24 fevereiro 2003

ECO-TERROR
How the Protesters Mobilized: Organizing a protest is fundamentally about logistics: where do people meet, how do they get on a bus, who will order portable toilets. Obviously, the Internet, like fax machines and copiers, has made the tasks easier. Before last weekend's protests, for example, people registered online for buses to New York. And a mass e-mail notice was sent out to New York protesters, informing them about public bathrooms in Midtown Manhattan and giving them a number to call in case of arrest.
But the Internet has become more than a mere organizing tool; it has changed protests in a more fundamental way, by allowing mobilization to emerge from free-wheeling amorphous groups, rather than top-down hierarchical ones.