It‘s complicated to find a Chilango (people from Mexico City) who hasn’t experienced police bribery. What we call in Mexico as “la mordida” (the bite) is the most often, easy and normalized act of corruption in one of the countries with higher levels of corruption. According to INEGI (ENVIPE, 2014), 78% of the Mexicans said they perceived corruption in traffic police, by far the highest authority with this perception.

Despite the fact that we have some national and generic information about corruption, we don’t have open and accurate data on how police corruption operates at a local level, causing zero accountability and plenty of misinformation. This happens for two reasons: one, the levels of citizen reporting are too low, and two, no one receives charges. Could technology and social media help to understand and combat corruption in Mexico City?

There is an enormous opportunity. Smartphones and social media are growing among Chilangos. Also, there are already a good number of people who speak out against corruption in their own social networks, either by complaining, or denouncing it. This has the potential to push forward the anti-corruption agenda through revolutionizing methods of corruption detection, and analysis.

This is how a friend and I decided to develop #MeParólaPoli (a cop just stopped me) an app that seeks to expose the police bribery in the streets of Mexico City. This app lets you instantly report a potential act of corruption when a policeman stops you on the street. Just by pushing a button you can automatically generate sound evidence, provide data about a corrupt (or honest) policeman, and generate a report ready to be published. The app collects the data and presents it in a web page with maps and other visualizations. We developed the app with the intention to partner with transportation applications operating in Mexico City, such as Uber, Cabify, and Yaxi. These drivers are the most affected by street corruption, and therefore have the highest level of interest. Also, all of them have already a smartphone, access to the Internet and a community that could easily adopt this technology.

To see how it works, watch the video:

Anti-bribery and anti-corruption apps, sites, and social media groups are increasing around the world. I Paid a Bribe is an anti-corruption web platform that uses the transparency of the Internet to incentivize citizens in India who have been the victims of corruption to self-report details of bribes paid. There are several more: JamiiForums in Tanzania, BribeSpot in Thailand and Cambodia, Prijavi Korupcija in Macedonia, and others (see more here).

When corruption is so profound in societies, of course, major and national anti-corruption reforms are necessary, however, innovative local solutions can contribute in reducing the problem.

The author of this blog post wishes to remain anonymous.

To an average DC resident, social movements may look like traffic jams.

They may look like scattered, unconnected protests taking the streets demanding justice for yet another cause. But to those involved in movement work, these protests are only a small fraction of the total coordinated effort. I myself have had the honor to be a member of the movement-oriented organization Anakbayan-USA. Anakbayan is the youth sector of the larger mass alliance of organizations, BAYAN, which works to educate, organize, and mobilize around issues that affect Filipinos in the United States and the Philippines, such as poverty, migration, and wage rights.

I’ve seen firsthand that most grassroots campaigns involve a number of departments, or working groups, specializing in different aspects of building a movement of people, and though their more public face may look like a group of young people yelling into the void, in actuality social movements are as planned and coordinated as any corporate enterprise. Specifically, in my chapter of Anakbayan-USA members are broken down into several committees including finance, outreach, and perhaps most under-rated, educational development: the committee which I’ve pursued. 

What does educational development look like in social movements?

Educational development means external educational projects– for example, making public the situation of landlessness of impoverished working peasants in the Philippines— as well as building internal member capacity, such as continually re-educating the member base on developments in the movement and orienting new members.  More broadly, this means that joining the movement is not just about showing up. Orientation is not simply a “Welcome Aboard!” pat on the back. For several movements, orientation is a serious duty, conducted by designated members of the educational committee, often several hours long, explaining the history, goals, framework, and tactics of the organization.

 

Ultimately, the success of Anakbayan is inseparable from our ability to attract, orient, and train new members who are able to continue the core mission statement of our organization.  As Philippine revolutionary leader Jose Maria Sison wrote, “Even a revolutionary society… would stagnate and be thereafter corrupted if the process of renewal and of continuous revolution is neglected or deliberately held back”. In other words, even if all of the goals of our campaigns were met, we would not have won if we were not continuing to educate and renew ourselves and new members.

So educational development is important… Why online education?

In one word: accessibility. While there are undeniable benefits to sharing a physical space, that unfortunately is a luxury to some. Whether it be a parent with several children, an individual with a physical disability, or someone who simply works all of the typical hours for holding a meeting or workshop, in-person trainings are potentially leaving some of our strongest allies behind and without means to participate.

In a world with Facebook Live and viral hashtags, it’s clear that technology is molding how organizations and individuals use their right to protest. But some social movements are faster to adopt the possibilities of technology to their cause– a tactic that has reaped results. Adopting social media platforms like Twitter can perhaps mean the difference between 5 and 25 people showing up to a meeting. We often think of technology solely as a form of communication, but in fact messaging is just one aspect of how technology can aid social movements.

This is underscored by the fact that though educational technology has advanced significantly, the delivery of educational materials in social movements has not advanced much (if at all) since the teach-ins of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Platforms like TechChange highlight that online education doesn’t have to be passive. With features like interactive web elements, live events, and forum activities, learning can be interactive and facilitated, just like learning in a classroom, but on your watch in the comfort of your own home.

Through educational mediums similar to TechChange’s live event platform, BAYAN has recently started hosting interactive webinars to train its alliance member base. Because of the efficiency and flexibility of online education, movements throughout the world should look to TechChange and BAYAN as examples of the educational organization of the future.  As we say in Anakbayan, “Lumalakas, Lumalawak, Lumalaban!”, which roughly translates to the struggle is intensifying, our movement is growing, and we will continue to fight. To its credit, online education is an important pillar in the growth and eventual success of our movements.

If you’d like to know more about Anakbayan, find us at the following links!

Website: http://www.anakbayanusa.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnakbayanUsa
Twitter: https://twitter.com/anakbayanusa