This article is in response to the call for articles ("long-standing projects ... accomplishments, plans, problems, and reasons why new people ought to become involved," Journal of the 5th Year, Feb. '92 issue). It is also a response to Edward Herman's article {Democratic Media} in {Z Papers}, since:
(A) and (B) are integrated into a "guided-tour of the electronic world" in the first part of the article, while (C) and (D) are dealt with in the second part of the article, which also sheds more light on (B).
The first part of this article is essentially a "crash course" on the electronic networks -- more accurately, on some of the main ones, since there is a whole "electronic world" out there the description of which would take entire books. We will look at several facets of that world, and then, alongside each one, offer an example showing how it applies to activism. We will be going from simpler to more elaborate forms of electronic activism; in so doing, we will be tracing the evolution of the projects described more fully in the second part, which grew out of a series of earlier and simpler experiments in electronic activism.
The second part of the article describes the specific project a number of us are working on, including what we've accomplished, the future potential, and some problem areas and places where we need help.
IT WAS BACK IN '86, when I was a first-year student at Dartmouth, that I started "playing" online, sending and receiving electronic mail ("email", pronounced "E-mail") -- mainly between Dartmouth and Harvard University where a similarly inclined friend was enrolled. Although email was not new then, it was very exciting to be able to correspond with a friend miles away in this manner -- without using stamps and envelopes, or spending money on long-distance phone calls.
Back then, the "transmission times," or how long it took from the moment you told the computer to send your message to when your recipient's machine received it, usually took several hours, and sometimes one and a half or even two days. Still, this was better than what the "online" community oftens refers to as "US mail" or "paper-mail" -- a common derisive pun being to replace the "m" with an "n": "I will send that by USnail" -- that incredibly slow medium taking two or three {days} to arrive at its destination, or "Snail-mail."
Today, email is an essential tool in a world-wide community of people and information-exchange. Every day, this community uses email to exchange countless pieces of information -- not just letters, but articles, newsletters, and so on; other components in this world of telecommunications are "posts" on electronic bulletin board systems (BBSs), and even digitally encoded graphics and video images.
Email today is also generally much faster; at least, on the primary electronic networks (for example, the {Internet) which are accessible from most major universities and many businesses. In fact, sending and receiving email is often "instantaneous," taking under a second, and among the "well-connected" networks, usually within a minute or so, even between locals thousands of miles apart.
As a test, I just logged into my California-based {Peacenet} account, and sent an electronic "test message" to my Cornell account where I am composing this article. It then took me seven seconds to return to my Cornell account and check my mail, by which time the message was there. This is what is meant by "essentially instantaneous" -- as instantaneous as one is able to notice(1).
Note (1):
{Peacenet} and {Econet} are run by the Institute for Global Communication, and are described in more detail below.
Many of us on the "Nets" -- whether electronic activists, hackers, hobbyists, or just electronic pen-pals -- have corresponded with people in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and Japan, as well as Canada and Latin America(2) and transmission times between such remote locations can be very short as well, when messages are not sent during times of "peak load." The "Culture Shock," in the pleasant sense of the word, I can only compare with the wonderful experience, following my fairly insular high-school years, of going to college and meeting so many people from all over the world -- including anti-apartheid activists from South Africa, friends I made from India, and others.
Note (2):
Africa and other parts of the third world are also getting online, including NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations), in particular, in preparation for the UNCED (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development) conference this summer in Brazil. Microcomputed-based "FIDO" systems like NGONET and ESANET (Eastern and Southern African Network) are linked to the nodes of the Association for Progressive Communication (APC). {APC} is described below following "{IGC} -- Networks for Activists"See "Low cost global electronic communications networks for Africa" by Mike Jensen and Geoff Sears (Director of {IGC}), posted, Jan 19, 1992, to {Peacenet}'s "reg.africa" conference.},
Email is -- or rather, can be -- a very intimate medium. I will not try to convey how or why this is so, leaving the discovery to be made by those who venture online. However, it is worth noting here that this is so, perhaps, because of and not in spite of the anonymity the medium affords -- your race, sexual orientation, whether you are tall or short, how much you weigh, the way you dress, how often you shower, etc (and, if you have a name like mine, your gender) are not very obvious to the people with whom you communicate, nor are these attributes of others obvious to you. Ideas, humor, personality -- - whatever the participants choose to reveal of themselves, and not more -- - is what comes through(3)
Note (3):
Various visual aides have been developed to convey **italics** and *_underlined_* or *>>EMPHASIZED<<* words you can even *< -- - POINT at*. On the {Usenet} (see below), there are the famous "smileys" conveying humor, anger, surprise, etc, and based on modifications of the sideways smiling-face comprised of three characters: (-:
I don't know {exactly} how email works -- any more than most people who don't have a degree in electronic engineering know the precise workings of their television set -- we will examine the analog of "How to use your Television set"
It should first be noted that there are many different mail-sending and mail-reading utility programs available, depending on the system you use. But generally, sending email is as simple as putting an address on an envelope. If you know a valid email address for your intended recipient (there can be more than one), you just type it into a line starting with a phrase like *To:* in your mail-sending program. The text of the letter is then either typed in or else "pasted" or "included" in from a pre-written file, and then the mailer program is given a command telling it: "send away!"
