From an April 2002 interview in Metropolis Magazine:

“Rosanne Haggerty is the new landlord of the Andrews Hotel, a grim vermin-infested joint at the corner of Bowery and Spring Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. She is also founder and executive director of Common Ground Community, a nonprofit organization that has purchased and converted a handful of historic buildings, including the Times Square Hotel, into some of New York’s most progressive low-income housing — work that last year earned her a $500,000 ‘genius grant’ from the MacArthur Foundation.

After four years of field research that took Haggerty and her staff from the public shelters of New York to the capsule hotels of Japan, Common Ground Community is set to begin transforming the century-old Andrews into something they call First Step Housing. Working with New York architects Marguerite McGoldrick and Gans + Jelacic, and more than 150 homeless men and women who contributed feedback, Haggerty plans to combine elements of the Bowery’s dying flophouse tradition — $7 a night, no lease, no questions — with smart management, on-site social services, and space-efficient modular design. Recently she spoke with Douglas McGray about the project’s design considerations — and its lessons.”

Rosanne Haggerty:

“Social scientist Christopher Jencks zoned in on the loss of the cubicle hotels as a specific cause of the rise of single-adult homelessness. That got me thinking, Why don’t these places exist anymore? For years I’d get close to the question and then recoil because these buildings were so squalid. The quality-housing advocate in me couldn’t comprehend how one could responsibly advocate their resurgence. It finally occurred to me that until not-for-profits started working on them, single-room occupancies had also been looked at as substandard forms of housing. Then it clicked — it’s more of a failure of imagination on our part than anything embedded in the model.”

After extensive research, including two months in Osaka, Japan studying the flexible use of limited space, interviews with individuals and groups of homeless men and women, including feedback on three rounds of prototypes, Common Ground developed a design that was attractive, affortable, and secure.

“The main reason people are remaining on the streets is safety. They perceive themselves to be more secure sleeping in a public space than in the city’s shelter system. People were very keen on the idea of metal detectors, very concerned about what the roof material would look like — how secure it would be. They were concerned about the strength of the lock and the durability of the construction....

Somebody had a very good line. He said, ‘You don’t want it to be a doll house, but you don’t want it to be a cell either.’ A lot of these folks have been in psychiatric hospitals or in jail, and they don’t want an environment that reminds them of that. Things as subtle as being able to move the furniture around — not having it nailed down — being able to get control of a degree of privacy in the space, having a window that opens and closes onto a central corridor seemed to take something that could have been viewed as institutional and make it cozy....

Frankly, design makes a significant difference in terms of the atmosphere of calm and respect that you establish. People respond behaviorwise to being in that kind of environment. Keeping maintenance costs reduced is also a consideration. We need spaces that can be cleaned easily, panels that can be removed and replaced without having to trash the whole unit.”

The First Step units are prefabricated, ship nearly flat and can bolt together in almost any commercial space.

Many of the housing projects incorporate social services:

“Supportive housing is permanent housing with social services for the formerly homeless, people with mental and/or medical disabilities, the elderly, and individuals with low-income. Supportive housing combines affordable accomodations with services like mental health and drug addiction counseling, job training and placement, community activities, and help with life skills like cooking and money management.

Supportive housing was created by non-profits around the country as a more holistic response to homelessness. Approximately 70% of homeless single adults in the United States have problems like mental illness, substance abuse and HIV/AIDS — problems which contribute to their homelessness. By offering a variety of support services designed to address these issues, supportive housing has paved the way for a more effective approach to preventing homelessness....

Two long-term government studies have shown that more than 83% of the homeless individuals placed in supportive housing have remained in permanent housing and have reintegrated themselves into mainstream society.”

See the Corporation for Supportive Housing and the Supportive Housing Network of New York.

Common Ground and the Architectural League of New York are currently running an open competition to design a new “prefabricated individualized dwelling unit.” The registration deadline is July 11, 2003. The design entry submission deadline is 10 AM, August 25, 2003.

“Up to four competition winners will be chosen. Winners will each receive a cash prize of $2,000 and will be engaged to develop their proposals for manufacture and installation at the Andrews House, a lodging house on the Bowery in Manhattan, for which they will be paid a design fee. An exhibition of entries will be mounted in Manhattan in October 2003, and displayed on the competition website. A publication documenting the competition may also be produced.”

See the First Step Housing Web site for more detail.

The International Organization for Standardization is an international non-governmental organization that coordinates the development of voluntary technical standards.

ISO is a network of the national standards institutes of 146 countries with a Central Secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland, that coordinates the system. National standards institutes, not governments themselves, are eligible for membership. Each country sends only one member, and each member has one vote.

The ISO does not regulate or legislate. It’s standards are developed by international consensus among “experts drawn from the industrial, technical and business sectors... experts from government, regulatory authorities, testing bodies, academia, consumer groups or other relevant bodies.”

“There are more than 2,850 of working groups in which some 30,000 experts participate annually. This technical work is coordinated from ISO Central Secretariat in Geneva, which also publishes the standards.

Since 1947, ISO has published more than 13,500 International Standards. ISO’s work programme ranges from standards for traditional activities, such as agriculture and construction, through mechanical engineering to the newest information technology developments, such as the digital coding of audio-visual signals for multimedia applications.

Standardization of screw threads helps to keep chairs, children’s bicycles and aircraft together and solves the repair and maintenance problems caused by a lack of standardization that were once a major headache for manufacturers and product users. Standards establishing an international consensus on terminology make technology transfer easier and can represent an important stage in the advancement of new technologies.

Without the standardized dimensions of freight containers, international trade would be slower and more expensive. Without the standardization of telephone and banking cards, life would be more complicated. A lack of standardization may even affect the quality of life itself: for the disabled, for example, when they are barred access to consumer products, public transport and buildings because the dimensions of wheelchairs and entrances are not standardized.

Standardized symbols provide danger warnings and information across linguistic frontiers. Consensus on grades of various materials give a common reference for suppliers and clients in business dealings.

Agreement on a sufficient number of variations of a product to meet most current applications allows economies of scale with cost benefits for both producers and consumers. An example is the standardization of paper sizes.” [source]

The internatinoal technical standards also include international safety standards for products including toys (ISO 8124-1:2000), camping tents (ISO 5912:1993), bicycles (ISO 4210:1996), and contraceptive devices (ISO 8009).

