Are You There, George? It's Me, Ava. - Democratic Underground

Ian David

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Fri Mar-02-07 10:42 AM
Original message

Are You There, George? It's Me, Ava.

Edited on Fri Mar-02-07 10:45 AM by IanDB1

News: Meet the Southern homeschooler whose antiwar videos get 30,000 hits a day.
By Samantha M. Shapiro
March/April 2007 Issue

One crisp, sunny Saturday last fall, I found myself walking through the heart of downtown Montgomery, Alabama, heading toward the state Capitol. It was about a 10-minute walk, but I didn't encounter a single person. I could hear freight trains whizzing by the Alabama River, and did see evidence that a "You Know You're a Redneck When..." theme party was being planned for later that night. But without weekday office workers, there were no pedestrians and very little traffic of any kind. A technicolor replica of the 1950s gmc bus that Rosa Parks rode eerily circled the streets, which were otherwise as still as a diorama.

<snip>

I was here for activism of a different age. I was going to attend a birthday party for Ava Lowery, a homeschooled teen activist who posts professional-quality antiwar video shorts on her website, http://www.peacetakescourage.com , from her bedroom in a small town about an hour's drive from Montgomery. Ava, whose videos have a worldwide following thanks to the blogosphere, had decided to throw her Sweet Sixteen party on the steps of the Capitol to protest the war in Iraq.

A decade earlier, a teenage girl out of the local political mainstream might have held her tongue until she could leave Alabama. But these days the Internet provides a means out—a community of like-minded people, albeit a virtual one. Ava's website averages 30,000 hits a day and is recommended by Michael Moore's. It remains to be seen, however, whether such virtual, viral efforts can serve as a replacement, or even a stimulus, for face-to-face networks such as church groups or labor unions. Ava's rally/birthday party was a small test of what Internet activism can look like on the ground. And it was a particularly ambitious test: scheduled to last six hours, and be executed on the same steps where Governor George Wallace had delivered his famous pro-segregation speech, a few blocks from the state Supreme Court building where Chief Justice Roy Moore erected his Ten Commandments monument, in a city that is home to an Air Force base, on a day when the streets were empty and there were, I had been repeatedly told in pained tones by Ava's supporters, two must-watch college football games—Auburn vs. Tulane and Alabama vs. Tennessee.

<snip>

Ava spends a big part of her day responding to emails from all over the world, some from active-duty soldiers. Many letters politely disagree with her or egg her on; others express doubt that a young girl could be behind the videos and speculate that they are the work of a 50-year-old man trying to get attention. Some of the mail gets nasty. There are references to Ava's mother sticking her "hand up your ass, you sad meat puppet." One viewer wished she would "get raped." Conservativeunderground.com displays a special fixation on Ava, pasting a Hitler mustache on a picture of her face, calling her an "attention whore," "a pig with lipstick," or an "ugly little bitch." It also posted Ava's parents' political contributions and Jeremy's work address. After Ava posted WWJD? on her site, a woman from Atlanta repeatedly sent her emails that said, "Call me as soon as possible about a possible threat to your life." When Ava and her parents called the number from an untraceable phone, the woman asked Ava whom she was working for. That prompted Tamara to contact the fbi and order Ava to shut down her website, although she knew Ava would be "devastated." Jeremy intervened and said Ava shouldn't back down, although privately he told me he'd talked to security companies about how to protect the family.

More:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/03/are_you_there_george_its_me_ava.html

See also:

Ava's Diary on DU http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Ava