As I said last month, my online activism completed ten years. This activism began in June of 2006 with I doing summaries from Newsweek magazine that I read in the municipal library and then rewrote them in my email and sent to some persons that I knew had an interested in the issues and in the English language. This was the case with the articles: "Lessons from Locke", "Still a Lot to Learn," "Correa's curriculum," and the "Dark Side of Globalization." In that time, I accessed Internet in the Infocenter at UFJF, where I kept accessing till 2011, Only in January of 2012, I started accessing at home. For the past ten years, I have been doing summaries of articles, reports and books. It is a good way for me to practice reading and writing English and in the same time educate myself and others about important issues that concern everybody. And those who do not know English and want to read, they can use the Google translator. The issues that I have been writing in my activism has remained the same since the beginning. They are: the economy in Brazil and in the Latin America. Importance of quality in education with its consequencies in democracy and in the development. The importance of an effective and efficient democracy and how to achieve this. The importance of human rights for democracy, for justice and for citizenship. The importance of political participation directly and indiretly. The importance of activism for democracy, for human rights and other issues. We can also have learnt about remarkable writers that influenced the world literature and other issues beyond literature. I have done summaries of many books, since 2006 and I have learnt a lot about all these issues that I have written about. and those who read my blog have learnt a lot too. The important writers that I have written and we have known them better, are: Charles Dickens, George Orwell, J.D. Salinger, Machado de Assis, Nathanael Hawthorne, Honoré de Balzac, Aldous Huxley, Voltaire, Gyorg Lukacs, Thomas Mann, Alexis de Tocquevill, Dante Alighieri, Mark Twain, Jane Austen, Jack London, Euclides da Cunha, Charlotte Bronte, and recently George Bernard Shaw. Also I wrote as a way to celebrate the anniversary of: Brazilian Constitution, United Nations, The protestst in June of 2013, and the Independence of Ireland. As I said before, I have read many books, and to remember these are some books that I have summarized: The first was, "A Short History of the World," by the famous fiction writer, H.G.Wells. I put on the blog, the chapter where he described the development achieved by Germany after investment in education in the 1870 and 1880 decades. The second book I summarized was, "Latin America 2040, Breaking Away from Complacency," this book says that many countries in Latin America is stuck in the 'middle income trap' and only investment in education and smart policies of development will raise the L.A. economic growth rates. The thid was the book, "Manufacturing the Future: The Next Era of Global and Innovation." This book is about the importance of R&D and innovation to development. The fourth book was "Raising Student Learning in Latin America: The Challenge for the 21st Century." The fifth book was "The Theory of the Novel," by Gyorg Lucaks. This book, I first read many times the Portuguese edition in the university. Then for my TCC I read again, the Brazilian edition, and for the summary on the blog, I read online the American edition. This book is really good, and help us to analyse fiction. The sixth book was, "Civil Society and Social Movement: Building Sustainable Democracies in Latin America." This book is about the necessity to increase citizen engagement in politics to strength democracy. In order to achieve this is essential that community organizaions, social movements and NGOs can be able to gain access to the halls of power. The seventh book was, "Democracies in Development: Politics and Reform in Latin America." This book is about how is essential to develop policies that are responsive to the will of the people. And the importance of a well-organized civil society and an independent media to monitor government, expose human rights violations and to bring political accountability. But institutions and policies that are good from the standpoint will have a limited impact if not accompanied by civil education and campaigns against abuse of power, government corruption and mismanagement. The development of democracy must be a concern in our everyday life, because only with a effective democracy, the voice of the people are heard, the human rights are respected, by the way, during this ten years of activism, I have posted many summaries proving the connection between human rights, democracy, justice and development. It is very important that everybody is aware to respect human rights in order to improve democracy, and justice. The eighth book summarized was, "The History of Human Rights." This book tell us how the idea of the people have rights was strongly developed during the 19th century. And how important they are to the people can live with dignity, freedom, equality, justice and peace. These were the first eight books I summarized, there were many others after them, but they were summarized recently, so I think it is not necessary to remember them. It has not been easy to maintain this activism for a decade, I do not know anybody else who keep a activism for so many years, a decade, in a row. Usually I read and publish the summaries on the weekend, it is when I have more spare time. But in order to do this, I have to sacrifice other things that I could be doing in my scarce spare time. I am not complaining about this, I already have more serious things to complain about. And whatever happens this year, I will keep doing summaries in my blog. I will try to keep it for as long as possible, if possible for the rest of my life. I really enjoy to see that people are learning something with me, something very important to their present and future, something very important to our democracy, our life as dignified citizens and very important to our history as a civilized society in this digital era, when there are millions of witnesses commenting about the right and wrong, the injustice and justice, the hipocrisy and the truth, the wise answer and the stupid answer, the courageous and the coward, the solidarity and the selfish indifference. And because millions interconnect with each other every day, we are being judged all the time, we could become famous without knowing about it. Because this, we have our responbility increased about the protection of our dignity, our justice, our rights while honest citizens, because, for example, a serious human rights violation happens, if there is justice for the victims, more justice could spread, but if not, a precedent of injustice could do more victims and in the end only sorrow and fear will exist.
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