In 1987, the ISO expanded to develop “generic management system standards.” ISO 9000 is set of a quality management guidelines that apply to all kinds of organizations in all kinds of areas. Once the a quality system is in place, an accredited external auditor can certify that your quality system has met all of ISO’s requirements. They can then issue official certification that you can use to publicize that the quality of your products and services is managed, controlled, and assured by a registered ISO 9000 quality system.

ISO 7001, “Graphical symbols for use on public information signs,” is a set of international symbols based on the “ISOTYPE” system of icons and pictograms introduced by Otto Neurath in the 1936. However, soon after the 7001 was published, it was determined that the standard international symbols did not have a standard meaning or clarity in every country. Published in 1989 and revised in 2001, ISO 9186 is a procedure for user testing of graphic symbols to determine which symbols communicate the intended meaning most readily to most people. There are two main test methods: a comprehensibility judgment test and a comprehension test. [source] Pictograms with exceptionally high comprehensibility in several countries can eventually become part of the ISO 7001 set.

ISO 13407 “Human centred design processes for interactive systems” provide guidelines for the planning and management of usability testing in the development of computer systems.

In 1993, the ISO established a technical committee, ISO/TC 207 to develop standards for “Environmental management.”

“This move was a concrete manifestation of ISO’s commitment to respond to the complex challenge of “sustainable development” articulated at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. It also stemmed from an intensive consultation process, carried out within the framework of the Strategic Advisory Group on Environment (SAGE). SAGE was set up in 1991 and brought together representatives of a variety of countries and international organizations — a total of more than 100 environmental experts — who helped to define how International Standards could support better environmental management.

Today, national delegations of environmental experts from 66 countries participate within ISO/TC 207, including 27 developing countries. In addition, 35 international non-governmental and business organizations participate as liaison organizations. The national delegations are chosen by the national standards institute concerned and they are required to bring to ISO/TC 207 a national consensus on issues being addressed by the technical committee. This national consensus is derived from a process of consultation with interested parties in each country.” [source]

The committee works in hand with ISO/TC 176, which develops the ISO 9000 family of standards for quality management and quality assurance.

“ISO 14000 refers to a series of voluntary standards in the environmental field under development by ISO. Included in the ISO 14000 series are the ISO 14001 EMS Standard and other standards in fields such as environmental auditing, environmental performance evaluation, environmental labeling, and life-cycle assessment. The EMS and auditing standards are now final. The others are in various stages of development.” [source]

ISO 14001 certification remains valid for three years and requires audits performed at least annually.

While U.S. environmental regulations do not apply outside of U.S. territory, ISO 14001 applies to all of your operations:

“Perhaps the most significant factor accelerating ISO 14001 compliance is the ever-increasing globalization that characterizes the auto industry. More and more, auto manufacturing is mirroring airplane manufacturing: parts and components might be manufactured anywhere, and assembly might occur anywhere.

This means that a single automaker can have multiple facilities all over the world, under the same corporate umbrella, which require a consistent EMS and measurable results in order to operate competitively. ISO 14001 is one of the best ways to ensure that these needs are met.” [source]

UPDATE: See my August 5, 2003 blog post ISO 14001 Reconsidered.

Via Metafilter, I caught this article in The Herald-Dispatch.

Both of Toyota’s engine assembly factories in the United States have achieved “zero landfill status,” which means that Toyota sells or gives away every waste product it produces to companies that recycle the waste: metals are melted down, plastic is mixed with sawdust to make plastic lumber, sludge from the wastewater treatment plant is sent to a company in Lima, Ohio, where it is mixed with other materials to make portland cement.

“Toyota has an environmental action plan calling for, among other things, reducing total energy use by 15 percent by 2005. Management at the Buffalo plant decided to do better, aiming for 19 percent. The plant achieved its 2005 environmental goals late last year, [said Don Stewart, maintenance manager for Toyota Motor Manufacturing West Virginia.]

The Buffalo plant is operating on an even tougher environmental plan that is scheduled to be fully implemented by 2006, Stewart said. Among the requirements is the zero landfill plan. The plant had already managed to avoid sending any hazardous waste to landfills. The next logical step was to not send any waste to landfills, Stewart said.

Some Toyota plants in Japan had already met that goal, so it was attainable, he said.”

The process has required investment, as well as revision of the manufacturing process.

“Stewart said zero landfill makes sense financially in several ways. For one thing, it eliminates liability for the company decades from now should problems at a landfill need to be corrected. In many cases, federal regulators require companies that dump materials in a problem landfill to remove them.

The Buffalo plant more or less breaks even on its zero landfill program, Stewart said. For some materials, recycling is more expensive than using a landfill, he said.

Toyota’s plant at Buffalo is ISO 14001-certified, meaning it meets a voluntary international standard for environmental protection. The certification process requires that the plant have a formal environmental policy, a system designed to track the plant’s environmental performance and established mechanisms for continuous improvement.

Now that the plant has attained zero landfill status, the next step is to work with suppliers to reduce the amount of waste materials coming into the plant....

Toyota is requiring that all its suppliers achieve ISO 14001 certification by the end of this year.”

In Toyota’s text about their environmental commitment is a press release on their ISO 14001 status and Toyota’s guidelines and requirements for its suppliers. Toyota sub-contracts much of its manufacturing processes, so its suppliers handle much of the waste product.

Toyota’s Policies for Global Environmental Protection Initiatives was established in 1992. The “Toyota Earth Charter,” was revised in 2000. Toyota’s Eco-project is designed to promote these policies so to the entire company, and to apply the concept of “Totally Clean” to every stage of a car’s life cycle, from development and production to use and disposal.

In 1998, Center for Resource Solutions awarded Toyota a “green e” for the use of sustainable electricity by its California operations.

In 1999, the United Nations Environmental Programme awarded Toyota their Global 500 Award, the first such award received by an automaker.

In addition to it’s green manufacturing process, Toyota also mass produces hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles. See GreenCars.com, a rating of fuel economy and emissions by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

See this article and this definition of Toyotism (or Toyotaism) for more on the human side of Toyota’s manufacturing process.

Environmentalist, on the board of chemical company, peddles poison products? A 19th century scandal unfolds in the 21st.

