Participant List with Abstracts and Roles

In Progress Description: This Article is the first to explore the interaction between cultural endeavors, social movements and law in the age of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis, Facebook, and You Tube are increasingly used for socially organizing and mobilizing traditionally marginalized groups. Art, music and culture continue to play a critical role in connecting people, communicating strategies, framing messages and refashioning narratives to help advance distributive justice for the poor and excluded. Web 2.0 mediums now enable artistic expression to connect individuals and groups, and to transmit and reframe messages between formerly disconnected and geographically isolated communities. The interaction between these Web 2.0 technologies and artistic, musical or cultural endeavors also has unique implications, not only for what law is used to facilitate social movements, but also for how law facilitates social movements Specifically, this Article will explore how low-income immigrant cultures in the U.S. have used, and are using, cultural heritage, music and art to promote greater distributive justice and human rights for low-income immigrants in the U.S. This Article will explore how communities, activists and community organizers deploy culture to frame advocacy strategies and use Web 2.0 technologies to disseminate these cultural frames or narratives. Further, it will explore how this use of arts and culture influences which laws are employed to advance social movements. Contemporary debates about law and social movements have primarily focused on the effect of law and litigation on social movements. This Article suggests that the interaction between culture, law and social movements 2.0 may impact the type of laws employed to facilitate social movements; this dynamic may shift the focus of law and organizing from traditional impactor cause-litigation towards a more expansive set of legal strategies, including more private law mechanisms. These developments may mean that law has different effects on social movements than those effects previously considered in the law and social movements literature.