Great article on DU's Ava on Mother Jones.

[im10ashus]

We love Ava! Go girl!!! :yourock:

By Samantha M. Shapiro
March/April 2007 Issue

One crisp, sunny Saturday last fall, I found myself walking through the heart of downtown Montgomery, Alabama, heading toward the state Capitol. It was about a 10-minute walk, but I didn't encounter a single person. I could hear freight trains whizzing by the Alabama River, and did see evidence that a "You Know You're a Redneck When..." theme party was being planned for later that night. But without weekday office workers, there were no pedestrians and very little traffic of any kind. A technicolor replica of the 1950s gmc bus that Rosa Parks rode eerily circled the streets, which were otherwise as still as a diorama.

Gleaming white, neoclassical, its wrought-iron balconies giving it a touch of plantation style, the Capitol was built in 1850; 11 years later, Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy on its steps. In 1955, Martin Luther King Jr. seized on Parks' refusal to sit at the back of a Montgomery bus as a way to bring attention to Jim Crow; a decade later the Capitol became the iconic destination of three marches from Selma that were key in ending it.

I was here for activism of a different age. I was going to attend a birthday party for Ava Lowery, a homeschooled teen activist who posts professional-quality antiwar video shorts on her website, peacetakescourage.com, from her bedroom in a small town about an hour's drive from Montgomery. Ava, whose videos have a worldwide following thanks to the blogosphere, had decided to throw her Sweet Sixteen party on the steps of the Capitol to protest the war in Iraq.

A decade earlier, a teenage girl out of the local political mainstream might have held her tongue until she could leavelabama. But these days the Internet provides a means out—a community of like-minded people, albeit a virtual one. Ava's website averages 30,000 hits a day and is recommended by Michael Moore's. It remains to be seen, however, whether such virtual, viral efforts can serve as a replacement, or even a stimulus, for face-to-face networks such as church groups or labor unions. Ava's rally/birthday party was a small test of what Internet activism can look like on the ground. And it was a particularly ambitious test: scheduled to last six hours, and be executed on the same steps where Governor George Wallace had delivered his famous pro-segregation speech, a few blocks from the state Supreme Court building where Chief Justice Roy Moore erected his Ten Commandments monument, in a city that is home to an Air Force base, on a day when the streets were empty and there were, I had been repeatedly told in pained tones by Ava's supporters, two must-watch college football games—Auburn vs. Tulane and Alabama vs. Tennessee.

Cont'd...
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/03/are_you_there_george_its_me_ava.html

[Ron Green]

1. She's a shining young star in our midst!

:thumbsup:

[im10ashus]

6. How awesome is she?

Having her 16th birthday on the steps of the Capital. She is a shining example of how our youth can help effect change. Love her!!!

[Greeby]

2. Kick for Ava

:kick:

[helderheid]

3. rec.... 1???!?

[Nite Owl]

4. K&R!!! n/t

[Richard Steele]

5. Ava is an amazing young person. recommended.

[Vektor]

7. She's amazing! K&R.

What an awesome girl!

[im10ashus]

8. Kicking for Ava!!!

:kick:

[im10ashus]

9. Kick!

:kick:

[EFerrari]

10. K&R! Go, Ava!

:yourock:

[PA Democrat]

11. K & R. Congratulations Ava!