A word on our virtual town hall from NOW!'s our campaign manager, Laura
Dear friends,
This week, we held a virtual town hall with Taiwan's Digital Minister Audrey Tang!
Audrey Tang is a free software programmer and civic hacker who became Digital Minister in 2016. With her team, she has been working on youth engagement, battling misinformation and using tech to respond to the coronavirus outbreak, while constantly innovating how to do politics and linking with citizens. Specifically, during the event, we talked about the importance of innovating democracy to ensure that citizens are not left out and they are contributing to what democracy looks like. Additionally, we touched upon the ways in which Taiwan has managed to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, with very little repercussion on the country and yet left out from the WHO meetings.
If you have missed the event, you can rewatch it here!
As Minister Tang said, "we are providing the people of Hong Kong a safe space to voice their fears, in the same way, that the Hong Kong people offered a lot of help when Taiwan was first democratised in the 1980s." In fact, in recent month, countries across the world have cracked down on rights and liberties to "deal with" COVID-19, and China has given a final blow to democracy in Hong Kong.
As such, understanding how to best use digital democracy tools to advance the pro-democracy struggle is more important than ever! Help us by joining our campaign on democracy here, and push for countries around the world to unite to protect, safeguard and innovate democracy.
Thank you,
Laura