These email addresses are not very different from ordinary addresses, which start with an identification of the individual (their name), followed by information about the person's location, starting with the narrow (street address) and proceeding to broader and broader "locators" (town/city, state, and zip). The same is done with email, with a few minor differences.
The first difference is that the entire address is put in one line; in fact, one expression. In this expression, the person's account-name (their "user ID" on the computer they use) takes the place of the recipient's name which would be written on the first line on the envelope, followed by an at-sign (*@*), and then the rest of the address, with dots (*.*) separating the parts comprising the "domain" or main part of the address.
For example, the email address of an online friend and fellow electronic activist, Rich Winkel at Missouri, is:
rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Here *rich* is the account name Rich has on a computer nicknamed *pencil* at the Computer Science (*cs*) department at the University of Missouri, with *edu* (EDU-cational) being standard for {InterNet} addresses of colleges and universities (4).
Note (4):
{InterNet} is sometimes confused with the {UseNet}, which is described below; the {Internet} is a major global network, parts of which are subsidized by various governments. It carries many kinds of traffic, including but not limited to {Usenet} BBSs. {Usenet} is also carried by other networks, for example, {Bitnet}.
Sometimes "smart" machines simplify addressing; for example, you don't need to know the names of the machines -- Sun workstations in this case -- in the math department here at Cornell to send me email; rather than using:
harelb@mssun7.msi.cornell.eduor
harelb@wright.msi.cornell.edu
("mssun7" and "wright" being among the "names" of these Suns)
You can email me at:
harelb@math.cornell.edu
which a machine translates into the full address.
Some institutions have gone further. Dartmouth, for example, has a complete online "Dartmouth Name Directory" (DND) of all their students, faculty, and staff. The Dartmouth computer facilities receiving email use the {DND} to figure out how to reach the person you are trying to send email to.
The format used is "name@dartmouth.edu" -- for example:
john.w.lamperti@dartmouth.edu
In fact, less information can be supplied so long as it uniquely identifies one individual -- thus *lamperti@dartmouth.edu* worked when this fellow electronic activist (and former math professor of mine) was the only "Lamperti" at Dartmouth; when professor Lamperti's son was involved with Dartmouth (teaching rock-climbing), John could be reached by supplying the Dartmouth computers with an extra "j" to uniquely identify him: *j.lamperti@dartmouth.edu*
Not unlike a person would, the computer figured out from the information given which unique person "j lamperti" on the {DND} I had in mind.
This {DND} system is also set up so that if the recipient does not have an email account, the {DND} prints out the received email letter and delivers it to that person's student or departmental mailbox.
The origins of our current project start with the murder of the Jesuit priests in El Salvador in November of 1989, with my ordering Amnesty's 1988 report, {El Salvador: "Death Squads" -- A Government Strategy}, and with the outrage I felt upon discovering how clear and explicit the documentation had been, by none other than A.I., that the so-called "Death-Squads" -- these shady right-wing extremist groups as the nooz-media invariably portrayed them -- were in fact army/government run. Something had to be done to educate people about this, to use the tragic occasion to spread the word and put an end to Washington's complicity (often much more than that) once and for all.
The email contacts I had were primarily people I had met by using the {Usenet} network of Electronic Bulletin Boards, or "newsgroups" as they are called (the {Usenet} is described in more detail below). By using newsgroups on topics such as "Activism", "Latin-America," and "Human Rights," information could be exchanged, like-minded people met, and "online discussion" as well as planning could take place in the newsgroups and by email.
