Global Voices in Polish

What am I talking about? See yourself here. ‘Global Voices aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online – shining a light on places and people other media often ignore.’ If you know my blog, you have probably seen the post in September about Global Voices linking to their site and to my fellow blogger Jez Wegierski, who posted about Global Voices Summit in Budapest this summer. For those who see it for the first time, I strongly advise to check out their Advocacy site, where you can find info about issues international bloggers face when being deprived of freedom of speech. I have noticed that their translation program lacks Polish, so I have written to them. I received a great response and established very professional, pro-active and encouraging communication with cool people, as a result of which I hope to help them out to kick off the Polish site fairly soon.

If you are a blogger and you’re interested in joining me or/and them, please let me know! I would love to share voluntarily work with anyone else caring for the cause.

Freedom of speech is a sensitive topic, and the info there makes me realise how happy I am to live in the UK and be able to post whatever I want and access all the sites whenever I want to. At American Studies we had an American Constitution class one (‘Congress shall make no law…), where the teacher wanted to show us the true meaning of American concept of freedom of speech. It’s important actually. We were asked to take 10 post-its each and write one of our most important freedoms (freedom to, and freedom from) on each of those. Let’s say this way:

1. Freedom to write my own opinions

2. Freedom to travel

3. Freedom from having to attend one religious gathering

4. Freedom to choose friends

5. Freedom to think and speak it.

6.  Freedom to eat whatever and whenever I want.

7. Freedom to access all books at the local library.

8. Freedom from having to wear pink.

9. Freedom to write letters to my family abroad.

10. Freedom to leave the house.

Now, with all this in front of our face, we had to imagine being deprived of one of those. Talk about it. As we got rid of 9 post-its we were terrified. And smarter, if you know what I mean.

Freedom of speech is one of our basic human rights. We think it’s so obvious, but is it?

Global Voices does a great job bringing the reality, the facts to the public and establishing a dialogue among those who ae involved in protecting it. They encourage blogging. You can find their link on Amnesty International site too.

What is the freedom you would leave on the last post-it?