Mastodawn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKoWKF3ktXI

Watching this video reminded me how much activist history gets distorted by sectarianism.

At places like #Greenham, divisions formed around the "colour" of the gates - different ideologies, identities, and political cultures. The trouble is that the loudest and most conflict-driven voices end up telling the history afterwards.

The people saying *"look at me"* get remembered, while the people saying *"don't look at me, I'm busy, look at the issue"* are usually too busy doing the actual work to document it.

This leaves us with a skewed activist memory, where internal drama becomes history and the slow, collective labour that made things happen fades into the background.

It's not just a problem of the past. We keep reproducing the same mess today.

#activism #GreenhamCommon #history #socialchange #OMN #stupidindividualism #openweb #makeinghistory

Greenham - the making of a monument

YouTube

#OMN (Open Media Network)Mar 15

Thinking of workshops to run at “Nodes On A Web” #NOAW unconference

Hamish Campbell is a long-time #openweb activist and technologist working on grassroots media and digital commons. He was involved in the early development of #Indymedia and continues this work through projects like the Open Media Network (#OMN), which works on how federated tools and community publishing supports public-interest media infrastructure. His focus is balancing building native platforms and on growing the social culture that makes the #openweb work: transparency, […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/thinking-of-workshops-to-run-at-nodes-on-a-web-noaw-unconference/

#OMN (Open Media Network)Mar 10

EU tech strategy, composting the mess

As #climatechaos accelerates, European politics will not stay where it is now. History suggests that periods of instability push politics to the right, because right-wing politics tends to be driven by fear and control. If that trajectory holds, then the digital infrastructure we build today needs to be resilient in a more hostile political environment tomorrow. This matters for the EU’s current technology strategy. Most policy thinking still focuses on industrial competitiveness - AI […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/eu-tech-strategy-composting-the-mess/

#OMN (Open Media Network)Feb 27

Why good faith is a technical requirement for #FOSS

If you’ve spent years in #FOSS, you’ve likely developed a strong allergy to vague political language. You care about licenses, reproducibility, governance models, and whether something actually runs. Good. That discipline is why free software exists at all. But here’s the uncomfortable question, what if the biggest blocker to the #openweb right now isn’t technical debt - but social debt? And what if “good faith” is not a moral nicety, but a core infrastructure requirement? The […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/why-good-faith-is-a-technical-requirement-for-foss/

#OMN (Open Media Network)Jan 4

We fucked up… and that matters because we still have agency

Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth: we fucked up the last 20 years of #openweb tech. Not “they” fucked it up. Not only #BigTech, not only venture capital, not only governments and surveillance states. We did, especially those of us who were closest to the tools, the protocols, the decisions - the geeks, developers, architects, and maintainers who shaped how this stuff actually worked in practice. That matters, because it means we still have direct power over what happens next. […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/we-fucked-up-and-that-matters-because-we-still-have-agency/

#OMN (Open Media Network)Mar 11, 2024

Historically, #mainstreaming politics has a tendency to shift to the right during times of crisis

The intersection of #climatechange, #mainstreaming politics, and fear is complex but they do influence social attitudes and policies. Historically, mainstream politics exhibits a shift to the right during times of crisis, and the looming mess of #climatechaos is following this trend. In this, we need to recognize the pivotal role that fear plays in driving right-wing politics and shaping public discourse. Fear operates as a strong motivator of political attitudes and policies, particularly […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/historically-mainstream-politics-has-exhibited-a-tendency-to-shift-towards-the-right-during-times-of-crisis/

witchescauldron Sep 26, 2025

#makeinghistory is a lightweight, federated, peer-to-peer friendly app to collect, tag, and narrate archival material (photos, flyers, docs, audio, video). Designed for activist groups, families, and grassroots collectives to own their history and weave it into living narratives.

* Archivist (Uploader)

Scan & upload material text, (images, PDFs, audio, video).

Add minimal metadata: date, place, people, tags.

* Contributor (Family / Activist Member)

Browse archive via columns (New, Recent, Thematic).

Add/edit metadata collaboratively.

Tag items (hashtags, free text).

Add contextual notes or stories.

* Story-Builder (Narrator / Researcher)

Create “Story” views: curated sequences of items.

Add explanatory text, embed links, timelines.

* Viewer (Public)

Read “Stories” or browse public archive.

Search by tag / metadata.

Comment (if enabled) via Fediverse accounts.

#OMN (Open Media Network)Mar 2, 2024

User Story #makeinghistory

The "User Story #makeinghistory" outlines a process for digitizing the #Campbell Family archive, which contains significant historical materials related to activism and political movements. The steps involved: Setting up the Application: The archive sets up a desktop computer or a hosted VPS instance to install the #DAT/ActivityPub based#p2p application for "makeinghistory." Uploading Digital Files: They use the application to create an account and start scanning and uploading directories […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/user-story-makeinghistory/

User Story #makeinghistory – #OMN (Open Media Network)

Hamish Campbell Aug 12, 2025

Without trust and working flows, there’s no value at all, no matter how secure, encrypted, or elegant the tech stack. The #OMN with #indymediaback and #makeinghistory are paths hamishcampbell.com/the-omn-with...

The OMN with indymediaback and...

The OMN with indymediaback and makeinghistory are paths – Hamish Campbell

hamish campbell Aug 12, 2025

Without trust and working flows, there’s no value at all, no matter how secure, encrypted, or elegant the tech stack. The #OMN with #indymediaback and #makeinghistory are paths https://hamishcampbell.com/the-omn-with-indymediaback-and-makeinghistory-are-paths/