Local Truth, Zero Cost: Best Free Community Reporting Apps

How can you collect and share the news that really matters?

How do you do this without any money, little time and few technical skills? How can you collect facts and select social media posts to get facts out quickly and accurately?

Check out these free apps and resources for Community Journalism. News for the people. By the people. Of the people.

• Padlet to crowdsource stories from people in the community. They can include photos, video clips and their comments. These are shown immediately on a map. Padlet offers both a free version that's ideal for grassroots groupds and a premium paid version with more features.
• Wakelet to add more information, text and videos relevant to your community. Wakelet also has both a free and paid version of the solution.
• Status Coup - videos from the ground
• News2Share - timely videos from the streets
• Solidarity Information Service - memes
• Cagle Cartoons - Political cartoons

Learn more about using these tools and request free help for stories about social justice and voting rights here.

"Us vs. Them": We, the People Oppose the Plunderers

Authoritarianism can’t be defined only in political or legalistic terms, as the expansion of executive power over the legislature and the judiciary. Authoritarianism is also a process of depriving the many of rights and well-being and giving the very few freedom to plunder the workforce, the earth, and treat human beings as assets to exploit. The “all for me, nothing for you” operations of regime cronies have an economic corollary. - Ruth Ben-Ghiat in LUCID

Resist

As we resist in the streets against ICE brutality and the attempts to shred our basic rights and deny our humanity, we must also proclaim that we, the people, will not be silent as Trump and the GOP collude with billionaires to re-engineer the government of the United States as their personal enrichment and power consolidation tools.

Tell the truth. Spread the truth.

Those who live with the societal ravages brought by kleptocracy know the outcomes of such trajectories. That is why, as he sat in the Siberian gulag where Vladimir Putin had placed him to end his anti-corruption activities, Alexei Navalny wrote in his diary that “we must do what they fear – tell the truth, spread the truth. This is the most powerful weapon against this regime of liars, thieves, and hypocrites. Everyone has this weapon. So make use of it.” - Ruth Ben-Ghiat in LUCID

TakeAway: Tell the truth. Spread the truth. These free apps can help.

Deepak
DemLabs

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