William Morris (1834-1896) was a poet, craftsman, designer, writer, typographer, socialist, an early environmentalist and design critic, and a founder of the Arts and Crafts movement. The movement in the UK and later in the United States aimed to raise the status of decorative arts, to celebrate craftsmanship and beauty in objects and furnishings. The movement was a response to industrialization, mass-production, and the alienation of workers from their craft and creativity. The movement campaigned for ethics and aesthetics in design, and celebrated craftsmanship, quality, and service it associated with the medieval guild system. Designers were encouraged to promote spiritual and humanist rather than commercial values, and to sell their wares to the public at a low price while fairly compensating the craftsman.

However, a paper published in the June 12, 2003 issue of the journal Nature finds that Morris used arsenic in the pigments of his wallpapers, despite widespread reports of its toxicity. The findings are a shocking contradiction to Morris’s design humanism.

From Wired News:

“William Morris is famous for creating beautiful tapestry designs, full of lush green leaves and vines, in the late 19th century.

A new study shows that Morris derived the color green from a dangerous source: arsenic. His father owned the processing plant that became the major supplier of arsenic used in green pigments in 1867. Morris made his own fortune from shares in the company, Devon Great Consols, and served on the board.

The researcher who performed the study found evidence that Morris turned a blind eye to the possible danger in which he placed his customers. Ironically, Morris was outspoken about his disgust with industry’s dehumanizing and polluting practices.

‘He was on the board of directors of an arsenic mining company,’ said Andy Meharg of the school of biological sciences at the University of Aberdeen in Great Britain whose study was published in Nature. ‘It is hard to believe that the health concerns of mining and processing of arsenic were not discussed at board meetings.’

Even in the late 1800s, the danger of arsenic exposure was well established. Workers at DGC suffered from painful skin lesions known as arsenic ‘pock,’ and many died from arsenic-related lung diseases, Meharg writes.

Yet Morris dismissed the assertion that arsenic was poisonous in letters to Thomas Wardle, his dye manufacturer. Wardle wrote Morris telling him that one of his customers was concerned that the wallpaper he had bought from Morris was making him and his wife sick.

‘As to the arsenic scare, a greater folly is hardly possible to imagine: The doctors were being bitten by witch fever,’ he wrote in a letter dated Oct. 3, 1885, according to Meharg.

The William Morris Gallery in London donated a small sample of one of Morris’ original wallpapers with the trellis design to analyze.

‘I analyzed the green pigment by energy-dispersive analysis and showed unequivocally that the coloration was caused by a copper arsenic salt,’ Meharg wrote. ‘The beauty that William Morris wallpapers brought to a room must have had a health cost, at least in damp rooms.’

In damp rooms, Mehard said, fungi living on the wallpaper paste turned the arsenic salts into highly toxic trimethylarsine. Arsenic pigments, which were also used extensively in paints and to dye clothes, paper, cardboard, food, soap, and artificial and dried flowers, were responsible for untold numbers of cases of chronic illness and many deaths.

The William Morris Society did not return phone calls requesting comment.

In addition to art and design, Morris was known for being an outspoken socialist as well as an environmentalist. He was a co-founder of the Arts and Crafts movement, and is described by art historians as someone who sought to ‘shift workers out of numbing factory jobs into uplifting crafts where a healthy mind, body and spirit could be achieved.’

So his dismissal of the misery that arsenic clearly caused workers in the factory his father owned — that gave him the means to start his firm, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (later changed to Morris & Co) — is troubling. But Meharg tries to give Morris the benefit of the doubt.

‘In his defense, he was a product of his age, when environmentalism was in its infancy,’ he writes in the Nature paper. ‘He was actually a positive force in this movement. His political creed developed over several decades, and by the end of his life, when he was most revolutionary, his links with industry were in the past.’”

See coverage in the Independent or Nature’s own article about the paper. You can download the full text of the paper if you are a Nature subscriber or are willing to cough up $18 for the article.

On June 4, 2003 the California Senate approved a bill that would require electronics manufacturers to recycle discarded computers and electronics equipment, and to set up and fund a recycling infrastructure. From news.com:

“If the bill is signed into law [by the state assembly and Governor Gray Davis], manufacturing companies by the beginning of 2005 would have to arrange for the recovery of 50 percent of all machines sold during the preceding year. That rate would grow to 70 percent in 2007 and 90 percent in 2010. According to the bill, just 20 percent of obsolete computers and TV sets are currently recovered for recycling. Under the bill, companies could either set up and finance state-approved drop-off programs, under which people could bring their older computers, or the companies could pay the state to do it. They would also have to develop recycling plans....

Governor Davis last year vetoed a bill similar to SB 20, but that earlier bill didn’t allow high-tech companies the option to run such programs themselves, as the new one does.

Although the current bill would affect only those companies doing business in California, the state, which is home to the tech-heavy Silicon Valley, often leads the country in environmental and other trends. Similar bills have been proposed in other states and in the U.S. Congress.”

See the text of Senate bill SB 20.

Other city and county-level initiatives mandating electronics recycling and “take-back” programs are also moving forward throughout California.

The Federal National Computer Recycling Act was introduced in the House on March 6, 2003 by Mike Thompson (Democrat, Napa Valley, California). The bill proposes a fee on all computer and peripheral sales. The fee would fund local programs to collect, reuse, resell, or recycle computer equipment. Gear would be exempt from the fee if its components are likely to be reused or disposed of properly. The bill also mandates a Congressional study on the health and environmental impact of materials used in computers. The bill covers other consumer electronics that “contain a significant amount of material that, when disposed of, would be hazardous waste.”

On April 11, 2003 the U.S. military released their list of most-wanted senior Iraqi government in the form of a deck of playing cards.

The cards were designed by staff of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the 3401st and 3418th Military Intelligence Detachments. One of the designers, Sergeant Scott Boehmler, 27, an Army reservist from Hazleton, Pennsylvania reports, “We understood what guys like to do on their downtime. This is an effective way of getting these images in the soldiers’ minds.”

Images can be downloaded from the Department of Defense Web site in HTML or PDF.

Production of the cards was widely covered in the U.S. mainstream media and treated as a significant event in the war. Subsequent reports of the arrest of Iraqi officials frequently refer to the list, even noting when an arrested official is not on the list. The reports are occasionally illustrated with an image of said official’s playing card.

The decks have also become enormously popular with the public. Web sites have sold hundreds of thousands of decks. As of May, one company reported $1.5 million in sales. It’s one thing to sell a war to the public. It’s whole other matter for them to buy it themselves in droves. I’ve even seen street vendors in NYC selling the decks alongside the knockoff sun glasses and watches and received a couple of unsolicited email messages offering the decks for sale.

