Do you know this woman? [View All]

[ColbertWatcher]

Do you know why her picture was taken?



She is Florence Owens Thompson, but in 1936 she was known across the country as only "Migrant Mother."

Farm Security Administration photographer Dorothea Lange took her picture as part of a government program to raise awareness about poverty in rural America.

According to Wikip*dia,

Photographers and writers were hired to report and document the plight of the poor farmer. {By} "introducing America to Americans."

I'm posting this because I have the beginning of an idea that I think has been a long time coming and I'm going to need the help of a powerful and dedicated online community to make it happen. We liberals know what shape the country is in, but we also know that the GOP-controlled media is for the most part ignoring it.

I think it's time we "introduce Americans to Americans" again.

We can start by documenting the condition of our towns. Simply start taking pictures of closed shops, abandoned houses, neighborhoods invaded by "foreclosed signs." Anything and everything that you feel needs to be addressed but isn't. The pictures need not be works of art; they only need to be taken.

Then upload those photos to hosting sites (like Photobucket or Flickr) where we can share them with everyone else.

Then we collect all the links into a huge database that I think would be hard to ignore. (I started a page on the Truthiness Encyclopedia where we can temporarily post links to pictures, but since the site is satirical, I don't know how appropriate it would be to continue using it- http://www.wikiality.com/New_New_Deal ).

By tagging the images and videos with the New New Deal (or something like that), GIS searches will find all the participants and their work.

Just as lifting the ban on photography at Dover helps Americans see the terrible consequences of war, we can use photography to open our fellow American's eyes to the terrible consequences of poverty.

I welcome everyone's ideas and suggestions.



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LINKS:

* Florence Owens Thompson's story as told by her grandson.

* Where is JK?, a blog for a documentary about the FSA/OWI photographers

* Library of Congress Web Guide for FSA/OWI Materials

* http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html">Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog