How to counteract hate speech online?

I spent the last few days in Europe – Budapest, Hungary to attend a meeting of the Advisory Council on Youth of the Council of Europe. It is a body composed of 30 representatives of youth NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations). It provides opinions and input on all issues concerning youth within the Council of Europe. The Advisory Council ensures also that young people are involved and their voices are heard in the institution’s broader activities. 

One of the main topics discussed was a recently launched campaign: No Hate Speech Campaign, which was launched on the 22^nd March by the Secretary General of the Council of Europe. The campaign and the ‘No Hate Speech Movement’, which accompanies the campaign, were born out of the realization that young people are exposed to violence, discrimination, and bullying online. The space that was once supposed to be the safe haven for all became a space where hate, prejudice, and stigma started to rule hurting the most vulnerable.

No Hate Speech Campaign has a few very important objectives:

•                To raise awareness about hate speech online and its risks for democracy and for individual

young people

•                To promote media and Internet literacy

•                To support young people in standing up for human rights, online and offline

•                To reduce the levels of acceptance of online hate speech

•                To mobilize, train and network online youth activists for human rights

•                To map hate speech online and develop tools for constructive responses

•                To support and show solidarity to people and groups targeted by hate speech online

•                To advocate for consensus on European policy instruments combating hate speech

•                To develop youth participation and citizenship online

The Campaign is promoted by a video presenting the topic of hate speech online where a few young people from different places in Europe talk about what hate speech online means to them and how it affect young people. Here you can see the video. I am very proud of it as one of the people present there is from my organization, ANSO (Association of Nordic and Pol-Balt LGBTQ Student Organizations). I think also that it is powerful and touches upon several topics present in Europe nowadays. 

The Campaign has many elements from training courses for bloggers, to research, various tools, to the Hate Speech Watch. It is an interesting approach to bullying or discrimination as it seems like those happening digitally have not been looked at with the same concern as the ones happening ‘in the real life’.

I am very curious how the campaign will develop especially that it is not supposed to be only European level campaign. It is supposed to be driven on national levels as well and not only online but offline, too. It will be definitely interesting to see it grow. So far there are national committees being set up in 34 member states of the Council of Europe (out of 47), which is a great number already. I really hope that the topic of hate speech and online bullying will get on agenda in Europe, not only within activists or NGOs circles but also in schools!

We could be witnessing a real change in attitudes and approaches to using Internet.

To read more about the campaign and No Hate Speech Movement, please go to the official website. And...join the movement! Share what YOU are doing to counteract hate speech online!

From Reproductive Justice to Human Rights Movement

Being an activist is one of the most amazing things that could ever happen to me! I, again, came to this conclusion after participating in a lecture organized by 2110 Center for Gender Advocacy at Concordia University in Montreal. The event welcomed a guest speaker, Loretta Ross, who was addressing topics such as reproductive justice, rape,women's rights, oppression, and building human rights movement. Even thought the theme of the talk may seem quite heavy, the lecture was one of the funniest, the most empowering, and uplifting speeches I have heard in years. 

Loretta Ross is one of the main forces behind an organization called SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, whose "mission is to amplify and strengthen the collective voices of Indigenous women and women of color to ensure reproductive justice through securing human rights." 

Before I start sharing my observations and learning points, I'd like to shortly explain what 'reproductive justice' is. In short, it can be defined as a freedom for women to decide about their bodies but holding the state responsible for providing the proper framework for women to develop, raise children (if they wish to have them) and have actual choice. Loretta Ross explained the difference between reproductive justice and reproductive rights discourse as "not only have the freedom to have a child or not to have a child but also to be able to raise the child and have a quality life". In another words "for reproductive justice activists, the primary difference between the reproductive rights and health frameworks and the reproductive justice framework is that the rights and health frameworks focus on protecting individual rights and choices, while the reproductive justice framework focuses on broader socioeconomic conditions and bringing about structural change."(1) Loretta also compared those two discourses in a simple way: pro-birth (reproductive rights discourse) vs pro-life (reproductive justice discourse).

It was amazing to watch Loretta speak and share her personal story of sexual abuses and full of challenges in an empowering way, making the audience burst out laughing numerous times. One of the lines that I found very interesting, among many many others, was the way she dealt with receiving over and over again the same question about fighting oppression, she said: "Loretta, aren't you tired of fighting oppression? Then my answer is 'Tired offighting oppression? Not as much as being oppressed!'" It was just the beginning of the lecture and at the same a very powerful moment for me as an activist because this is exactly what I do and what it feels like! Even though Loretta and I work in different fields, it was so easy to relate to her words.

She also addressed the fact that activists and people working towards making a change in the world tend to complain about hardships, being tired, and having endless amounts of work. Her answer to this was: "We social justice people are very privileged! We are very fewpeople who don't put up with hate and oppression. We need to be responsiblewith that privilege! Like with any other privilege! And, please, don't play theoppression Olympics: my oppression is worse than yours! ;)" I was sitting there grinning because I knew exactly what she was talking about! Activists are amazing people but sometimes we need reality check in order to stop, see what we actually have, and we need to learn to appreciate it, and acknowledge how privileged we are to be able to do what we love and work to make change in the world. Not everyone is as lucky as we are!

Loretta talked about knowing differences between an enemy and problematic ally, which brought the audience, first to laughter, and then to a big round of applaud! "I know the difference between an enemy and problematic ally - with the ally you can actually agree on things that you want to work on together even though you may not necessarily understand each others realities". What I found interesting and maybe even a bit intriguing was her statement that in order to be able to work with (problematic) ally, we have to get over the unrealistic expectation that the ally will understand our realities because the truth is that they will not. I guess that this thought could be connected with the belief that many people thinking differently want to reach the same goal, which was identified as one of the major challenges of the human rights movement. Loretta believes that social rights movements need to get over the single-identity agenda fights but instead work intersectionally combining different identities and realities as we are never only 'one'. A person is never only a woman, but can be also trans, or have disability, and so on. We cannot work for equality not communicating with each other and being separated. Another round of applaud came with Loretta's reference to Martin Luther King's sermon delivered just 4 days before his assassination in 1968 where he was speaking about creating not 'only' civil rights movement but human rights movement, which he never managed to witness happening. She jokingly said "for all those years everyone was telling me that Martin Luther King had a dream! No one told me he had a plan!" :) She continued saying that "we need to build human rights movement - intersectional movement, you can't fight for women's rights in racist way, you can't fight for LGBTQ rights and violate disabled people." This also identifies one of the challenges, which is convincing people to work together even though there is no agreement on all fronts regardless of the end aim - equality, respect, and freedom. 

This is just give you a taste of what I experienced during 2.5h lecture full of reflection, laughter, and 'aha' moments. I could relate so many things to the LGBTQ or transgender movements, the mechanisms of work, cooperation, and internal struggles follow the same logic or maybe lack of it... To reflect on Loretta's words on being privileged as a civil rights activist, I definitely feel extremely privileged and lucky to be a part of this huge machinery for change! I would never trade this for anything else. I believe that if we let ourselves learn from each other and pay more attention to what we can offer to each other, we would be stronger and more efficient fighting for our rights. As a human being I would like to see people being safe and free; and as an activist, I would like to see one big united human rights movement envisioned years ago by a great activist and leader, Mr King to rock. Who's with me?

(1) Asian Communities for ReproductiveJustice 2005, p.3.