What Can Happen In A Year…
by Adriano Contreras | Friday, February 5th, 2010

I’ll tell you something. Today we’re celebrating 40,000 new hits to TheSitch.com and Mike “The Sitch” Sorrentino of MTV’s latest lackluster show, “Jersey Shore”, has absolutely nothing to do with it.

In the past week we’ve had a couple dozen people stumble on the site due to Sorrentino’s just announced new fragrance (probably a mix between Jersey pollution, ocean water, and Sorrentino’s ab sweat), “The Sitch”. Another useless commodified individual producing an even more useless commodity. Still, the slight site boost in the past week pales in comparison to what we’ve been able to accomplish in the last 12 months in terms of published content and a well received graphic redesign.

It was last February that we blogged from inside the first American university to be occupied in solidarity with Gaza. It was hectic scrambling to get digital camera photographs and videos up on a (then) constrained web interface to deal with the demand for quick uploading of videos and pictures. Even dealing with the bugs inherent in Wordpress, the foundation that the site is built on. Everything changed so quickly as negotiations of demands took place.  But we managed and thousands of people visited the site during the occupation and several days after. Other sites were linking to ours and people were using reports published on our site to give concrete examples of struggle and solidarity in their coalitions and organizations.

That period was a bit of an awakening. The website was founded on the principle of giving a platform for people who otherwise have no voice. Now we really found ourselves realizing the potential for the site. But it had to be done efficiently, well written, and… pretty.

Almost a year ago, the “6 Reasons To Oppose the War in Afghanistan”, a scathing series of articles exposing the consequences of the occupation and its ideological foundations, has become the top read article on the website. Every day dozens of people enter search terms into search engines looking for the other side to the mainstream analysis on war. Some begging for questions answered and others craving some solutions. The “6 Reasons…” argues for an immediate withdrawal of occupying forces, leaving Afghans to manage Afghanistan.

And we promise to be resolute in publishing the last two parts in the coming weeks.

April we uploaded some great video content from the Northeast Campus Antiwar Network conference. Providing a political analysis of the so-called “war on terror” and laying out strategies and experiences in BDS and Palestine solidarity work. Including strategies from Hampshire College, which became the first American university to divest from Israel.

Others tried a different approach in July, when 6 members of the Viva Palestina-US convoy published their dispatches from their time in Egypt, attempting to enter Gaza and break the siege delivering thousands of dollars in aid. Again thousands flocked to the site to read up on the twists and turns around Egypt bureaucratic policies and demoralization games. Ordinary people on the streets of Cairo and within the convoy were interviewed and remembered. 24 hours in Gaza, the convoy exposed the crimes of the Israeli siege.

Again, in December, this time I sent dispatches from the convoy departing London to Gaza. I detailed the experiences of solidarity, the hardships of being on the mission, more of the Egyptian hassle and brutality, and the experience of being amongst Palestinians under siege. When the American media chose to ignore what was headline news in the Arab world, The Sitch became the outlet for the American perspective of someone on the convoy for the US.

For a blog with no real marketing campaign and absolutely no money, 40,000 hits is pretty damn awesome. Just as awesome are the people contributing to it both on a regular basis here in the States and in Gaza and the West Bank.

We want to be the place people can come to hear ordinary voices in an ordinary fashion, explaining the sitch in the current struggles and the ones to come. By arming ourselves with the politics through reading, debating, and organizing we can win battles for reform and ultimately a different world.

What can happen in a year can be remarkable and we hope to build upon what we’ve established on this second anniversary. Sorrentino can trademark “the Sitch”, that’s fine, but this one is arguably the only one you should be checking out.

- Adriano Contreras, on behalf of the team at The Sitch

Tags: Afghanistan, Gaza, Mike Sorrentino, MTV, The Sitch

5:47 am. Politics, Site News.