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

Chuck0 chuck at tao.ca
Thu Feb 24 07:34:29 PST 2000


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/ Mid-Atlantic Infoshop: http://www.infoshop.org/ Alternative Press Review: http://flag.blackened.net/apr/

Free Leonard Peltier! http://www.freepeltier.org/

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

- Jens Bjørneboe



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