It may not be clear, a priori, that "electronic" planning and coordination of real-life projects (activist or otherwise) is necessarily an improvement over the exclusive use of the traditional methods (telephone, face-to-face mettings), or even that it is workable. However, so it proved in the present example, and it is my hope that the "time-line" of the projects we are tracing will provide concrete settings for the abstract -- but very real -- recurring themes:
The project we organized was to send copies of the A.I. report to all U.S. Senators along with a signed letter demanding a change in U.S. policy, with copies going to the major media, stating also that this key Amnesty report had been made available to Congress, and what the report said. Using the electronic networks, and with two primary co-organizers at Dartmouth College (John Lamperti) and the University of Chicago (Mary Pugh), we were able to raise almost all the funds needed to buy and send the reports through online contacts.
Electronic mail was used to joinly revise the Statement to be sent to the Senators and the media, by rapidly swapping back and forth by email, half a dozen times, the latest draft. And, by "advertising" on the {Usenet}'s newsgroups, we were able to get the Statement signed by dozens of people from over twenty states. We were then able to have the statement signed by Archbishop Gumbleton of Detroit, one of the few co-signers(5) whom we contacted by phone rather than email.
Note (5):
The co-signers gave their consent to add their name to the Statement, rather than signing one physically circulated copy of the Statement.
The {Usenet} is an interactive bulletin board system currently read by more than 2 million people worldwide, with some 10 million email accounts having access or potential access. (Electronic surveying devices keep these and other statistics which are cited below.)
The {Usenet} "system" is often referred to, with some merit, as an "anarchy" -- in the political, not derisive/chaotic sense, although given the vast amount of people, data, and interactions in question (see below), "chaos" is unavoidable, and it is merely a question of how "well-managed" the chaos is (6)
Note (6):
As one user put it, the {Usenet} is a "logical network" not a physical
network (such as {Internet}) (7).
Note (7):
In essence, informational "traffic" is passed along between the main
{Usenet} "nodes" and thus the articles (as items posted to the
newsgroups are called) get "propagated" across the system. In the
U.S., anyone with a capable machine and the proper software can get a
{Usenet} "feed" and thus become part of the {Usenet}.
Few of us can afford this means of access to the {Usenet}(8) however,
and two of the most common ways to gain access is by means of a
computer account at a major university or through where one works, by
which students, faculty, and staff, and employees with an account can
get on the net and read the {Usenet} newsgroups. From computers
running the Unix operating system, news-readers such as "readnews,"
"rn" and "nn" (9) are available.
Note (8):
From a Vax system, another popular system at universities, *VMSNEWS*
is available. There is usually online help available -- - from unix,
for example, type *man rn* to get the MANual description for that
newsreader program; or e.g. *help vmsnews* on Vaxs -- or else one can
ask the local system operator for help.
If you cannot gain access to the {Usenet} from a university or your
company, and if you have a computer and modem at home, there are
public-access unix systems, or "Nixpubs," which you can dial into
using a modem. A monthly list of Nixpubs is posted to {Usenet}'s
*alt.bbs* newsgroup, and many of these machines, some of which are
freely accessible, carry {Usenet} "news" (the flow of "newsgroup"
postings). In fact, by the time this article is published, I hope to
have my mother in Massachusetts online thanks to these nixpubs, and
thanks to tips about where to find good cheap modems which the readers
of *alt.bbs* were kind enough to provide.
The individual sites which carry {Usenet} news are completely
independent:
Every administrator controls his own site. No one has any real
control over any site but his own.
The administrator gets her power from the owner of the system she
administers. As long as her job performance pleases the owner, she
can do whatever she pleases, up to and including cutting off {Usenet}
entirely (10).
Note (10):
According to the official documents, insofar as anything on {Usenet}
can be "official;" even in the one domain where {Usenet} functions as
a "democracy" rather than "anarchy," the voting procedure for the
creation of a newsgroup (see below), one merely has The Official
{Guidelines.}
The {Usenet} is also not "software" -- there are dozens of software
packages in use today for reading and transmitting {Usenet} articles.
It is for these and other reasons that in describing {Usenet} as an
electronic bulletin board "system" that word belongs in quotes, and
why the official "What Is {Usenet}" description in the newsgroup
*news.newusers.questions* spends most of its time stating what the
{Usenet} is {not}, and finally contents itself with the seemingly
all-purpose description:
{Usenet} is a set of people who exchange articles tagged with one
or more universally-recognized labels, called "newsgroups."
These people reside at universities, research institutions, government
agencies (e.g., one sees addresses like *joe-shmoe@nasa.gov*) as well
as companies big and small (email addresses often ending in *.com*),
and even high schools and private homes.
