World

A MILLION VOICES AGAINST FARC

by andrescolmenares | January 22, 2008 at 01:00 pm

1192 views | 10 Recommendations | 3 comments

A worldwide rally against the terrorist group
FARC has been organized by a common Colombian citizen with no
experience in politics through Facebook.

Early this year, Oscar Morales decided to create a group in Facebook
to protest against the lies, cruelty and madness of the terrorist group
that has kidnapped and killed thousands of Colombians and foreigners
for over 40 years in Colombia. Three weeks later the group has over
190,000 members from all parts of the globe. This massive social
networking phenomena drive the creator to set a date for the rally:
February 4th.

He received immediately hundreds of messages from supporters all around
the world, from Paris to Dubai. TV networks, newspapers and radio
stations didn’t escape from the wave. The message multiplied. The
government announced the Facebook group all their support.

This day millions of Colombian citizens will stop their activities
around 12 pm. Paris, Düsseldorf, Miami, London, Buenos Aires,
Guatemala, Dubai, The Hague, Tel-Aviv, Washington amongst other cities
are joining to our voice to make a million voices against FARC, against
kidnapping, against murder.

No political party or experienced leaders are behind the protest. Just civilians who want their voices to be heard.

This is a clear example of how social networks can work for good, noble purposes.

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Kaitlin

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 16:14 on January 22nd, 2008

Thanks for this andrescolmenares. An interesting use of Facebook - I expect we'll see more initiatives like this.

Caoimhin1

at 16:38 on January 22nd, 2008

Great post, thanks for the info!

Swan

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 16:46 on January 22nd, 2008

Definitely a good story Andrescolmenares,

This isn't the first time that a social networking group has been used to bring a cause to the attention of the public though.

Blog catalog mirrors your blog and from time to time challenges all bloggers to unite for a worthy cause. The last one that I was involved in was "Bloggers Unite - Blogging for Hope" where each blogger had to blog about some kind of abuse.

I chose child sexual abuse and wrote a poem as my entry. Using bloggers to bring attention to such things now, is going to be a very powerful voice over the next decade or so.

It's about time "the people" had real representation and were actually allowed to speak.
~ Swan