Cyber subversion

...And please remember that we can't consider articles unless they're accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope...

...Over the last decade especially, ITs have dramatically transformed possibilities for political organization and action in an increasingly global polity...

...4) Notes and footnotes should also be typed double-spaced, on a separate sheet...

...Of course, activists have launched critiques of Gateway (see www.brettonwoodsproject.org and, for the official take, www.worldbank.org/gateway...

...Activists disrupted Internet sales by the company, a corporate participant in the World Economic Forum, for seven hours as corporate officials and authorities wrung their hands over the difficulty of proving the guilt of suspected offenders...

...If there's a delay, it's because a few editors are reading your article...

...Other uses of cyber subversion resemble the anti-MAI campaign in their efforts to disrupt business as usual by opening the conference rooms of the World Trade Organization (WTO), World Bank, and IMF and making the substance of international economic negotiations visible to the global public...

...S26") protest against the world's financial institutions, Prague's ubiquitous Internet cafés hummed with activity as activists reported to their networks back home...

...Roberto Bissio, one of the people responsible for advancing electronic communications in third world activism, claims, "Contrary to `common sense' belief, the spread of electronic mail and conferences in the NGO [nongovernmental organization] communities and the international institutions they deal with was the result of pressure from the South to the North and not the other way around...

...To Our Contributors A few suggestions: (1) Be sure to keep a copy of your manuscript...

...World Bank officials are especially quick to emphasize the importance of their institution in bringing the new technologies to third world countries so that they can compete in a global economy...

...The powerful use of ITs to disrupt the neoliberal economic agenda was first demonstrated by the 1998 campaign against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI...

...John W. Foster and Anita Anand (Ottawa: The United Nations Association, 1999...

...In contrast to the large protests typical of the 1970s and 1980s, there were very few mass-produced placards and borrowed slogans here...

...48 n DISSENT / Spring 2001 PLAN B Organizing in an Internet Age Organizing is clearly changing as this new medium alters both the range of people who speak to one another and the form of their communication...

...IMC meetings help ensure that different aspects of the protests are covered by the loosely knit team of reporters and videographers...

...Electronic Monkey-Wrenching ITs are providing the tools for activist networks that seek to disrupt corporate and governmental operations...

...In the 1998 EarthAction survey, 80 percent of northern and 51 percent of southern affiliates reported use of the Internet or electronic mail...

...The MAI was developed in secret negotiations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), where the absence of third world voices would help ensure that the treaty passed without substantial revisions...

...Or this new kind of direct action might involve the creation of fake Web sites designed to lure visitors from official sites and expose them to alternative messages about a company or international organization...

...The great engine of the new global economy, like the newspapers of an earlier era, supports both the expansion of markets and the rise of citizens' networks organized to change economic and social realities...

...Consensus positions can be negotiated via electronic listserves in order to make more efficient use of the limited meeting time transnational activists have...

...Activists dramatized the potential of this strategic use of technology through the innovation of Independent Media Centers (IMCs), designed to "bypass the corporate media machine" by creating opportunities for activists themselves to report about the movement (www.indymedia.org ). Introduced at the Seattle protests, IMCs are press centers established at the site of a mass protest or in cities with active movement groups...

...3) Type your ms double-spaced, with wide margins...

...As the world's financial elites regroup following a tumultuous year, they will likely adjourn their meetings to places less open to the disruptive protests of Seattle, Washington, D.C., Melbourne, Prague, and elsewhere...

...Local groups are encouraged to post reports of their actions to movement Web sites, where they help amplify the perceived success of each day...

...In the weeks surrounding the September 26 (or John Markoff, "The Internet and Electronic Communications," in Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History, eds...

...Recent examples of these are posted at www.gatt.org , www.whirledbank.org, or www.olympisc.com . Web "sit-ins" are also common as a way to block access to a target's site...

...There is talk within the World Bank of abandoning the annual conference in order to avoid public contestation...

...Films made by IMC activists in Seattle and Prague have been used in part to substantiate protesters' claims of police abuses and use of agents provocateurs...

