In the wake of a tragedy, those who are closest to its source often look with disbelief at the masses of people who suddenly care and, in their own attempts to process grief or anger ask something akin to: Where were you before?

That sentiment showed up a couple times in my Twitter feed in the hours ensuing Aaron Swartz’s suicide and the subsequent media spotlight on both him and the trial whose pressures many believe contributed to his death. It’s a completely understandable sentiment, but I want to propose a different take.

For many (many, many) years, the prison-industrial complex has been ravaging American society. The prosecutorial overreach in Swartz’s case (more on that can be found on Unhandled Exception) was not an isolated incident in this context. You can find the same overreach that existed in Swartz’s trial in every zero tolerance policy in schools, you can find it in our skyrocketing prison population in general — and it should make you enraged because the punitive parts of our system do not punish equally.

If you are HSBC and you have been involved in money laundering, you pay a fine; if you are a six-year-old who brings a camping utensil to school, you get suspended; if you are a poor 13-year-old who is late to school, you have to go to court with your family and face a $350 fine.

We can all be asked “where were you?” when we discover or become involved in something we didn’t know before, but that isn’t the answer that will bridge movements and make the people who oppose an inequitable system stronger. The real answer is “Welcome.”

Welcome to this part of the fight against violations of individual liberty, welcome to this part of the fight against commercialization of knowledge. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

The real question is: “What do you know that we don’t know?” There is a great deal that people who have been involved with schools know that the Electronic Frontier Foundation doesn’t know, and vice versa. The same goes for people working on issues in the prison system.

Those of us who harassed our legislators over SOPA and talk the ears off our non-techie friends about speech, privacy, and consumer rights in a technologically-mediated world are situated in one corner of a much larger battle with a much larger system. We have natural allies in education activists who work to mobilize against the school to prison pipeline and the increasingly prison-like schools (replete with police, metal detectors, fines, etc.), among others. It seems that the tragedies the U.S. has seen in the last couple of months — the Newtown school shooting and the ensuing talk of armed teachers in schools or a national database of mentally ill people, and the increasingly visible and serious problems inherent in Swartz’s trial and others like it — are intertwined.

We should take a look at each other’s information, see what we share, and say “Welcome. What can I learn from you?”

With the massive amount of twitter activity on the topic, I’m sure you’ve seen that Amazon.com (I won’t link) has gotten some sizable damage from deleting the sales rank of not only LGBT books (academic, erotic, plain old fiction, any and all of it period), but of feminist books and books like “The Joy of Sex.” This means that books sink to the bottom in search results or aren’t displayed at all (Bastard Out of Carolina comes in 5th at Amazon, and in its rightful place of 1st on Barnes and Noble, the new non-fiction book, “Unfriendly Fire,” on military policy and don’t ask don’t tell does not even show up on Amazon’s actual book listing now – only the Kindle version is returned in the search results), and that they don’t show up on the main pages if they’re top sellers.

If you look at the #amazonfail twitter search, you’ll see all the links to more information on what’s going on.

What I want to highlight is that homophobia is not a new phenomenon at Amazon.com. Many years ago – ten years ago, to be exact – Amazon Bookstore here in Minneapolis sued Amazon.com for trademark infringement. The dot com’s legal strategy? Make Amazon Bookstore out to be a bunch of lesbians selling lesbian books and dismiss the suit that way. Nevermind that Amazon Bookstore had best selling literature on its shelves, and in recent years had an extensive children’s section to serve the population of the South Minneapolis neighborhood it was in – no, “feminist” and “women-owned” meant “lesbian” to Amazon.com and its lawyers and they played that one out to the end.

I don’t need to repeat the excellent article Salon.com wrote back in 1999, but I would like to note that ten years ago questioning people under oath about their personal sexuality was far more intimidating than it would be today. And it’s not like it’s an easy topic now.

I will say this – ten years ago, the Internet wouldn’t have been filled with outraged people on Twitter. Things are really changing. And I’m grateful for tools like Twitter that allow for massive dissemination of information at lightning speed. Amazing.

Amazon has been an #amazonfail for years, you just didn’t know it. Thanks to Twitter and the Internet, now you do. Don’t forget it.

Shop local, folks. You can start at IndieBound if you don’t know your local booksellers.

From one of my incomparable Web colleagues here at the U:

This came up in a meeting today and I hadn’t seen it yet. I’m pretty sure you don’t care about how (in detail) it’s done, but suffice it to say that a programmer took Google Maps and housing information from Craigslist and made an interactive map that shows you, on the map, where all the rentals in your area are and pops up any pictures available when you click on one. It’s the coolest thing ever. Well, maybe not ever. But it’s cool. It’s all at HousingMaps.com.