A typical {Usenet} newsgroup name, *rec.sports.baseball*, reveals two
things: words/identifiers are separated by periods (pronounced "dot,"
as in "rec[-reation] dot sports dot base-ball"); and that the name
starts with a broad, general category, then a more specific
identifier, and continuing in this manner if necessary.
The {Usenet} is organized in a logical hierarchy, by means of seven
broad categories, and the first word in a "mainstream" {Usenet}
newsgroup name is one of the following:
There is also a hierarchy for unofficial *alt*-ernative newsgroups
like *alt.co-ops*, *alt.atheism*, or *alt.angst* -- no vote needs to
be taken for the creation of a {Usenet} "alt" group, although the
propagation of such newsgroups to other machines is more limited --
administrators sometimes cut off all *alt* groups to avoid newsgroups
like *alt.sex* and the rest of the alt.sex.* hierarchy. This happens
despite the fact that *alt.sex* is usually at or near the top in the
{Usenet} readership ratings -- in February, for example, it had
roughly 260,000 readers; that month, *misc.jobs.offered* was second
(surprise, surprise) with 210,000 readers, and *rec.humor.funny* third
with 180,000 readers -- this according to the {Usenet}'s automated
electronic "Nielsen"-type ratings system, the results being posted
monthly to *news.lists* It should be noted that *alt.sex* is fairly
tame by {Usenet} standards; in *alt.sex.bondage*, for example (still
not the most daring newsgroup, and, interestingly, on a higher level
of maturity than *alt.sex*) you can tune in to (or join) women and men
discussing different types of knots, and the {safe} way to use gags,
practice bondage, etc, with their "SO's" (Significant Others).
Note (11):
If the "headers" of the articles are included, the figure comes to
476 Mbytes over the two weeks.
The explosive growth of the {Usenet} is such that percentage growth is
measured monthly -- for example, below are the data from two readings
at the end of last year (Note the growth approaching 40\% in
Mbytes-per-day between October of '91 and the quoted figure for Feb.
'92):
In fact, based on more detailed statistical analyses drawn from the
data automatically collected by different {Usenet} machines, the
estimate for August of 1995 volume is 365 Mbytes per day; for August
of 2000: 12,154 Mbytes per day if the growth patterns continue (13)
In translation, on any given day of the week, many books' worth of
material is posted (many dozen books in 1995 if that rate is realized)
on the {Usenet} alone, which does not count other networks, or the
several {thousand} electronic mailing lists in operation.
Clearly, tools for narrowing down from this flood of information to
what you are looking for, and making sense of that information, are
crucial. Fortunately, the same technologies which opened this
Pandora's Box and its floods of information, can be used to design and
implement exactly such tools, and the tools available today
("newsreaders" editors, etc) make the task far less formidable that
this introduction, upon first reading, might suggest.
Following the El Salvador project, I organized an (electronic)
mailing-list of the participants, over which information and updates
could be exchanged and through which long-term discussion and support
could take place. This list, which was known as the Activists Mailing
List (AML), rapidly grew as the word was spread by email and over the
{Usenet}. Fortunately, by the time there list approached 100 members
and was becoming difficult to manage "by hand," one of {AML} members
and original participants in the El Salvador project, Rich Winkel in
Missouri, offered to put the {AML} on a "listserver" (courtesy of his
system administrator) and thus came into being the *ACTIV-L*
"Listserv"-based electronic mailing list.
The *LISTSERV* software manages an electronic mailing-list by creating
an email address like *ACTIV-L@UMCVMB.BITNET* such that all email sent
to that address is forwarded to everyone else who is subscribed to the
mailing list. Listserv maintains and updates a list of all current
subscribers, and "understands" simple commands such as *JOIN ACTIV-L*
(which are emailed to it at *LISTSERV@UMCVMB.BITNET*) and by which
people can have their address added to or removed from the mailing
list (were it so easy to have one's name removed from the "paper-mail"
mailing lists!)
By maintaining a list of everyone currently subscribed, the Listserv
eliminates the need for each person on the list to keep and update
their own private list of current list members and to list for their
computer's mailer-program all the corresponding email addresses each
time s/he wishes to post to the list.
There are today literally thousands of listserv-type electronic
mailing lists, from *AMALGAM* ("*Dental AMALGAM and MERCURY
Poisoning*") to *YACHT-L* ("*YACHT-L@GREARN The Yachting Sailing and
amateur BoatBuilding*") and almost everything in between, for example:
Which brings us to another example of things Listserv is useful for.