...Elites nevertheless still hope to promote their economic model with institutions that cannot endure transparency and democratic decision making...

...This ongoing dialectic between cyber subversion and the growing concentration of power will shape the politics of the new millennium...

...In an article entitled "Does protest need a vision...

...Earlier this year, Nike's Web site was taken over by protesters who encouraged would-be Nike customers to join protests against the World Economic Forum meeting in Melbourne...

...While many groups mark Global Days of Action with disruptions of local financial districts, other activists are inspired to engage in the electronic equivalent of guerrilla warfare— disrupting the routines of political and capitalist elites by creating simple nuisances, such as E-mail or fax jams that generate masses of fax or E-mail messages to targets, disrupting business as usual...

...Elites seek to advance information technology for greater profits, but these same technologies have supported new forms of transnational organizing and action that form the basis of an emergent international civil society...

...In the case of the global financial institutions, they have done so in part to cultivate popular legitimacy for their organizations, which they see as gravely misunderstood by the general public...

...They provide ongoing critical commentary on local and global events and facilitate decentralized, independent coverage of protest activities...

...For instance, the site of the next WTO ministerial meeting is Qatar, an authoritarian Middle Eastern kingdom with a poor human rights record and a weak civil society sector...

...But there are clear limits to how far global *Roberto Bissio, "Occupying New Space for Public Life: Politics and People in a Network Society," in Whose World is it Anyway...

...We will not consider manuscripts submitted simultaneously to several publications...

...A group called The Electronic Disturbance Theatre launched a blockade of the Mexican Embassy's Web site to show solidarity with the Zapatista struggle...

...But as potent as they may be as profitseeking tools, information technologies are (at least for the time being) equally effective as tools of political subversion...

...It may also, however, deprive the movement of a unified voice and complicate sustained efforts to generate very large numbers of protesters at key events...

...Bissio stresses that the decline in costs of long-distance communications brought the greatest benefits to those farthest from the places where policy is decided...

...New Statesman, July 3, 2000), Naomi Klein likens the movement's loose, fluid structure to that of the Internet itself, which she sees as producing a culture of "laissez-faire organizing...

...Few activists in recent protests would deny the importance of ITs to their work...

...If you are submitting to Dissent electronically, our e-mail address is editors@dissentmagazine.org...

...Mary Kupiec Cayton and Peter W Williams (Scribner's, 2001...

...Although the lyrics are similar, the melodies are wonderfully various...

...The new technologies, in short, help decentralize access to information—about political and legal processes, about policy critiques, and about resistance strategies and organization...

...Eighteen thousand people from forty-nine countries joined that effort...

...or uploaded video and audio reports to activist Web sites...

...THE EDITORS 52 n DISSENT / Spring 2001...

...Individually, most of these actions look small and ineffective...

...they may involve as few as a dozen people...

...Can ITs serve as the great equalizer for either the global economic playing field or for the movement arising in opposition to it...

...While facilitating access to information, the Gateway Initiative would have the added (and not-unintended) benefit of giving the bank centralized control of the flow of information to and from governments, NGOs, and corporations...

...And those that did appear in Seattle on November 30, 1999, and in Washington, D.C., on April 16, 2000, were furnished by traditional social movement support structures: unions and churches—the latter being most involved with the "Jubilee 2000" campaign to cancel third world debt...

...When police closed the main protester "Convergence Center" and banned public meetings, the Internet cafés proved beyond police control...

...If they are not inclined to pay heed to such petitions, they may find that their superiors take them more seriously...

...Elite Responses Governments and corporations have begun in earnest to mimic the techniques that activists have refined...

...activists labeled it a bill of rights for corporate investors...

...2) Please don't write to ask whether we're interested in such and such an article—it makes for useless correspondence...

...A 1996 survey of transnational human rights organizations, for instance, showed that 44 percent of all groups used electronic communications...

...DISSENT / Spring 2001 n 5 PLAN B financial elites are willing to go...

...However, when included among lists of protests in scores of cities and dozens of countries, they reinforce the empowering notion that participants are part of a global movement...

...In the 1996 survey of transnational groups, 49 percent of northern and 30 percent of southern organizations reported access to electronic communications...