U.S. military personnel are the world’s largest consumers of playing cards, according to Cincinnati-based United States Playing Card Company, the world’s largest playing card manufacturer. According to Time (May 12, 2003) the extreme popularity of the most-wanted cards prompted the distributor to reissue cards created for the military in earlier wars. During World War II “spotter decks” were produced for troops to distinguish between Allied and enemy aircraft. During the Vietnam War “decks containing only the ace of spades were passed out to U.S. troops, who would display a card on their helmets to scare away the Viet Cong — supposedly superstitious about the card, which fortune tellers considered a harbinger of suffering and death.”

The cards have inspired a genre of spinoffs.

GreatUSAflags.com has followed up with U.S. Military Heroes playing cards “honoring America’s servicemen and women involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom.” The deck also features images of aircraft, ships, submarines, aircraft carriers, vehicles and missiles deployed in battle.

On April 25, global justice group, the “Trade Regulation Organization,” released their U.S. Regime Change cards [image, PDF 6MB]. The group, “estimating that the U.S. governing regime is no longer consistent with world peace or prosperity, hopes that the playing cards will show the way to regime change and, eventually, large-scale war crimes proceedings.”

On May 1, Greenpeace International released a deck of “most wanted” cards depicting the nuclear powers of the world. [PDF, 96K] “This deck is designed to help delegates to the Non-proliferation Treaty meeting recognise owners of weapons of mass destruction. Packed with nuclear weapons of mass destruction facts. Fun for the whole family.” Says Tom Clements, senior campaigner with Greenpeace, “It ties the anti-war message together with the disarmament message.”

On May 7, the conservative Web site NewsMax announced the Deck of Weasels [image] which features images of anti-war celebrities and politicians includes Michael Moore, Tim Robbins, Jacques Chirac, Barbara Streisand, Teddy Kennedy, Kofi Annan, Vicente Fox, Jean Chretien, Senator Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd. Each card features a quote by the celeb opposing the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Each of the photographs has been altered so each figure wears the beret of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard.

On May 15, the Ruckus Society released America’s War Profiteers, a deck of cards identifying 53 individuals and institutions in the oil, military, government, media, and policy sectors. “The groups’ aim is to expose, ‘The links among corporations, institutions, and government officials that profit from endless war.’” The site also features a good set of links to articles and campaign pages.

On May 23, Nitestar Productions released “The Deck of Republican Chickenhawks,” depicting the 54 Republican officials, congressmen, politicians and pundits who avoided serving their country through connections, deferments, or other excuses.” Needless to say, many of the officials vigorously supported the U.S. war on Iraq. The deck was inspired by a list maintained by the New Hampshire Gazette of Republican politicians and pundits who have never served in armed combat.

Still other decks reported in the May 18 Washington Post:

“Republicans in the Texas legislature had cards made depicting the state’s ‘most-wanted Democrats’ — the lawmakers who fled to Oklahoma to scuttle a vote on a bitterly contested Republican redistricting plan....

Inspired by the Pentagon’s cards, Frances Gomez, 23, decided to print up card sets featuring her top 55 Cuban villains. But just before the printing order was sent out, Gomez tweaked her plan in hopes of really sticking it to Fidel Castro. She decided to make the cards look like dominoes, the real king of the board games in Little Havana and just about anywhere else that Cubans gather.

So, instead of being the ace of spades — the card reserved for Saddam Hussein in the Pentagon’s deck — Fidel is the Double Nine, the domino tile that no player wants to hold at the end of a game. Gomez needed help from Cuban American groups in Miami to compile her list. She was born in the United States and says, like many Cuban Americans her age, that she knew little about the details behind the deep animosity felt toward Castro and his allies by older generations that fled the island nation.

‘It’s important to learn who these people are,’ Gomez said.”

In addition to the playing cards are recent political trading cards.

In 1991, trading card publisher Topps (coordinating with the Pentagon and Navy Department) published 3 sets of Desert Storm Trading Cards. In 2001, they published a series of Operation Enduring Freedom Trading Cards.

An article in the Guardian notes:

“90 glossy cards featuring US political and military leaders, the patriotic response to the September 11 attacks, and military hardware.... The series also features a photograph of flowers laid outside the US embassy in Pakistan in the aftermath of the September 11 atrocities. No corresponding card shows the subsequent angry demonstrations against the US bombing campaign.... Topps would not directly respond to charges that the cards promoted an unquestioning view of the war to children.”

Kingsley Barham, publisher of marijuana trading cards that cover hemp history, politics, types, and uses, developed a set of trading cards about the September 11 attacks, Heroes of the World Trade Center. Despite approval from families of victims whose portraits are on the cards, the cards were met with outrage by politicians and the media. The New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg urged lawyers to find ways to prevent the sale of the cards.

Satire decks of the U.S. “war on terrorism” include American Crusade 2001+, Unofficial Iraqi Freedom Action Cards, and the images of Playing the Hitler Card, a small collection of cards with images of dictators and links to pages were they have recently been compared to Hitler.

In September, 2002 Slate published the Flash animation Corporate Scandal Trading Cards, “the fastest guide to America’s top 10 business crackups” with names and photos of CEO’s along with some statistics and a brief description of the crimes and frauds of WorldCom, Enron, Global Crossing, Adelphia, Tyco, ImClone, Halliburton, Harken, Qwest, and Andersen Consulting.

In April 2000, Texans for Public Justice produced a set of Bush League trading cards. The 20 cards feature statistics and a profile of a Bush “Pioneer” who has raised at least $100,000 for Bush’s presidential election. The profiles are drawn from TPJ’s investigation into the 212 announced Bush “Pioneers.”

On the heels of their 1989 comic book “Brought to Light: Thirty Years of Drug Smuggling, Arms Deals, & Covert Action,” in 1990 Eclipse published the original Friendly Dictator Trading Cards. The hallucinogenic artwork of Bill Sienkiewicz illustrates “three dozen of America’s most embarrassing ‘friends’, a cunning crew of tyrants and corrupt puppet-presidents who have been rewarded handsomely for their loyalty to U.S. interests.” Other political trading card sets published by Eclipse include “Drug Wars,” “The Iran Contra Scandal,” and “Rotten to the Core - New York Political Scandal,” and “Coup D’etat,” which presents theories pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Douglas Rushkoff’s 1994 book Media Virus quotes journalist and Eclipse editor Catherine Yronwode:

“Our trading cards are designed so they read like Hypercard stacks. Each cross-references to other cards... They all connect, and you can rearrange them in chains of interconnectivity. Or chronologically. You can find out who someone’s boss was, how different people moved around, that this guy was in Vietnam at the same time as this guy, and then that they were both in Nicaragua at the same time, too.”

