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