huridocs-tech The role of email activism - In depth assessment

Edited/Distributed by HURINet - The Human Rights Information Network
---------------------------------------------------------------------
## author     : papadop@PEAK.ORG
## date       : 13.01.99
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Anatomy of a very nineties revolution
Global.conflict.Internet By John Vidal On January 1 1994 the
Zapatistas rose against the Mexican state in what is now
known as the first 'cyber' or 'Net' war. Even as the
government mobilised its army to occupy the state of Chiapas
and tried to deny the revolutionaries access to the mass
media, they and their supporters were mobilising words and
images to disseminate ideas electronically.

The Net was used in several ways. To begin with, it became
the only way of posting the Zapatistas' concerns and
programmes for economic and social reform which were being
underplayed, ignored or suppressed by the mainstream media.

'Information was downloaded on to the Net, gathered from
other sources and transformed into flyers, pamphlets,
newsletters, articles and books detailing the torture, rape,
executions and other violence being perpetrated by the
police, military and the hired goons of the big ranchers.
The material fuelled marches and vigils around the world,'
says US academic Harry Cleaver, contributor to Zapatistas!
(Pluto Press).

It was then used to promote passionate discussion about
society, the failures of global capitalism and market-driven
neo-liberalism around the world. The same computer networks
now post gigabytes of articles, speeches, reports,
discussions and documents. They also report the 'Encuentras'
(Encounters) that are now held by the Zapatistas across the
world each year.

Clearly the Zapatistas are winning the battle of ideas. Five
years on, many of their concerns and analysies of poverty,
land rights, justice, exploitation, the environment and
society are part of the vocabulary of new democracy
movements in many countries.

Meanwhile the creaking, vulnerable Mexican state has tried
to counter attack what Cleaver calls 'the autonomous
appropriation of cyberspace'. It has been accused of
tampering with computer communications, with networks 'going
down' at critical moments, monitoring the net closely for
counter-insurgency and trying to de-legitimise the
Zapatistas' arguments.

'Both sides are now active in a cyber-spatial dimension of a
war which has raged out of Chiapas across Mexico and the
world,' says Cleaver. 'They and their supporters have woven
a new electronic fabric of struggle to carry revolution
round the world.'

=========

E-mail and the Net are revolutionising the way environment,
human rights and social justice groups work.

John Vidal on the new democracy and ideas emerging from
cyberspace and their potential to counter oppression

Guardian (London) Wednesday January 13, 1999: Twelve
environmental justice protesters and a video activist walked
into Shell UK's London HQ and occupied three offices last
Monday morning. Almost the first thing that Undercurrents
reporter Roddy Mansfield did was to set up his small digital
camera and link it to a palm-top computer and a mobile
phone. Despite Shell turning off the electricity and cutting
the phone lines, within minutes he was broadcasting the
protest live on the Internet, and e-mailing to the
mainstream press. By 4 pm when the last people were evicted
five 'broadcasts' had been made.

Reportage of the future? A new tool of democracy? Illegal,
irresponsible behaviour? Take your pick, but just as
sixties' students took over printing presses to further
disseminate their political message, so today's activists
have turned as one to new electronic technologies.

The Web and e-communications have revolutionised
environmental and social justice campaigning and, arguably,
helped to nurture a new north-south dialogue about
democracy, social justice, development and human rights in
an increasingly globalised world.

Many non-governmental groups now depend on the Web and
electronic mail to motivate, activate and communicate their
uncensored messages. Most groups have camcorders and Web
sites; all have e-mail.

The obvious advantage of electronic communication is the
ability it gives campaigners to network quickly and cheaply.
Using e-mail and 'list servers' - where the same message can
be sent to any number of electronic addresses in a few
minutes - information can be passed around the world so that
other groups can be alerted and global campaigns mounted
quickly.

A classic case of electronic media being used as a
grassroots weapon of democracy, says Tony Juniper of Friends
of the Earth, was the massive international campaign to
ambush the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). If
this inter-governmental agreement had been, as expected,
nodded through Western parliaments, it would have superseded
national laws. It was being debated in secrecy by OECD
countries until a French environmental NGO exposed what was
going on.

Within days, the ramifications of a treaty which would have
given massive legal and economic advantage to transnational
corporations around the world, were being assessed by
environmental and other groups. The MAI was interpreted as
anti-democratic, unjust and a serious threat to civil
society.