Eclipse’s “Crime and Punishment” and “True Crime” cards, which present information about serial killers and gangsters, prompted the Board of Supervisors of Nassau County to pass Local Law 11-1992 which made it illegal to disseminate “indecent crime material to minors.” From the Friendly Dictators site:

“In 1997... a U.S. federal appeals court struck down a Nassau County, New York law banning the sale of trading cards depicting ‘any heinous crime". The court found for Eclipse who had challenged the law on First Amendment grounds - cf: Eclipse Enterprises, Inc. v. Gulotta (U.S. Federal Court of Appeal, 2nd Circuit, December 1997). The expense of this court case seems to have bankrupted them - at any rate, for whatever reason, Eclipse appears to have folded. There are no web entries for the company, no listing in any of the Publishing Indexes I’ve been able to find, and all its products are out of print, as far as the big web booksellers are concerned.”

Details of the case and proceedings can be found here.

This entry has been updated and incorporated into An Introduction to Activism on the Internet.

I’ve been searching for a list of excellent examples of Internet activism. I couldn’t find one, so I made my own.

I’ve structured much of this list around categories outlined by Sasha Costanza-Chock in “Mapping the Repertoire of Electronic Contention,” in Representing Resistance: Media, Civil Disobedience and the Global Justice Movement, eds. Andrew Opel and Donnalyn Pompper. Greenwood, in press. Unless otherwise indicated, the quoted text below has been taken from him.

Though I’ve added some of my own commentary, this is not intended to be a full analysis of the campaigns and organizations mentioned. I disagree with the politics of many of the examples listed, but think there is something to be learned from each of the them.

Many of the projects listed here also cross multiple categories, but have been organized here for the sake of demonstration. The categories are as follows:

• Representation
• Information Distribution and Independent Media
• Research
• Cultural Production
• Outreach
• Solidarity
• Lobbying
• Fundraising
• Tactical Communication

[ Because it’s taken so long for me to finish this list, I’m posting what I’ve written thus far. The second half will cover online collaboration, tech tools, and more oppositional tactics. I’ll post it as soon as I get a chance. In the meantime, do please your comments and feedback. ]

Representation

“It would be impossible to catalog the hundreds of thousands of sites devoted to social movements, but these generally present organizations in terms of mission, projects, history, membership, and links to affiliated groups, and usually include contact information. One function of such sites is to establish a kind of ongoing presence for organizations and other movement actors. In contexts of extreme repression, websites may be the only way for organizations that operate entirely underground to have a persistent visible presence at all. For example, this is the case for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, who have spoken of how their website (www.rawa.org) has served as kind of ‘virtual base’ from which they are able to represent themselves to the world as well as engage in all the other forms of conventional electronic contention described below.”

The armed uprising of the Zapatista National Liberation Army in the Mexican state of Chiapas was one of the first social movements to use Internet effectively. On January 1, 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army took over 5 towns and over 500 ranches in Chiapas, one of the poorest states in Mexico. The Zapatistas say they chose this date because it marked the first day of the North Amercian Free Trade Agreement. During the long war between the Mexican Army and the Zapatistas, the Zapatista’s sent out periodic email communiques through journalists and sympathizers that described the situation on the ground and the ideals behind the movement and its critique of neoliberalism. Despite limited mainstream media coverage of the struggle, the communiques were distributed throughout Mexico and around the world, published on the Web and on gopher sites. As national and international support and solidarity for the movement grew, the actions of Mexican government were increasingly scrutinized. Protests were held around the world, meetings were organized in Chiapas and across South America, and the Mexican government was eventually pushed to accept mediation and negotiations instead of military repression. This page has a list of information resources in English.

Information Distribution and Independent Media

“This includes, but is not limited to the distribution of information about movement goals, campaigns, actions, reports, and so on via website, email, listservs, bulletin boards, chat rooms, ftp, and other channels. Information may be designed for the general public or for specific receivers, for example press releases, academic reports, or radio programmes and video segments for rebroadcast. In some cases the same information may be repackaged differently for various intended audiences.”

Radio B-92 broadcasts music and news promoting “free speech, objective reporting, social tolerance and solidarity, minority cultures, cosmopolitan values and alternative culture” in the struggle for a free and democratic Serbia. After two brief closures by the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, Radio B92 was permanently taken over on April 2, 1999. Within months, Free B92 managed to resume almost all its former activities. In cooperation with Studio B, the radio program B2-92 began broadcasting on 99.1 MHz FM on August 9, 1999. Despite constant jamming by the regime this program quickly became the highest-rated in Belgrade as had been Radio B92 before the shutdown. The government took over Studio B on May 16, 2000, terminating the FM broadcast. Despite this, the station continued to broadcast on satellite (six hours a day) as well as on the Internet (24 hours). The shift to underground, Internet broadcasting enabled the opposition to be heard throughout the war. The station continues to the use of the Internet in the fight against repression and as focus of an on-line community concerned with the struggle for democratization of Serbia.

Indymedia is many things to many people: a collection of autonomous independent media organizations; an open publishing system; a global, grassroots infrastructure for free speech, dissent, and activism; a network for solidarity and technology exchange; a movement for truth and social justice, both local and international. Indymedia rose to prominence during the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in November 1999. Since then, the global justice movement and Indymedia have grown along side each other, often intersecting and mutually supporting one another. Over 120 Indymedia Web sites provide an online forum for independent journalism. Check the Indymedia FAQ or contact a local Independent Media Center near you.

Much has been made of the rise of Blogs in Iran, particularly as a place for women in Iran to talk freely about subjects they can not otherwise discuss in public. The debate online is an extension of the overall intellectual and democratic transformation taking place.

Blogs also played a role in the resignation of Senate majority leader Trent Lott. When the mainstream media ignored the racist remarks of the incoming Senate Minority Leader, bloggers kept the story going.

Tokyo Alien Eyes is a tiny organization that fights racism against foreign residents in Japan, particularly students. The director maintains a blog (in Japanese) of his activities which creates a level of transparency that is unique among Japanese community based organizations.