...sought updates on happenings in other parts of the movement, the city, and the world...

...Although much of this organizing takes place "in the open," unless the authorities understand the socially grounded networks of users visiting sites such as www.s26.org, they will have difficulty predicting the size, scope, and militancy of the people such sites reach...

...Should protesters' calls for greater transparency in the world's financial institutions be stonewalled, I suspect we will see new innovations in the use of electronic communications to illuminate proceedings that authorities would prefer to conduct in the dark...

...Or take a chance and send us your article...

...The cafés facilitated efforts to mobilize large demonstrations to celebrate the early close of the World Bank/IMF meetings and demand humane treatment for imprisoned protesters...

...Check all your figures, dates, names, etc.—they're the author's responsibility...

...This activity also makes governments nervous...

...Despite this divide, some argue that the Internet has been essential for the world's poorest...

...As we're not an academic journal, we prefer that they, wherever possible, be dropped altogether or worked into the text...

...In short, ITs have created new avenues through which global activists can pursue a two-pronged strategy of disruption and transparency...

...The MAI's purpose was to limit governments' ability to regulate foreign investment within their borders...

...they receive an IMC press pass and can publish their materials on the IMC Web site...

...Many delegates to the Prague World Bank/IMF meeting believed that there was little risk of protesters outnumbering and outmaneuvering the eleven thousand Czech police—which suggests the difficulties authorities have in planning for Internet-facilitated actions...

...northern activists have acquired the technology at higher rates than their southern counterparts...

...Internet organizing also complicates government efforts to repress the movement, as geographically dispersed victims of police abuse are able to file reports to a central database, where legal experts can compile evidence on behalf of free speech and civil rights claims...

...Unlike mail-based campaigns, the timing of actions can be immediate...

...Local political and associational structures and cultures clearly mediate the influence of electronic media on the character of protests...

...Broader geographic coalitions are possible where detailed minutes can be posted to dispersed organizers...

...The global communications revolution may be driving the current phase of global economic expansion, but it also carries with it new prospects for resistance...

...The Internet has not only helped popularize these global days, but has also increased their potency...

...proclaimed a banner at protest headquarters in Prague during the September 2000 meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF...

...On the ground, this type of organizational structure helps explain at least one of the stark differences between the recent protests and earlier ones, namely the relatively high concentration of homemade placards, newly penned chants and street-theater scripts, and the use of "puppet-ganda" and costumes...

...To what extent does Internet-based activism marginalize the poorest of the world while privileging activists with greater access to the hardware and skills it requires...

...And a wide network of potential allies and supporters can be swiftly informed about collective actions...

...John Markoff, a historical sociologist at the University of Pittsburgh, makes the same point in reverse: "Just as literacy was as much an instrument of bureaucratic power as of social movement challenge, the new electronic technology seem[s] as likely to expand the toolkits of the powerful as to undermine them...

...African affiliates reported the least access to the new technologies (35 percent), while Latin American affiliates rivaled the rates of access found in North America and Western Europe (75 percent...

...When the MAI negotiating text was leaked to movement leaders, they posted it on the Internet, quickly generating opposition from activists around the world...

...Look at our last few issues to see if your idea fits in...

...Following the arrests of protesters in Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Prague, activist networks generated petitions pressing for fair treatment and release of political prisoners...

...Activists volunteer to write, film, or take photos relevant to the protests...

...She is coeditor of Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity Beyond the State...

...Although we lack systematic evidence on which to base an answer to these questions, we do have some data reflecting differences in activists' access to the Internet...

...But just a few months later, one could not find a single reference to the Seattle meeting on the site, even amid histories of the WTO that mentioned other meetings...

...Direct comparisons of the different types of organizations in these surveys is problematic, but the higher percentage of use by groups that we would expect to be less likely to use electronic communications suggests the spread of the new technologies among activist groups...

...Our Resistance is as Transnational as Capital...

...Large numbers of small and informal networks can coordinate actions around shared goals, generating unpredictable outcomes for both organizers and authorities...

