How technology and social media spawned a new civil rights movement

(theGrio)  The revolution will not only be televised but apparently it will also be uploaded, downloaded, streamed, posted and tweeted as well.

What America has been witnessing — from the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida and Mike Brown in Ferguson to Eric Garner in Staten Island, Walter Scott in North Charleston and Freddie Gray in Baltimore — is the birth of a new civil rights movement. But this movement is a little different from your parents’ or your grandparents’ civil rights movement.

Social struggles for freedom, justice and equality have their similarities, to be sure. And to some extent, it seems we are still fighting for some of the same things, because the more things change, the more they remain the same. Racism and brutality are still around and apparently have no intention of leaving quietly. But the techniques and structures of organizing and movement building have met twenty-first century sensibilities. This new movement is online. It is on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, in your inbox and in a video on your cellphone.

Technology has helped give birth to the new civil rights movement.