Geek buys a new computer with a built-in DVD player. Geek runs the Linux operating system and is unable to play the DVD’s he owns. So he cracks the DVD encryption scheme and shares the recipe with other Linux users. Hilarity ensues. So what’s the best way to spread a piece of code? Ban it and then sue a bunch of geeks to remove the code and links to it from their Web pages. The debate over DeCSS, subsequent lawsuits and massive civil disobedience have broad implications: Is code software or speech? Are digital media, movies, videos, software, or speech? Can you really make hyperlinks illegal? And what about our freedom to tinker? The continued redistribution of the code has made a mockery of the MPAA, their tactics, and security model. (Particularly when the DeCSS code was briefly entered into the public record in the course of the trial.)

And then there are your solid campaign sites like Circuses.com. Run by the organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the campaign targets cruelty against animals by circuses. The site provides a concise overview of the issue, a list of actions you can take, and materials for kids to download and print. The site navigation is clear, and the overall design is bright and circusy with stars and photos of circus tents... and animals in chains. The domain name is also a great Google hack. When a user searches for info on “circuses,” Circuses.com comes up first.

Research

“Many social movement organizations use the Internet as a resource for gathering specific information relevant to their cause, including information about opponents or targets, information produced by other movement actors, case studies of parallel situations, historical background, theory, economic data, environmental data, media analysis, and so on.”

The Environmental Working Group Farm Subsidy Database is a database of farm program checks written by the U.S. Department of Agriculture during calendar years 1996 through 2000, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. The tens of millions of check records were compiled to obtain the total subsidy received by each recipient, in each payment category. According to the NYTimes, it has “not only caught the attention of [U.S.] lawmakers, it also helped transform the farm bill into a question about equity and whether the country’s wealthiest farmers should be paid to grow commodity crops while many smaller family farms receive nothing and are going out of business.”

Among the myths, propaganda, and disinformation bolstering the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there were a few shining beacons of clarity and truth on the Web. The Center for Cooperative Research has produced several excellent fact sheets about America’s war without end. Their breakdown of Iraqi opposition groups, and their positions on U.S. invasion, is the best that I’ve found. See also 13 Myths About the Case for War in Iraq, a collaborative research project developed by Organizers’ Collaborative. Written and produced by “The Committee to Unsell the War,” Who Dies for Bush Lies? features a summary of Bush administration lies in the case for this and the previous Gulf War, and addresses the cost of war on U.S. civilians and soldiers as well as Iraqi civilians and soldiers. It also points to carefully selected resources, links, and actions, and features photos of anti-war Americans from all walks of life rallying against the war.

Cultural Production

“Visual art, music, video, poetry, net.art, and other forms of cultural production by artists active in, associated with, or supportive of social movements are often posted, distributed, or sold online.”

Several Web sites host agit-prop images that can be freely printed out and posted around town. Subvertise is a fairly broad collection. During the invasion of Iraq, many sites hosted a number of downloadable anti-war posters. The idea is a good one, though the quality of the images is mixed. Two individual artists with some great agit-prop images and posters online are Erik Drooker and Mike Flugennock. Micah Wright’s remixed vintage propaganda posters were widely picked up by the blogging crowd.

During the invasion of Iraq, a couple of artists remixed President Bush’s State of the Union speeches to comic and chilling effect. To this, I would also add this lipsynched love song between George W. Bush and Tony Blaire.

Also under cultural production, are satire sites.

“Site parodies or replicas of target sites that subtly alter wording or images to express activist viewpoints and discredit the target have been launched against.”

Some examples: gatt.org, GWBush.com, whitehouse.org, Homeland Security Cultural Bureau.

Other examples are listed in the parody section of this blog.

Outreach

Also known as “viral marketing,” these campaigns often take the form of Flash pieces that are emailed from friend to friend promoting a cause or action. Two examples are AIDS Concern, Hong Kong, and the Amnesty International, Conflict Diamonds animation.

Less attached to any specific campaigns are two projects by Jonah Peretti that were forwarded widely around the Web: his email exchange about customizing Nike sneakers with the word “sweatshop”; and the straight-faced satire site blackpeopleloveus.com.

Somewhere between outreach and tactical communication is political use of the Web site meetup.com. The site is a “free service that organizes local gatherings about anything, anywhere.” You register your interest and city and when a critical mass of people have also registered, a date and place for the meeting is set. On April 2, over ten thousand people met across the country to discuss campaign efforts for Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean. As of this writing, Dean’s Meetup site reports that nearly 23,000 people are meeting or are interested in meeting in nearly 500 cities. Also of note, is the Howard Dean Web log, maintained by one of his campaign workers as they stump across the U.S.A. Read more about the Dean campaign and its use of the Internet. Note, too, that constituencies that are less connected to the Internet, are less likely to be reached by Internet organzing alone.

Solidarity

One of the first electronic advocacy campaigns was the Blue Ribbon free speech. In February 1996, President Clinton signed into law a Telecom Bill and its “Communications Decency Amendment.” The “Communications Decency Act” attempted to impose U.S. broadcast-style content regulations on the Internet. Internet users were outraged. Protests were held, lawsuits were filed, and Web authors colored their pages black for 48 hours. Subsequently, the authors posted banner graphics of blue ribbons and linked to campaign pages on the fight against the CDA and Internet censorship. In June 1997, a unanimous US Supreme Court decision struck down the CDA as an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. The blue ribbon campaign did not end, however, as Clinton signed the “Child Online Protection Act” (aka “CDA II”) in 1998. After another round of protest and lawsuits, the law was struck down in March 2003. The blue ribbon campaign continues today and has broadened to include Internet censorship around the world.

In January 2003, Sam Hamill was invited by First Lady Laura Bush to take part in a White House symposium called “Poetry and the American Voice.” Hamill, author of 13 volumes of poetry, is also ex-Marine, a Buddhist and a pacifist. He started the Web site Poets Against the War and invited a few friends to submit antiwar poems. The poems would be presented to the White House at the March 5th event. In two months, the site received over 13,000 submissions. News got around and the symposium was cancelled. The site also began listing events and readings of poetry against the war around the U.S. In March, 13,000 poems were presented to the Prime Minister of Canada. In May, 174 of the poems were published by Nation Books in an anthology titled “Poets Against the War.”

