Want to Join a Protest? Press 'Forward'

[Chuck0 <chuck@tao.ca>]

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Wow! This is a pretty good article!

LA Times 12-20-1999
http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/19991220/t000115904.html

Want to Join a Protest? Press 'Forward' 

WTO: As the Seattle demonstrations proved, there's a quiet revolution
being organized on the Internet.

By CLANCY SIGAL

My fantasy is that, like Dr. No stroking his cat, I masterminded
the "battle in Seattle" over the World Trade Organization. The reality
is
that on my personal computer I watched, then joined in, the drama of
organizing Seattle's shutdown two weeks ago.

My access to the Internet--the key organizing tool in bringing tens of
thousands to the port city in protest over the 135-nation WTO
meeting--gave me unparalleled political power. I did it comfortably from
my office chair. Lenin had to stand on a soap box freezing his backside
in snow blizzards. All I had to do was press the "F" for the forward
button and "mobilize the masses" at my fingertip.

As the legendary labor martyr Joe Hill might have said: Don't mourn
for me, computerize.

I allocate 15 minutes a day to browse the Web. From the free news-nets
I've signed up with--diverse organizations like Hackworth (a dissident
military group), the International Workers of the World, AlterNet,
Left-org and whatnot--I can usually figure out what's going on among
activists I've never met. These computer-literate comrades I know only
as
"Michael P" or "Flint Jones" or "Starhawk" the pagan witch. Even Gus
Hall, the Communist Party's leader-for-life, has a flashy Web page.

There is an unacknowledged youth revolt out there. Anyone who plays
Nintendo can join the revolution. Last month, for example, in the
largest
demonstration against a military facility for a decade, thousands of
computer-tied students and dropouts gathered at the U.S. Army School of
the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga., dubbed "school of assassins" because
it trained so many Latin American military death-squad soldiers.

Prior to Seattle, across my screen, at lightning speed, flitted
messages from Nader's Public Citizen team, the Sierra Club, United World
Federation, the steelworkers' union, Teamsters, Sea Turtle Restoration
Group, Seattle Lesbian Avengers, various stripes of anarchism, "free
Mumia" adherents, a group dubbed "Art and Revolution"--a patchwork of
interests and philosophical camps. Hundreds of high school kids ditched
school by agreeing, via e-mail, to meet in Seattle.

The extraordinary thing was the level of literacy and awareness. Even
among 13-year-olds, there was genuine debate about unsexy subjects like
trade liberalization, tariff barriers, agricultural subsidies and export
regulations and fierce but friendly arguments about nonviolence versus
trashing "capitalist property." An electronic consensus was achieved,
namely, the WTO delegates' habit of secrecy was odious, and power
without
responsibility was uncool. It was as clarion-clear as a Tom Paine
pamphlet.

At the flick of my wrist I forwarded e-mail messages all over the
country and to Europe. Sometimes I entered the debate. More often, I
used
my computer as a message center, bringing together like-minded
unaffiliated persons. Lord knows how many romantic liaisons I
unwittingly
assisted between free-wheeling high schoolers. ("See you in Seattle,
Alice! I'm the guy with a purple skateboard!")

Perhaps the most enduring legacy of Seattle, and the Fort Benning
sit-in, is the creation, mainly by argument and action, conducted
electronically, of a fairly coherent vision of a better American future.
In 1917, John Reed had to sweat out interminable meetings in drafty
halls
to help bring a new world to birth. I sip my latte and punch in "R" for
reply, and I have joined the revolution.

Clancy Sigal Is a Screenwriter in Los Angeles

-- 
Chuck0

Mid-Atlantic Infoshop
http://www.infoshop.org/

Leonard Peltier Freedom Month 
Executive Clemency For Peltier!
http://www.freepeltier.org/lpfreedommonth.html

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now!
http://www.infoshop.org/gulag/mumia_idx.html

"A society is a healthy society only to the degree 
that it exhibits anarchistic traits." 
        - Jens Bjørneboe


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