Now I Know Who My Comrades Are by Emily Parker

That makes it very difficult for a government to chop off the head of one leader. These sites can be a powerful tool because social media-fueled revolutions tend to be leaderless. Your book makes the point that social media can be a double-edged sword. I was in New York, and I was watching all this happen in practically real time. For example, the most likely reason that the female blogger who was arrested was able to get out is because there was so much publicity around her arrest. That's why bloggers in Cuba put their photos on their blog pages anonymity actually is very dangerous for them. When people in the outside world know their names and faces and stories, it's their greatest weapon. In Cuba's case, the people in my book have been protected by publicity.

But I still was able to make several trips to Cuba and to follow up with these people over time.ĭid you worry that writing about these dissidents by name would get them arrested or killed?Īctually, quite the opposite. Cuba was by far the most difficult of the countries that I chose. I really didn't want to write this book from my desk in New York, and I didn't think it was feasible for me to spend a lot of time reporting in Iran.

There definitely are other great case studies that could be in this book, but I chose three countries where I could go back frequently and where I had existing networks. Why did you focus on these three governments instead of equally repressive regimes in Africa, South America or the Middle East? It showed ordinary Russians they could make a change, and that helped them overcome their apathy. Little by little, those protests - which people here call 'slacktivism' - started getting results. Navalny started just by getting them to fill out form online. Eighty-five percent of Russians didn't feel they had any effect on the political process. The crux of the Russian story for me is when Alexey Navalny said, 'I propose to people the comfortable way of struggle.' A few years ago, Russia didn't have any significant Internet censorship, but people weren't using the Internet for activism or opposition. Those people tell their friends and relatives back in Cuba what the bloggers are saying. But even though bloggers don't have a huge audience inside Cuba, they have found an audience outside the country. Cuba has very limited Internet participation. You really have this feeling that the people sitting at the next table are watching you. In my experience, the paranoia in Cuba is even more palpable than it is in China or Russia, because Cuba has a long tradition of being divided by citizen informers.

Now I Know Who My Comrades Are by Emily Parker