The campaign to stop it depended on the Web and spread like
wildfire. After two years, more than 600 citizens' groups,
including unions, workers parties, consumer organisations,
development and environmental groups in dozens of countries
were exchanging information, co-ordinating opposition and
alerting politicians, the media and civil servants.

'Governments were ambushed by the detail of the information
coming from other countries. I could speak to the British
Government about the situation in France before they knew
it. It [the campaign] created chaos, undermining individual
countries' positions,' says Juniper. By November
negotiations had been abandoned.

Campaigners have also learned how to put companies into a
spin. Shell, BP, Rio Tinto, McDonald's, Monsanto and many
others with global ambitions have met ferocious global
attacks in the past few years. Equally, the Net has been
used as a defence by many campaigners trying to save
wildlife, countryside or cultures. Indigenous groups and
southern NGOs have all learned who their friends are in the
north and have been quick to appeal for help, and many
northern groups have learned tactics from developing
countries.

The globalised Web has become, says Juniper, 'the most
potent weapon in the toolbox of resistance to globalism and
the rampant free market.' This is ironic because globalism
itself depends on the same technology to whiz trillions of
dollars around the world every day. 'It has encouraged
activism. People are more aware of what others are doing,'
he says.

For protesters it is heaven to be able to disseminate
information across the world without having to persuade
journalists, programme makers or editors. 'Our resistance is
now as transnational as capital itself,' says a member of
Reclaim the Streets (RTS) in London. RTS is the British link
in a loose coalition of groups called People's Global
Action. These come together, via the Web, for co-ordinated
events like last year's Global Street Party which was
celebrated in 30 places in 20 countries on the same day. On
June 18 this year, there will be a series of co-ordinated
demonstrations in the world's financial centres.

Just as corporate globalisation and a plethora of
international laws have led to a broadly similar
'neo-liberal' national politics around the world, so a
globalisation of opposition is developing along with new
links between NGOs.

'E-communication allows far greater dialogue between
like-minded groups and individuals, encouraging a consensus
of views. Remarkably similar political and philosophical
critiques of large-scale developments, corporate affairs and
capitalism itself are now being developed in rich and poor
countries,' says one commentator.

The new dialogue is often leaving flat-footed mainstream
media lagging. Within hours of the Far Eastern smogs, the
Amazon burnings, and flood disasters in Bangladesh, Web
sites were full of eye-witness accounts, and e-mails were
alerting aid agencies and development groups.

'E-mail meant we could respond far more quickly and
effectively as well as inform the public here,' said a
Christian Aid spokesperson. 'We knew what relief was
necessary far earlier and could develop rehabilitataion
programmes quickly.' The days when media were controlled by
a few are effectively over. In the new world of
e-communication, they are seen as increasingly elite,
censorious agents of the establishment. Organisations like
Oneworld, based near Oxford, transmit reams of information
on the environment and social justice, receiving more than a
million hits a week on their Web site which connects more
than 250 social and environmental justice groups worldwide.
Perhaps the most astonishing is McSpotlight website which in
less than three years claims it has been visited more than
65 million times by people wanting to know about that dark
side of McDonald's The success of the sites does not
necessarily translate into change: McDonald's has continued
to expand its outlets and profits in that time and the
environment is still being trashed everywhere.

The downside is also important. Overload of information is
now common and the democracy of the Web can be at the
expense of reliability of the information it offers. 'It's
difficult to know who to trust, who is reliable and what
information is correct,' says one development worker. 'We
have to be on guard all the time.' Much of the new media is
avowedly partial, subjective and committed. Pressure groups
prefer to give only one point of view which can be dogmatic
and often hysterical. This, say some, is a natural response
to the equally flawed mainstream media's long neglect of
certain issues, and the equally biased points of view of
many journalists. 'It allows us to say what we want to say,'
says Roddy Mansfield of Undercurrents. 'That's democracy.'


----------------------------------
Send mail for the 'huridocs-tech' list to 'huridocs-tech@hrea.org'.
Mail administrative request to 'majordomo@hrea.org'.
For additional assistance, send mail to: 'owner-huridocs-tech@hrea.org'.
Archives of previous messages posted to the list can be found at:
http://www.human-rights.net/huridocs-tech.