...The multilingual assemblage of leaflet-bearing visitors and the computer terminals, cell phone-recharge outlets, and Internet hook-ups provided by the Initiative Against Economic Globalization (INPEG) helped substantiate this claim...

...Although the ultimate impact of such petitions is difficult to assess, it's fair to say that local police chiefs are unaccustomed to having international attention focused on their internal operations...

...Electronic organizing has shaped a new form of protest—localized solidarity actions under the rubric of "Global Days of Action...

...My own view is that the overall impact of ITs will be beneficial: they will help expand information exchange and participation and create opportunities for decentralized protest by those who can't travel to the global sites where the conflict is staged...

...BY FACILITATING the spread of information that challenges dominant ideologies and portrayals of reality, ITs facilitate global efforts to mobilize resistance and disrupt official agendas...

...Both the WTO and the World Bank initiated the equivalent of electronic global town halls, where the public was encouraged to post questions and comments on the organizations' Web sites...

...What activists describe as a "carnival against capital" is actually a flowering of locally planned initiatives that parallel a mass mobilization at a particular meeting site...

...The revolution will not be emailed," say Peoples Global Action affiliates, who prefer to maintain traditional organizing techniques of hard-copy leaflets and mailings and who argue that electronic technologies must be used alongside "more involving and humanizing activities...

...Please use inclusive language so that we don't have to make adjustments during editing...

...Often making use of free E-mail and Web site platforms supported by the corporate advertising they seek to abolish, "hacktivists" of all skill levels employ this weapon of the (relatively) weak to further social change...

...Also, World Bank president James Wolfensohn sought to preempt growing attacks on his organization after Seattle by meeting with Microsoft chief Bill Gates to plan a sixty million dollar "Gateway Initiative" that would establish a World Bank site as "the premier Web entry point for information about poverty and sustainable development...

...JACKIE SMITH teaches sociology at the State University of New York—Stony Brook...

...Some of this creativity spilled over to the S26 protest in Prague, although it was more limited in scope and was matched by the more traditional protest templates brought by the stronger and more disciplined European socialist and communist parties and workers alliances...

...Will resistance to the Bank prevent poor countries' and people's access to ITs...

...5) We're usually quick in giving editorial decisions...

...By far the most common use of electronic communications is to promote dialogue among activists about global problems and movement strategies and tactics...

...Thus activists commonly claim, "We are everywhere and nowhere...

...Global Days of Action can cause major disruptions in numerous cities around the world with very little in the way of centralized, visible organiDISSENT / Spring 2001 n 49 PLAN B zational structures...

...Civil Society, the United Nations, and the Multilateral Future, eds...

...But innovations in the subversive use of ITs bring strong responses from political and corporate elites seeking to control and exploit the commercial potential of these technologies...

...Within days of the first public scrutiny, the MAI—at least in its original form—was dead in the water...

...Less confrontational but only somewhat less influential are such actions as electronic petitions, action alerts, and dissemination of resources or articles about the movement and its targets...

...As the use of electronic communications grows, the digital divide between the global North and South also appears to be growing...

...Following the failed Seattle meeting, for instance, the WTO Web site was transformed virtually overnight into a more user-friendly site, boasting of the organization's newly found commitment to "transparency...

...When the New York Times falsely claimed that Seattle protesters used Molotov cocktails and lobbed excrement at delegates, activists' responses led to a retraction within two days...

...Southern NGOs are less in need of information than of channels for relaying information to appropriate forums...

...The expansion of communications technologies has enabled more local and national groups in the global South to demand direct access to global political forums in place of a system involving mostly northern-based international NGO intermediaries...

...Can the new technologies effectively challenge global inequalities or do they simply reproduce them...

...In a survey taken just two years later of the affiliates of a transnational organization called EarthAction, 59 percent reported having access to electronic communications...

...This serves to reinforce the democratic, participatory norms that pervade much of the movement...

...50 n DISSENT / Spring 2001 PLAN B The "Great Equalizer...

...The use of action alerts is not new, but it is greatly assisted by electronic communications...

...The digital disparity was greater for access to the Internet than to E-mail—probably because of variation in the quality and density of telephone connections...