From the Link and Think site:

“Each December 1, World AIDS Day, the creative community observes A Day With(out) Art, in memory of all those the AIDS pandemic has taken from us, and in recognition of the many artists, actors, writers, dancers and others who continue to create and live with HIV and AIDS. A Day With(out) Art was created by the group Visual AIDS in New York City. For the last several years, Creative Time has organized a Day With(out) Art observance on the worldwide web, encouraging diverse website designers and administrators to darken their site and convey AIDS prevention and education information to their visitors. In 1999, more than 50 webloggers took part in a project called a Day With(out) Weblogs. In 2000, nearly 700 personal weblogs and journals of all sorts participated. In 2001, the number was over 1,000. The personal web publishing community — weblogs, journals, diaries, personal websites of every kind — has continued to grow and diversify. Once again, everyone who produces personal content on the web is invited to participate a global observance of World AIDS Day. In recognition of the variety of sites participating — E/N sites, weblogs, journals, newspages and more — and to differentiate it from other, similar endeavors, a Day With(out) Weblogs became Link and Think.”

Lobbying

“This includes electronic versions of certain kinds of collective action aimed directly at influencing the political process and legislative outcomes. Online petitions and email campaigns fall into this category. Targets may be elected officials and government bodies, multilateral institutions, transnational nongovernmental organizations or other social movement organizations.”

Corporations and non-profits, like Capital Advantage and GetActive Software, maintain online applications that make it easy to contact state and federal officials in the U.S. Non-profit organizations like NARAL (formerly The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League) can use the applications to run action driven sites like the Choice Action Network which can email customized action alerts to supporters in targeted districts so the users need only click a button to send a letter to their elected officials. The applications also integrate email list management and online fundraising, and can connect track the online actions and donations of their supporters.

Like the services mentioned above, the Web site FaxYourMP.org lets Britons send faxes their Members of Parliament. The site was instrumental in killing the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000 and the national ID card campaign. What’s notably different is that the site is run by a private citizen out of his own home. Blogger Corey Doctorow sums it up: “Some code, a good meme, DSL, and a few hundred bucks’ worth of hardware adds up to a tool that moves governments. I am agog.”

The WWF Panda Passport makes electronic advocacy into a kind of a lobbying game. The more actions you take the more stamps you get in your panda passport. The more stamps you accumulate, you higher rank and title you win. At each threshold, you are offered rewards like downloadble wallpaper graphics and screen savers. Site users are also sent action alerts by email. Though the game format seems very effective at encouraging participation, I find it trivializes the content.

Amnesty International’s Urgent Action Network existed long before the Internet. Postal mail action briefs were sent from AI’s London headquarters to national offices around the world to distribute to Amnesty International members. The briefs outlined cases of “prisoners of conscience,” often detained for non-violent expression of their political beliefs and often at risk of torture or execution. Amnesty members would respond with hundreds and even thousands of letters to the responsible government officials urging them to free the prisoners. Email and the Web have dramatically shortened response times, though much of the lobbying is still done with postal mail. Last year’s campaign on torture introduced action alerts via text messages to beepers and cell phones. Over the years, hundreds of prisoners have been released (though AI does not take direct credit for specific releases.) Also of note is the use of geography as a tactical tool. Not every urgent action is sent to every member by the 80 Amnesty offices around the world. When actions are distributed, a geographic balance is maintained so that, for instance, letters an Islamic country does not only receive letters from the U.S. and Western Europe, but from other Islamic countries as well. Conversely, Amnesty generally does not send cases to members that are in the members’ own country (though there are some exceptions.)

Lobbying is not confined to government officials and corporations, but also includes the media. With the Capital Advantage application you simply your zip code for a list of local media outlets and their contact info. Palestine Media Watch sends out regular email dispatches that document media bias in reports on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The newsletter encourages subscribers to respond directly to the news agency concerned.

There are an enormous number of petitions online. Sites like petition online makes creating one very easy, though it lacks a verification mechanism. This petition urging UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson to investigate Ariel Sharon’s crimes against humanity has nearly one million. The petition collected signatures into 2003 — long after Mary Robinson left that office in September 2002 and after the Web site and email account of the petition creator ceased to exist.

One of the best uses of online petitions is simply building a network of supporters. MoveOn.org started in September 1998 as an online petition to encourage the media and politicians to move on from the seemingly endless noise over the President Clinton’s impeachment proceedings. According to the site “during impeachment, MoveOn’s grassroots advocates generated more than 250,000 phone calls and a million emails to Congress.” The site has focused on other issues, but it was in the fight the U.S. war on Iraq that it took off. Most notable, was the virtual march on Washington which organized thousands of anti-war Americans to call and fax the President and Congress on February 26, 2003. The action overwhelmed White House and Senate switchboards and offices. With their periodic email messages urging simple, concrete actions MoveOn also organized off line rallies, personal visits by constituents with their elected officials, and raised funds for the production and placement of television, radio, and newspaper ads. The email list now boasts over two million subscribers around the world.

Fundraising

“This includes appeals to membership and donations as well as the online sale of ‘SMO merchandise’ - T-shirts, books, buttons, posters, and so on. This is problematized by certain kinds of companies that might be considered (or consider themselves) SMOs but have a main organizational function that is commercial, for example Fair Trade Federation (http://www.fairtradefederation.com). Fundraising efforts are also aided by computer-assisted direct mailing campaigns and by member database management.”

An growing number of Internet users are donating money online, though the overall percentage of chartiable donations made online is still very smalll. According to groundspring.org, around 1-3% of individual giving in the U.S. was via the Internet in 2002.

Humanitarian organizations like the Red Cross raise an enormous amount of money whenever a big disaster hits the mainstream media. Donation sites for the families of the victims of the attacks on September 11, 2001 raised an unprecedented amount of money.

Of online donation sites, I find the Heifer International Gift Catalog particularly effective. The Catalog is an e-commerce site where you can purchase cows and goats which are distributed to families around the world that live in poverty. The site creates a strong sense of transparency, giving the impression that there is no question about what your money is funding.

The Hunger Site was the first of many ‘clicks for charity’ sites. The site funnels dollars from banner ad clickthroughs into humanitarian relief efforts. I have always been impressed by the popularity of the site, considering how superficially it address the actual causes of hunger and extreme poverty. The Hunger Site is run by for-profit corporation, though it claims 100% of sponsor banner advertising is paid to nonprofit beneficiary organizations.

