Internet Fueled Global Interest in Disruptions

The tumult in Seattle began 11 months ago with a salvo of e-mail.

“Everybody clear your calendars,” read a message sent Jan. 26 to thousands of supporters by Public Citizens’ Global Trade Watch, a lead organizer of this week’s protests. “We’re going to Seattle at the end of November.”

That e-mail, and others from allied organizations, began ricocheting around the globe the moment Seattle was selected to host the World Trade Organization talks.

Soon there were dozens of “listservs,” or e-mail discussion groups, devoted to devising ways to disrupt the event. By this fall, there was a central Web site, at https://www.seattle99.org, seeking volunteers, distributing fliers, providing directions and even assisting protesters in finding lodging.

These were the digital origins of what has become one of the most incendiary U.S. political uprisings in a generation, with hundreds of police and National Guardsmen using tear gas and concussion grenades to face down armies of protesters.

And Wednesday, as the WTO talks finally got underway and 300 demonstrators were arrested, organizers of the massive protest said its magnitude would not have been possible without the Internet.

“The Internet has become the latest, greatest arrow in our quiver of social activism,” said Mike Dolan, field director for Global Trade Watch. In many ways, he said, “the Internet benefits us more than the corporate and government elites we’re fighting.”

That, he said, is true not only because of the Net’s geographic reach, but because of its ability to link disparate political groups that might not have identical agendas but, at least in the case of the WTO, can identify a common enemy.

Environmentalists, labor activists, women’s rights organizations and vegetarians are just a few of the groups represented among the tens of thousands of protesters that have flocked to Seattle, including many from other continents.

But almost all of them have used the Seattle99 site as a clearinghouse of information. The site, operated by People for Fair Trade and backed by numerous organizations, offered to post materials from almost any group interested in taking part in the protests.

The site has gone well beyond the usual position papers and solicitations for volunteers. It has served as a distribution center for such traditional materials as fliers that activists can print and post on telephone poles and bulletin boards. One features a cartoon of a WTO official preparing to carve up the world with a knife just as an army of pitchfork-wielding protesters storm in, saying, “Thought We’d Drop In!”

One of the site’s cleverest functions is its use of software to match protesters who need shelter with Seattle residents willing to offer their spare bedrooms or couches for a few nights. Travelers were even prompted to list any allergies to pets that they might have, or whether they preferred a nonsmoking residence. According to Bill Aal, technical director of the site, more than 1,200 demonstrators found temporary lodging that way.

Many protesters relied exclusively on such online data in making their Seattle plans. Sarah Koch, who was in one of the environmental marches Tuesday, said she was unaware of the planned protests until a few weeks ago, when she stumbled onto an anti-WTO Web site.

After signing up for one of the site’s e-mail lists, she became fascinated by the scope of the event taking shape online. Each day she was getting e-mail requests for help, ranging from a plea for assistance in stitching together sea turtle costumes to requests for duct tape and first aid supplies.

“All these people asking for specific help for specific things made me want to come,” said Koch, 28, who traveled from Idaho. “It made me feel that I would actually have something to do.”

Of course, the demonstrations were also the culmination of a great deal of offline planning. Top-level organizing “is still done in person,” said Lori Wallach, director of Global Trade Watch. Since January, she said, there have been monthly international conference calls among dozens of groups mapping out the Seattle protests.

But the Internet has been an invaluable tool for disseminating information to a vast audience at almost no cost, she said. To illustrate the Net’s impact, she described an instance six years ago when her organization obtained a leaked copy of the agreement that created the WTO.

“I took it to Kinko’s, made copies and Federal Expressed it to 30 people I work with,” she said. When her group got its hands on another sensitive document last year, she said, “I scanned it into our computer and then e-mailed it not just to those same 30 people but posted it on our Web site for the world to read.”

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Well-Wired Activists

Activist groups used the Internet to inform, organize and draw protesters to Seattle for the WTO meeting. Here’s a look at some of the more popular sites: