How Green Is My Silicon Valley: Eco-radicals, labor agitators, anarchists

[Chuck0 <chuck@tao.ca>]

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Actually, activists didn't lag behind corporations prior to Seattle.
Activist websites became quite widespread in the early days of the Web,
preceding the huge corporate rush onto the web. Activists have been
using the Internet, chiefly email, to organize actions since the 80s.
The reason why we are so effective now is because we have spent a decade
building up the activist IT infrastructure.

This didn't happen overnight; it's just that the boss media finally
noticed.

Chuck0

---------------
How Green Is My Silicon Valley
by Kayte Van Scoy

Eco-radicals, labor agitators, anarchists: The '60s are definitely back.
Blame it on the Internet.

It was the beginning or the end of something; everyone seems sure of
that. The November 30 protests against the World Trade Organization in
Seattle were heralded as many things: proof of corporate world
domination, the rebirth of civil disobedience, and the beginning of an
anarchist revolution, to name a few. However, absent from analyses of
the "battle of Seattle" was the realization that the Internet may have
kick-started the languishing tradition of social activism in the United
States.

Before Seattle, social activists lagged far behind the corporate giants
when it came to the Internet, offering dry, information-heavy Web sites
that weren't particularly successful at raising money or drumming up
membership. Enter sites like the Direct Action Network, Protest.net, and
Indymedia.org, working together through the sort of loose alliances
typical of the Internet. Rallying against a common
enemy--corporations--the activists surprised even themselves by using
only word of mouse to gather the fiercest protest the United States had
seen in years. Where did these rabble-rousers come from?

Continues at:
http://www.zdnet.com:80/pccomp/stories/all/0,6605,2429462,00.html

-- 
<< Chuck0 >>
Homepage: http://flag.blackened.net/chuck0/home/
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Free Leonard Peltier!
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"A society is a healthy society only to the degree 
that it exhibits anarchistic traits." 
        - Jens Bjørneboe


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