Tuesday, June 01, 2004

Spirit of America

Jeff Jarvis and Britt Blaser both told me about this really unique effort to help Iraqi people -- person by person -- to get back on their feet.

Let me start helping by letting you know more about it. Dan Gillmor in Sunday's San Jose Mercury News wrote this excellent piece.

Read what Jeff wrote here, and this is a sample in case you're link-fatigued this morning and don't feel like trotting over to Buzzmachine:
This is important work on so many levels: As Dan says, no matter what you think about the war, we have a human obligation to help the Iraqi people. But it is also enlightened self-interest: If we can help the Iraqis build their nation and their democracy and if we can connect with them on a personal level -- if, to be blunt, we can demonstrate that Americans are not ugly -- then we create a foothold for democracy, freedom, modernity, civilization, and just friendship in the Middle East.


And here's the link for Spirit of America.

I love Jeff's elevator pitch: "Think of it as open-source nation-building."