Dems Find Genius Way To Broadcast Sit-In After Republicans Turn Off Cameras
Democrats from the House of Representatives are staging a sit-in on the Congress floor on Wednesday.
The sit-in was started by Congressman John Lewis. The House Democrats are doing this to try and force a vote on gun control measures in a tactic similar to a filibuster the Senate Democrats held last week.
The sit-in started when representatives began chanting "no bill, no break" after the Pledge of Allegiance was held.
With this, the Republicans in the House announced the House was in a recess. This move shut off the cameras that live-stream what is happening on the House floor as well as the microphones.
So effectively, this sit-in would be happening, but you'd only know if you were there.
More and more people joined the sit-in, including senators.
All this excitement was going on, but there was no way to see it. You could see photos from people's Twitters and Instagrams, but you couldn't hear or see what was happening in real time.
At least, you couldn't see what was happening until the Democrats started turning to social media.
Dems in the room began streaming the proceedings on Periscope and Facebook Live. Without the House cameras, C-SPAN started showing these livestreams.
This is a truly incredible thing to be happening. This is what the future feels like.
It's also the potential of online streaming. The Arab Spring was a prime example of what can happen when you are able to show a large number of people and the on-the-ground reality via livestreams, photos and other forms of social media.
Obviously, this is a less intense and pressing version of the Arab Spring, but it's the same idea: You still get to see something the authorities tried to block from you.
Without these streams, we'd all be missing out on the action. This is transparency. This is a very cool thing happening right now.
On C-SPAN, the livestreams show various politicians standing up to the podium on the House floor and giving speeches about gun control. They are passionate and moving, and we can all see them because of social media.
As much as we all have fun with streaming and social media platforms, they can be used in really cool, groundbreaking ways. They give us all ways to see what we otherwise wouldn't. They give us all ways to see things the people in charge don't want us to see.
The C-SPAN feed isn't perfect, as live-streaming tends to be. The channel has to stop the feed every so often to re-establish the video connection, but you can still see a majority of what's going on where the cameras and microphones are off.
It's awesome people on the House floor thought to use streaming, and it's even more awesome C-SPAN put the streams on TV.