Since there are so many such lists, and and since the list of such
lists changes increasingly rapidly as new lists are created, there is
a mailing list, serviced by a Listserv, which sends out to it's
subscribers an announcement each time a new list is created
summarizing what it is about, so you can decide if you want to join
it, for example, something like:
This listserver-for-listservers does something else, too: it maintains
an up to date list of all these mailing lists, adding new entries as
lists are created, and removing names of archaic lists which "die out"
as a result of lack of interest. You can give it a command to send you
at any given time the most up to date list of mailing lists. Warning:
the last time I sent out for this list I received a list of over 2800
mailing lists. However, a good unix editor like "emacs" (pronounced
"E-macks") has no trouble editing the such a big file, nor, for that
matter, and almost instantly, finding in it all lines which have
"*dog*" or "*eco*" or "*fish*" in them, allowing you to try out the
handful of lists you might be interested in.
Many of the mailing lists (and {Usenet} newsgroups) are concerned with
topics which may seem frivolous next to activism, but there are many
useful non-activist forums where information can be shared or help
solicited (taxes, home-repair, etc), as well as lists providing
intimate support forums which the lists members might not have easy
access to elsewhere (former abused-children, the disabled, etc).
The successes as well as frustrations and shortcomings of the El
Salvador project led me to write up a proposal for a big project,
called PACH (pronounced "patch", and standing for Progressive Alliance
Clearinghouse), which is the primary subject of the second half of
this article.
At about the same time the Activists Mailing List "became" *ACTIV-L*,
an *ACTIV-L* subscriber who also had an account with {Peacenet}
(described in the following section), Andy Lang, forwarded my PACH
files which I posted to *ACTIV-L* to then- {Peacenet} Director Howard
Frederick.
Dr. Frederick was impressed enough to write back to offer a
complimentary {Peacenet} account from which information and articles
from the {Peacenet} and {Econet} systems could be forwarded on a
regular basis to *ACTIV-L* (Rich Winkel, who set up the Listserver at
Missouri for *ACTIV-L*, had been forwarding items occasionally from
{Peacenet} for some time).
The {Peacenet} and {Econet} systems are part of broader nation-wide
and world-wide networks, which are described below.
{Peacenet} and {Econet} are sister-networks dedicated solely to
promoting peace, human-rights, social justice, and environmental
issues through education and by providing resources for activists.
Jointly run by the Institute for Global Communications (IGC), a
division of the non-profit Tides Foundation, based in San Francisco,
these networks allow users to gather information from and post items
to over 900 {IGC} newsgroups (called "conferences") on topics ranging
from Central and Latin America, Disarmament, Economics, Energy, and
the Environment ... to Labor, the Media, the Middle East ... on
through Toxics and Waste, Women, and Youth. There are also special
conferences listing calendars of events, announcements, and general
references and resources (not unlike "Zaps" online), and besides these
conferences dedicated to news and information, there are others which
serve as forums for discussions and for the planning of activism and
long-term coordination; for example, Amnesty International has a whole
array of "private" (internal) {Peacenet} conferences which it uses to
coordinate its work).
{IGC} also offers its subscribers an email-to-fax link by which faxes
can be sent for as little as 25 cents per page by addressing to the
"email" address *fax:1CCCNNNNNNN* where 1-(CCC)-NNN-NNNN is the fax
machine's number. A similar service is offered for
email-to-telex-machines, as well as telex-machine-to-email (there is
no fax-to-email service as yet, although improved scanner technology
and a better funded {IGC} may bring that about some day). {IGC}
"News" conferences include wire services that are online, as well as
legislative bulletins, newsletters, and even magazines that are
online; for example, Propaganda Review is now entirely online.
{IGC} has over 7,000 users in the U.S., but deserves to be far better
known, offering resources on a scale that would have been unimaginable
before the advent of electronic networks.
One thing lacking in the unix-based {IGC} accounts is the power that
comes with an {individual} unix account. However, if you have access
to such a machine, through a university for example, {IGC} offers a
"telnet" login as an alternative to modem dial-ins ("telnet" is a unix
program allowing log-ins to remote machines) Telnetting into {IGC},
which is more convenient for the user, is actually preferred by {IGC}
as it adds less to the load on their systems, and is offered on a
discounted "off-peak" basis 24 hours a day, at $3/hour.
