-based violence around the world. And they did this while running the race of their lives…sometimes multiple years in a row!

We hope you will follow in their footsteps and join Team WITNESS in the 2016 TCS New York City Marathon.

Why WITNESS?

As images of refugees, police violence, and attacks on civilians flood our social media feeds and shape our reaction to current events, it is impossible to deny the power of visual imagery for human rights. That’s why WITNESS supports people using video for human rights all over the world. With millions of people empowered to film injustice by the cell phones in their pockets, we make sure that more videos lead to more rights. By joining team WITNESS, you are empowering brave individuals to tell their stories and achieve justice.

How It Works:

• Register with Team WITNESS. Registration for charity partners opens after the official lottery drawing on March 8, and closes on September 15. Note that spots are limited and will go quickly – so the sooner you reach out, the better!
• Meet your fundraising minimum by November 30, 2016 – with help from our amazing fundraising team. Each runner commits to raising $3,000 in support of WITNESS’ programs. But you don’t have to do this alone! You’ll have the full-support of our in-house fundraising team, who will help you out with strategies, tips, and additional assistance.
• Run your heart out in the 2016 TCS New York City Marathon!

As a member of Team WITNESS, you will receive:

• A guaranteed spot on the starting line on November 6;
• A personalized witness jersey;
• A complimentary NYRR training program to help with your training (with options for 20, 16, and 12-week training schedules);
• Invitations to special WITNESS events;
• Fundraising tips and strategies to help you meet your goals;
• An amazing team of human rights defenders to train and share your journey with.

 Interested in joining the team? Contact natalie@witness.org to learn more and secure your spot today.

Join Team WITNESS in the 2016 TD Five Boro Bike Tour, and bike for human rights worldwide!

On Sunday, May 1st, ten bikers sporting fabulous orange jerseys will represent Team WITNESS…and you could be one of them. Each of our fierce and fashionable bikers will commit to raising $1,000 in support of WITNESS’ programs – ensuring that human rights defenders around the world can use their cell phones to film abuse and fight for justice.

As a member of Team WITNESS, you will receive:

• Free, guaranteed registration;
• Breakfast and lunch on the day of the event;
• A personalized jersey;
• Fundraising support;
• Invitations to special events;
• And more!

Last year’s team raised over $12,000 in support of WITNESS’ programs and had a blast doing it! Our team was led by a mother-son duo of Irish invaders, and bolstered by our own Executive Director. We challenge you to surpass their fundraising total and join us in the fight for justice and equality.

Interested in joining Team WITNESS?

Step 1: Contact alexandra@witness.org to secure your spot and register with the team. The sooner you reach out, the better your chances – we already have a few bikers committed to joining the team, and spots will go quickly! Registration opens January 12 and closes on Friday, April 8.

Step 2: Set up your personalized page on Crowdrise, and use WITNESS’ tips to start fundraising.

Step 3: Ask your family, friends, and colleagues to help you meet your fundraising goal of $1,000 by May 30. If you can think of 25 people who will give you $20, you’re already halfway there! And remember, you’re not on your own – you will have support, encouragement, and excellent fundraising ideas (seriously, we’re full of them! #humblebrag) from Team WITNESS.

Step 4: Bike in the Tour on May 1.