[Air-l] FC: How anti-Iraq war protesters employed technology, from NYT

[Michael Gurstein]

Pace Gina and others... I think the article below provides some extremely
useful insight into the role that the Internet played, is playing and will
play in the variety of political transformations that are taking place.

The demonstrations were, we should note, occuring on day 1.5 of a war that
hadn't yet happened and yet according to CNN who referred us to their
website for confirmation, there were significant "anti" activities in some
603 (not sure where the 3 came from) communities across the globe.

Some observations:
	* pre-Internet, we would probably not have known (certainly not in a timely
fashion) about 90% of those activities as they occurred mostly in places
where AP/Reuters and the traditional national/international media never
tread
	* pre-Internet, almost certainly 90% of those activities might never have
happened since the people in those communities would not have expected that
their activities in Peoria and Penticton would register on any sort of
international demo chart and thus they would have been invisible to all but
the direct participants
	* pre-Internet, at day 1.5 of a war that hadn't happened yet, the turnout
would have been in the thousands rather than the millions and would have
represented the success of organizing efforts among the league of the
committed (the usual cast of fringe political parties and a few politically
active unions) rather than the infinitely larger and much more diverse (and
ultimately much more powerful) league of the conscious and concerned.

I think the results that Gina presented are an indication of the limitations
of attempting to study phenomena which are emergent, systemic and
tranformative with purely (and dare I say, narrowly) empirical methodology
and tools that are meant to study phenomena that are incremental and
particularistic.

Best,

Mike Gurstein

-----------------------------------------------------------

>Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 18:58:29 -0800 (PST)
>From: "Jennifer 8. Lee" <[spamproofed]@nytimes.com>
>To: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/weekinreview/23JLEE.html
>
>CRITICAL MASS
>How Protesters Mobilized So Many and So Nimbly
>By JENNIFER 8. LEE
>
>
>WASHINGTON — Before the global protests against war in Iraq last weekend,
>organizers were already making conference calls and passing out fliers for
>their next set of demonstrations, including one scheduled for next
Saturday,
>outside the White House.
>
>But then, the worldwide protests drew millions of people onto the streets,
>from San Francisco to London, and the Bush administration hit some
diplomatic
>roadblocks. Sensing delay in White House momentum, the organizers
themselves
>paused and decided to make a strategic move, delaying the demonstrations
from
>March 1 until March 15. They spread the news the old-fashioned way, through
>alternative radio stations and word of mouth, and the instantaneous way,
>through Web sites and e-mail messages.
>
>Organizing a protest is fundamentally about logistics: where do people
meet,
>how do they get on a bus, who will order portable toilets. Obviously, the
>Internet, like fax machines and copiers, has made the tasks easier. Before
>last weekend's protests, for example, people registered online for buses to
>New York. And a mass e-mail notice was sent out to New York protesters,
>informing them about public bathrooms in Midtown Manhattan and giving them
a
>number to call in case of arrest.
>
>But the Internet has become more than a mere organizing tool; it has
changed
>protests in a more fundamental way, by allowing mobilization to emerge from
>free-wheeling amorphous groups, rather than top-down hierarchical ones.
>
>In the 60's, the anti-Vietnam War movement grew gradually. "It took four
and
>a half years to multiply the size of the Vietnam protests twentyfold," said
>Todd Gitlin, a sociology professor at Columbia University and longtime
>liberal activist.
>
>The first nationwide antiwar march in 1965 attracted about 25,000 people.
By
>1969, the protests had grown to half a million. But increasing the numbers
>required weeks and months of planning, using snail mail, phone calls and
>fliers.
>
>"This time the same thing has happened in six months," Mr. Gitlin said.
Even
>though momentum behind the demonstrations didn't grow until a month ago,
>after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's presentation to the United
>Nations, more than 800,000 people turned out in 150 rallies in the United
>States last weekend, from 100 in Davenport, Iowa, to an estimated 350,000
in
>New York City. In Europe, more than 1.5 million protested.
>
>The protests had no single identified leader and no central headquarters.
>Social theorists have a name for these types of decentralized networks:
>heterarchies. In contrast to hierarchies, with top-down structures,
>heterarchies are made up of previously isolated groups that can connect to
>one another and coordinate.
>
>Because no central decision-making authority exists, protests can be
>localized and can appeal to new groups and individuals who don't live in
>areas where social protest information would typically reach. For example,
>Mothers Acting Up was started two years ago by four women around a kitchen
>table in Boulder, Colo., a liberal college town. But with their Internet
>site, www.mothersactingup.org, they have been able to reach 600 like-minded
>members across the country, many of whom participated in marches last week.
>
>Technology also spreads word of rallies to countries where free expression
is
>limited. In Singapore, where the government does not allow demonstrations
at
>the American Embassy, cellphone text messages went out, exhorting
recipients
>to gather at the embassy anyway. The text messages, which work like mass
>e-mail messaging to mobile devices, attracted at least a half-dozen
>placard-carrying demonstrators at the gates at the appointed time. The
police
>rounded them up for questioning.
>
>"Whenever a new communications technology lowers the threshold for groups
to
>act collectively, new kinds of institutions emerge," said Howard Rheingold,
>the author of "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution," which documents
>self-organizing and leaderless movements. "We are seeing the combination of
>network communications and social networks."
>
>His book tells the story of how cellphone text messaging helped bring down
>Joseph Estrada, the Philippine president who was ousted after protests in
>2001 over corruption. Text messaging advertised instant rallies, encouraged
>people to protest by wearing black and provided updates on the impeachment
>trial.
>
>(In the same way, cellphone messaging is potentially alarming for the
Chinese
>government. Officials do not have centralized control over the network and
>therefore cannot censor it, the way they do the Internet.)
>
>E-mail lists have allowed individuals to create groups that defy geography
>and time. Thousands of people have joined hundreds of antiwar lists, and
>diverse streams of messages fly back and forth quickly, vastly different
from
>the information flow in hierarchies. Since the beginning of the year, 300
>messages have been posted on a popular antiwar list in Sydney, Australia,
>that has almost 900 members. The notes range from solicitations for
donations
>to United Nations updates to appeals for local volunteers.
>
>This is mass mobilization, but also nimble mobilization. Protesting a war
>that hasn't begun requires a constant eye on the calendar of government
>action. And the movement's flexibility maximizes its impact, organizers
say.
>A protest date can easily be moved, timed to affect the latest diplomatic
>maneuver.
>
>"We are trying to stay a step ahead of the administration by our planning,"
>said Damu Smith, chairman of Black Voices for Peace, one of hundreds of
>groups involved in last week's demonstrations. And staying ahead of the
game
>"is absolutely strategically central in our ability to be effective in what
>we are doing."
>
>Military theorists are fond of saying that future warfare will revolve
around
>social and communication networks. Antiwar groups have found that this is
>true for their work as well.
>
>
>
>
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