The story of the West Memphis Three is long and winding, especially if you haven’t seen HBO’s documentary. Wikipedia is a good starting point, because, for brevity’s sake, we’re going to focus on the reaction concerning the West Memphis Three’s release, which is blowing up the Internet, especially Twitter, as I type. Speaking of Wikipedia, the entry for the WMT has already been updated to reflect their release.

There’s also a series of YouTube videos, that helped bring the story back to the forefront:

From there, the cavalcade of reaction was on. Henry Rollins weighed in as well:

Twitter has officially been consumed by the West Memphis Three and Damien Echols, the one in the middle of the lead image, and the face of the WMT. Even Eddie Vedder, lead singer of Pearl Jam, has become a Twitter trend based on his support of the WMT. Apparently, he and Maines were there to greet them as they were released:

The linked photo confirms Vedder’s participation:

There is some contention about the conditions of the release, however:

The deal, according to various reports, were under the conditions of an Alford plea, which Wikipedia describes as:

Alford plea (also called Kennedy plea [1], Alford guilty plea[2][3][4] and Alford doctrine[5][6][7]) in the law of the United States is a guilty plea in criminal court,[8][9][10] where the defendant does not admit the act and asserts innocence.[11][12][13] Under the Alford plea, the defendant admits that sufficient evidence exists with which the prosecution could likely convince a judge or jury to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

ABC.com references an anonymous source, who indicates as much:

A person who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a gag order in the case told the AP the tentative deal includes a legal maneuver that would let the men maintain their innocence while acknowledging prosecutors likely have enough evidence to convict them.

As indicated in the Natalie Maines tweet, this was done to prevent the WMT from suing the state of Arkansas, nevertheless, the conditions haven’t erased any of her joy:

The “Free The West Memphis Three” website feels the same. Thanks to the immediacy of Twitter, there’s also links to the reaction of Damien Echols concerning the most talked about prison release in some time:

The release, in part, says:

I have now spent half my life on death row. It is a torturous environment that no human being should have to endure, and it needed to end. I am innocent, as are Jason and Jessie, but I made this decision because I did not want to spend another day of my life behind those bars. I want to live and to continue to fight for our innocence. Sometimes justice is neither pretty nor is it perfect, but it was important to take this opportunity to be free.

And this, friends, once again demonstrates the incredible power of the Internet and social media in particular. Perhaps it didn’t help free the WMT, per se, but it certainly help spread the word about their freedom, which is almost as important.

Information is still power, and social media is a powerful tool to deliver it by.

The idea behind crowd sourcing/funding is quite simple. Because of the connectivity of the Internet, organizing group efforts for projects is so much easier than ever before. Examples of this are all over the place, but one of the most powerful occurred during the Haiti earthquakes and the subsequent crowdsourcing led to an incredibly accurate recreation of up-to-date Haitian maps, which were absolutely necessary after the infrastructure of the country was destroyed.

In fact, the Haitian crowdsourced map projects is one of the more famous, and perhaps best examples of how effective the power of an Internet crowd is, especially when they have a like-minded goal.

One of the latest examples of the power of an Internet crowd with a shared goal may not be for something as important as recreating maps of an area that’s been destroyed by a natural disaster, but the end result is fun, if nothing else. What we have, as pointed out by Laughing Squid, is The People of Burning Man book, which was created thanks to the power of an Internet grassroots movement.

For those who are unaware, Burning Man is a week-long festival that takes place in the Nevada desert. The attendees, for lack of a better term, are an example of the freaks Whodini was referring to in their timeless song, “The Freaks Come Out At Night,” and that is meant as a compliment.

In the case of the Burning Man “picture book,” the term “crowd funding” comes into play. When the concept was initially floated, it was shot down because of the sensitive nature of the content. For an example, just do a Google Image Search for “Burning Man” and you’ll see why some publishers were unwilling to go with project. Undeterred, the book’s creators went straight to the Burning Man community, via the Internet, of course, and because of their efforts, we now have an awesome book of images that does a great job of capturing different aspects of the attendees.

The book’s site has more, and it provides a perfect description of how crowd funding works:

This project was shown around to all the main photo-book publishers by a seasoned agent. The publishers all said “no.” They also asked to keep their copies! Despite their own interest, they said the content was too extreme, and that here would not be enough demand. It became clear that we were asking the establishment to publish something that was largely anti-establishment. So we appealed to the community, asking for enough funds to do the printing. Within 15 days, several hundred people had pledged their support, already totalling the full amount. By the time the funding period was complete, the community had contributed well over the amount for which we had asked. This proved that there was a lot of demand and support for the project, and it enabled us to do a larger print run of a book of good length and quality. This print run exists thanks to the support of over 500 fantastically wonderful human beings, whose names are all listed in these back pages.

While there are some people, the kind of folks who might comment on Fox articles about atheists, who would probably disapprove of the images and the people in them, the book does a great job of showing the world the United States is not just a nation of consumerists who are largely apathetic to anything outside of their bubble.

To commemorate the book’s release, there’s a highlight/trailer video of what you can expect from the images. It’s a tad NSFW, due to brief nudity, but even the video itself is a testament to fantastic user-generated content:

What are some other examples of Internet grassroots movement you can think of? Does the clean up of Vancouver following the Stanley Cup Finals count? Let us know in the comments.

In America, as on the Internet.

The latest crowd-wisdom experiment produced an inaugural address representing the collective desires and ideals of the (Slate.com reading) populace, and the result is: it’s not bad. That’s a tepid review, but not a damning one, only because the result is exceedingly progressive (not that there’s anything wrong with that), progressive a word used in diplomatic lieu of the often pejorative “liberal” or “leftist.”

While reformed neocons might tolerate, even forgive rhetoric regarding environmental concerns, interrogation, and affordable health care, they still may balk at fundamental philosophies allowing the people to “change and adapt our covenants.” A covenant, a solemn promise, a strict Constitutional constructionist might argue, is never changeable and is not supposed to be.

Regardless, Slate’s collaborative inauguration speech is heavy with a sense of unity and the free market of ideas, and even, in certain places, it carries that moving rising rhythmic cadence the great speeches of history carry.

The speech resulted from two readers known simply as Honu and Nick utilizing MixedInk, an online platform allowing collaborative creations of op-eds, letters, petitions, mission statements, articles, speeches, et cetera. Honu and Nick didn’t stand alone. They could pull from 450 participants, who created 384 speeches in total, and could borrow from inauguration speeches from the previous 43 presidents. Honu and Nick’s speech was voted the best of the bunch.

The speech appropriately builds on Obama’s historic “Yes we can” mantra:

Future generations of Americans will look back at this moment of crisis and opportunity and they will judge us—but not by our words. They will measure us—but not by the promises we make. For language has the power to move us to action, but it is never a substitute for it.

 

Our children’s children will ask only this: What did they do back then? Did they rise to the challenges providence had set before them? Did they unite as one people, with a common destiny? Did they set aside the old partisan rancor in order to protect our great nation, to strengthen democracy and human rights at home and abroad and to safeguard the blessings of the natural world for all time? Did they live up to the great promise cradled in that name: America? What will these future generations say?

They will say, "Yes, they did."

And such is the beauty of a more digitized democracy, the naïve, idyllic devotion to collaborative unity and “common destiny,” played out more efficiently and with sudden simplicity. It carries with it the pitfalls democracy always carried, blemishes on an ideal most are content to tolerate: runaway mobs, the hard, stubborn thumb of a supposed moral majority, covenant cornerstones balanced precariously on the sands of the current Zeitgeist.

But we wouldn’t have it any other way, would we?