For me, this has meant "the best of both worlds," using the emacs
editor's built-in {telnet} feature which provides a nice interface
with {IGC}. Namely, emacs is designed for multi-tasking, whereby you
edit several files at the same time, each residing in one of several
{buffers} among which you can instantly switch. From emacs you can
also send mail, receive mail, manipulate entire directories very
nicely with its directory-editor {dired} and so on, each of these
functions in a different buffer.
In this manner, {IGC} conferences can be read in one buffer while
reading {Internet} mail, sending mail, etc, in the other buffers. An
interesting {Peacenet} or {Econet} article can then be saved in my
private directory, emailed, saved on a remote machine, or posted to
the {Usenet}, each with a few keystrokes, by using one of the
customizable emacs "macros" (14).
Note (14):
To briefly survey the vast array of information on the {IGC} networks:
Also online are press releases by SANE/Freeze, Greenpeace, AFSC, and
others; newsletters and bulletins, for example the Environmental and
Energy Study Institute's (EESI) "Weekly Bulletin"; and information
about bills pending on Capitol Hill -- for example, *fcnl.updates*
contains the Friends Committee on National Legislation's weekly
legislative alert.
I cannot come close to covering the range and diversity of online
resources on {IGC}, but to cite one more example, the "mosconews"
conferences contain articles from Moscow News, an independent weekly
newspaper founded in 1930 and distributed in more than 140 countries,
and which is independent from all state and party structures in the
former USSR.
{IGC} subscribers also have access to the several thousand {Usenet}
newsgroups.
{IGC} is a founding member of the Association for Progressive
Communication (APC), a worldwide umbrella group of progressive
networks dedicated to peace, human rights, and the environment. The
{APC} Member Networks are: {AlterNex} (Brazil); {Chasque} (Uruguay);
{ComLink} (Germany -- note the pun); {GlasNet} (Russia); {GreenNet}
(England); {IGC} (USA); {Nicarao} (Nicaragua); {NordNet} (Sweden);
{Pegasus} (Australia); and {Web} (Canada). Membership is pending for
{EcuaNex} (Ecuador) and {Lega per L'Ambiente} (Italy).
All {APC} partners are independent organizations, and retain full
control over their network, paying fees to a fund to further the
global spread of the network.
While there are 10 countries with member-networks, people in over 90
different countries call those machines; for example, many people in
Africa and Europe call GreenNet. In all, there are some 15,000 {APC}
users.
The subscribers of these networks can exchange electronic mail not
only with other subscribers, but also with people on other networks,
including {Internet}, {Bitnet}, {CompuServe}, the {WELL}, and {MCI
mail}. The {APC} networks also share a more intimate link among
themselves, by directly exchanging daily the information posted to
their newsgroups, with a 2-way information "feed" between the
different {APC} machines.
For more information about {Peacenet} or {Econet}, write to:
{IGC}, 18 De Boom Street, San Francisco, California 94107.
Phone: (415) 442-0220.
As Z readers are well aware of, one of the (few) positive concomitants
of the Gulf Crisis was a surge of activism and the possibility of
building a national consciousness leading to a broad-based long-term
movement or coalition.
Space for critical thinking and coalition-building also opened in the
electronic domains (even as it was slammed shut for viewers of
mainstream TV Nooz), and during the Gulf Crisis and subsequent Gulf
War, there was a swelling in "online" activity and interest as well.
*ACTIV-L* in cooperation with {IGC} responded by distributing critical
information and updates to activists, not readily available elsewhere,
about what was happening and why. This included detailed reports on
the destruction in Iraq, and analyses of the war and the U.S. media by
commentators generally excluded from public view, including editorials
>from the Nation, In These Times (typed in by readers) and news
releases and articles by FAIR (posted by FAIR to {Peacenet} and
forwarded to *ACTIV-L*). *ACTIV-L* subscribers were also informed
about protests and projects in Europe far more extensively than their
TV-viewing counterparts.
There was also extensive discussion on *ACTIV-L* and interaction among
subscribers, for example, soliciting specific information for a
pamphlet or exchanging information among campus activists about what
sorts of actions were taking place elsewhere, with what tactics, and
with what success.
Besides the regular email subscribers to the list -- by then some
1,000 people -- many readers would download articles and print them
out, distributing them to their local activist groups or using them
for public education, in pamphlets, talks, and so on. The net effect
*ACTIV-L* and {IGC} had during the Gulf Crisis we cannot measure, but
it is my hope that a glimpse is provided in the accompanying side-bar
by the sampling of electronic mail I received during that period.
