It’s Your World, So Change It: Using the Power of the Internet to Create Social Change

Introduction

“There is nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things we don’t know.”—Ambrose Bierce

December 25th, 1990, was one of the most important dates in the history of American civil rights because that was the day that George Holliday got his first camcorder for Christmas.

George, a Los Angeles-area plumber who lived close enough to California’s Interstate 210 to see the cars roll by, was out on his balcony a few months later, on March 3rd, when he saw something disturbing: four LAPD officers beating a black man. Holliday, who had spent time in Argentina and knew something about oppressive police tactics, did something the officers could not have anticipated: He whipped out his Sony HandyCam, took video, and distributed ...