In the U.S., registered non-profit organizations are restricted in the amount and kinds of lobbying they are permitted to conduct. So MoveOn, building on its enormous email network, started a separate political action committee. MoveOn PAC is a response to corporate PACs that raise money for (and curry favor from) candidates for congressional office. MoveOn PAC acts as a conduit for Web users to fund candidates with moderate to progressive views. “All funds go entirely to the individual campaigns in the amounts you specify. We take care of all the required [Federal Election Commission] paperwork by transmitting necessary contributor information to each campaign... Through the MoveOn.org Political Action Committee, more than 10,000 everyday Americans together contributed more than $2 million to key congressional campaigns in the 2000 election, and more than $3.5 million in 2002 election.”

Planned Parenthood also used fundraising itself as an advocacy tool. After an LA Times columnist wrote that a donation to Planned Parenthood in the name of John Ashcroft was a fitting message to send to President George W. Bush on Presidents’ Day in response to his reinstating the “global gag rule” and appointing John Ashcroft as U.S. attorney general, 15,000 individuals contributed $500,000 . 15,000 acknowledgement messages were delivered to the new Executive Office Building.

Tactical Communication

“This refers to the use of the Internet or other electronic communications to aid mobilization efforts, both before and during street or ‘real world’ collective actions. This includes calls to action distributed electronically, as well as coordination during street actions using internet, pager, cell phone, WAP, or other electronic communications technologies.”

On September 25, 1995 the Mersey Docks & Harbour Company sacked 500 dockworkers in Liverpool for refusing to cross a picket line. Faced with Thatcher’s anti-union laws at home, the dockers appealed for international support. Along with conventional means of communication, they spread the word through email and a Web site on LabourNet. As the dockers travelled to carry the picket abroad, to publicize the struggle and raise funds, they found that when they arrived, people already knew about their struggle “from the Internet.” LabourNet became a daily news service about the Liverpool dispute for dockers around the world.

“Using this network the dockers were able to organise two international days of action in their support. In the first day of action, the body that supposedly possessed the authority to call international dockers’ actions, the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), was circumvented in this way and reduced to trailing limply behind the dockers’ network. It organised virtually no action itself and when asked by the press to supply information on the pending action it was forced to send begging E-mails to LabourNet to try to find out what was actually happening. This first day of action, on 20th January 1997, resulted in what one international union official described as ‘the biggest international working class action for 100 years.’ In 27 countries, 105 ports and cities, dockers, seafarers, and other workers took part in workplace meetings, public meetings, demonstrations at British Embassies and Consulates, work-to-rules, and full-scale stoppages ranging from 30 minutes up to 24 hours. Whilst this was happening, the Liverpool dockers’ union, the Transport & General Workers’ Union (TGWU), was trying to persuade the Liverpool dockers and their families to accept redundancy payments and quit their fight. The international support was inspiring them to carry on and was making the TGWU leadership’s task much more difficult. When the Liverpool shop stewards called a second day of action on 8th September 1997 the TGWU insisted that the ITF must not support the action. This made very little difference. If anything the action was bigger than the first one. US and Canadian longshoremen closed down the entire North American West Coast from Alaska to Los Angeles for 24 hours. The flexibility of the dockers’ communication network was illustrated by the fact that they were able to organise this action whilst keeping the employers in the dark about its actual date, only publicly announcing it at the last moment.

In September 1997, a ship from Britain with containers on board from a company using Liverpool was refused by dockers in Oakland, Vancouver, and at two different ports in Japan. Rather than sail back all the way back to Britain, the ship was sold along with its cargo to a company in Hong Kong.

“This action caused great fear amongst ship owners and their insurers, even more than the international days of action had. Despite this growing international strength, the dockers were ultimately forced to surrender by the connivance of the TGWU leadership. On 26th January, 1998, the Merseyside Port Shop Stewards Committee issued a statement notifying supporters around the world that ‘the Liverpool dockworkers decided to call an end to their long running dispute.’ Behind the scenes, enormous pressure, full details of which have never been fully revealed, had been put on the shop stewards by the TGWU leadership to force them to end the dispute. Despite this defeat, the Liverpool dockers’ struggle proved how powerful a networked union communication structure based on the Internet could be in the fight back against a globalised capital that dominates the mainstream media. During the course of the Liverpool fight, dockers in a number of other countries: Montreal in Canada, Santos in Brazil, Los Angeles in the US, Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Stockholm in Sweden all began producing their own Web sites. The defeat of the Liverpool men meant most of these Web sites later closed down, but workers elsewhere are still building Internet based communications networks inspired by the one built in support of Liverpool. During the Korean general strike in 1997, the, then illegal, Korean Confederation of Trade Unions used LabourNet and its own Web sites to publicise its actions. This later resulted in the formation of Korean LaborNet (NodongNet). In February [2002], the All Japan Dockworkers’ Union, which played a central role in taking action for Liverpool, worked together with labour media activists to launch LaborNet Japan.” [source]

Other examples of electronic media for tactical communication include:

• the use of fax machines to mobilize and publicize 1989 uprising in Tiananmen Square.
  
• the use of text messaging by protesters in 2001 revolution in the Phillipines to rapidly coordinate demonstrations that helped topple president Estrada.
  
• the use mobile phones by protestors at the 1999 World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle to coordinate the demonstrations, and outwit the centralized radio system of the police. Other large scale, international demonstrations by the global justice movement, such as the G8 protests in Evian, France and convergences like the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, rely heavily on the Internet to coordinate.

The January 2003 presidential victory in South Korea also stunned everyone by shaking off 50 years of conservative rule. The change is in part the result of a demographic shift and the use of the Internet by the younger generation to get out the vote.

The February 15, 2003 protests against the U.S. invasion of Iraq were historically unprecedented for the scale and global distribution, and the fact that they occurred before the war. Millions of people in 793 cities around the world took to the streets to protest Bush’s war in Iraq. Though email facilitated much of the organizing within individual cities, I hear from organizers that almost no coordination at all took place between cities. It was mostly word-of-mouth. The idea started at the European Social Forum in November 2002. There, the date February 15 was chosen as a date for anti-war demonstrations “in every capital.” From there the idea spread. Images of the protests circulated the Web in practically real time. Some articles: Wired, New York Times, Washington Post.

Mentioned above, MoveOn.org’s massive lobbying blitz, the February 26, 2003 “virtual march” on Washington D.C. falls under this category, too.

Last updated on July 20, 2003.