This flurry of activity prompted us to create a new {Usenet}
newsgroup, misc.activism.progressive (MAP), hoping to expand the
project by reaching a wider audience.
This necessitated having an online "vote" -- newsgroup-creation is the
only facet of {Usenet} which follows a pattern of {democracy} rather
than {anarchy} -- and hence building up enough support to attain the
necessary two-to-one margin over the significant minority of vocal
(and paranoid) reactionaries opposed to anything "leftist", let alone
a "moderated" forum which we were requesting to host, with the specter
of electronic indoctrination camps used often -- an absurdity in light
of the ability of any {Usenet} reader to press a key to read any of
countless other political, un-moderated, and mainstream- or
right-wing-dominated forums.
The lengthy process was an emotional strain which took its toll, yet
today that mentality can be a source of amusement, paralleling
paranoid Senators worrying about a "leftist" PBS and threatening to
freeze funding -- this in light of the documentation, recently
circulated again by {FAIR} on {Peacenet} (and through our newsgroup
and other {Usenet} newsgroups, to tens of thousands of online
readers), showing the pervasive {right}-wing bias on "public" TV.
The newsgroup "passed", but not before several more attempts where
made to wreck the enterprise, including charges -- actually, totally
groundless assertions -- about every conceivable type of impropriety
or "fraud," including unprecedented post-vote "surveys" to ask the
voters listed as "in favor" whether they in fact voted this way. The
voters replied in the affirmative, but not before voicing their
disgust at the charges, including charges that the {IGC} directorship
"faked" the crucial hundred-odd {Peacenet} "yes" votes. Judging by
this quite hostile reaction, one might have concluded there and then
that we were on to something good...
Aside from wanting to create a forum with a potentially larger
audience, {MAP} was to become {Usenet}'s first genuinely activist
group, since the existing *alt.activism* had been all but taken over
by "conservatives" -- reactionaries and general weenies bent on
endless arguments, infantile sarcastic "jokes" and otherwise "flaming"
any post which might lead to something constructive in the vague
direction of that newsgroup's name -- "Boy, Saddam would really love
your positions!" was (and is) par for the course (15).
This was possible because alt.activism is an "un-moderated" newsgroup,
to which anyone could post a message (and usually did). {MAP}'s
charter was for a {moderated} newsgroup which would:
Zbigniew J. Pasek, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, compilation
of Electronic Resources, Feb. '92.
The costs are not entirely prohibitive: the {Usenet} article
describing What Is the {Usenet} (in the official monthly post to
{Usenet}'s *news.newusers.questions* newsgroup) states that
"Computers capable of taking {Usenet} feeds are down in the $500
range now, and UNIX-capable boxes are going for under $2000, and
there are at least two UNIX lookalikes in the $100 price range."
Note (9):
"nn" standing for "No News" is Good News -- see below regarding
the quantity of "news traffic" on the {Usenet}.
CAVEAT: You should {not} interpret this gender-neutral language in
the official administrative posts to mean there isn't any sexism
on the {Usenet} -- not to mention racism, homophobia, and some
holocaust revisionists to boot.
The Usenet Newsgroups
Explosive Growth
According to the newsgroup *news.lists*, in a two-week period in
February, 195,672 articles, totaling some 388 Mega-bytes (11) were
submitted from over eighteen thousand sites, by some 50,000 users (or
only about one in forty news readers) and to over 2,000 different
newsgroups, totaling an average of 27.7 Mega-bytes (Mbytes) per day
(12).
A Mega-byte (Mbyte) is 1,024 Kilo-bytes, or "K" -- for comparison,
parts I and II of Noam Chomsky's {The Victors} which we have
online, are about 70 K each. Thus the equivalent of roughly 400
such articles are posted each day -- the content and overall "info
to noise ratio," however, are another matter.
Note (12)
Subject: "Total traffic through uunet for the last 2 weeks"
Message-ID: <1992Feb12.165056.13940@uunet.uu.net>
Date: 12 Feb 92 16:50:56 GMT
Sender: rick@uunet.uu.net (News Statistics)
195672 articles, totaling 387.926123 Mbytes (476.163834 including
headers), were submitted from 18092 different Usenet sites by
49442 different users to 2045 different newsgroups for an average
of 27.709009 Mbytes (34.011702 including headers) per day.
91/10/23 91/11/27 growth
Articles 142161 163345 15%
Mbytes/day 20.124 22.330 11%
Sites posting 14572 15860 9%
Users posting 38388 43955 15%
Newsgroups 1758 1891 8%
Note (13):
Brian Smithson (brian@csd.mot.com) in:
Re-post of Usenet stats (LONG; was: Re USENET ANALYSIS REPORTs...)
Message-ID: <4812@motcsd.csd.mot.com>)
Electronic Mailing Lists and "Listservs"
MAPS-L MAPS-L@UGA.BITNET Maps and Air Photo Systems Forum
MEDIA-L MEDIA-L@BINGVMB.BITNET Media in Education
MEDIMAGE MEDIMAGE@POLYGRAF.BITNET Medical Imaging Discussion List
IGC -- Networks for Activists
Emacs' customizability and expandability is legendary. I will say
a little more in part II about the radical software-for-the-people
project, the GNU project, of the Free Software Foundation -- GNU
Emacs being one result of this project. For example, emacs'
{telnet} facility was designed for an interface different from
{IGC}'s, making the cursor "jump up" annoyingly; within a day or
two of my posting to {Usenet}'s *gnu.emacs.help* about this, I was
emailed a "patch" to modify (customize) emacs's telnetting, nicely
fixing the emacs-{IGC} telnet link.
One of PeaceNet's "*INFO-COMPASS*" login banners
Welcome to PeaceNet / Bienvenido a PeaceNet. For help, type "?"
<<
A.P.C.
With *ACTIV-L* in place and linked to {IGC}'s {Peacenet} and {Econet},
the first stage of the PACH network we are still working to expand was
attained, a network which, like Z and the rest of the alternative
press, could help circumvent the media information blockade, as well
as serve as a focal point for democratic participation, discussion,
and action. This potential was tested during the critical months
leading to and following the Gulf "War."
ACTIV-L and IGC Confront the Gulf Crisis
Electronic Activism during the Gulf Crisis
SPREADING INFORMATION
# From: Michael Perelman
A New Usenet Newsgroup
MAP's Mission
Note (15):
In fact, I recently received email from an old acquaintance which
opened: "After a year without net.access, I'm pleased to see
you're still there. Looks like I missed the virtual abandonment
of alt.activism to the sabateurs and the creation of
misc.activism.progressive"
provide news, information, and resources of interest
to activists and anyone interested in promoting
peace; economic, legal, and social justice and equality; a clean
environment and safe workplace; democratic control over domestic and
foreign policy, and other issues of concern to the progressive
community.
and which "is not for political discussion, although we welcome
inquiries and requests for information and references, announcements
of local activist organizing..." -- *ACTIV-L* would serve as a forum
for discussion (16). Together with forwards from the {IGC} networks,
other mailing lists, and readers' contributions, these resources
include books (reading lists), listings of alternative publications,
videos, media and government telephone numbers, announcements of
speaking tours, and other data activists rely on.
Note (16):
*ACTIV-L* has since spawned *ACTIV-D* for discussions,
while *ACTIV-L* now runs just the articles posted to {MAP},
for people who do not have access the {Usenet}.
#############################################################################
# [SIDE-BAR: "Spreading The Word"] #
#############################################################################
# =================================== #
# How the Nets help "Spread the Word" #
# =================================== #
# #
# >>INFORMATION:<< #
# #
# Date: Fri, 1 Feb 91 15:12:13 -0500 #
# From: painter@world.std.com (Alan J Painter) #
# Subject: FAIR report -- Re: The media and the war: unbiased coverage #
# or rooting for the home team? #
# #
# I simply wanted to thank you for the great information that you have #
# been posting to alt.activism. I have just started reading this #
# group (in fact, just started reading news in general due to my #
# previous unconnectedness) and I find that the raw information about #
# El Salvador, statistical reportage and such are extremely useful. #
# [...] #
# #
# - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - #
# #
# [Referring to an article we posted to the UseNet #
# which came from a post to PeaceNet by Project Censored:] #
# #
# Date: Mon, 25 Feb 91 21:14:24 PST #
# From: robert Arrignton
(Part (II) continues with "MAP (17) Today and the PACH Project")
Harel Barzilai is a graduate student at Cornell University. He is
co-founder and co-moderator of the *ACTIV-L* mailing list and UseNet's
misc.activism.progressive (MAP), and an avid electronic activist,
currently working on the PSN-phase (Electronically linked Progressive
Student Newspapers) of the PACH project, described in Part II of this
article.
Note (17):
Currently with over 12,000 readers.