Protesters Find the Web to Be a Powerful Tool
November 21, 2001
By AMY HARMON
It was just before Jodie Hemerda set off a family feud by
announcing her opposition to the United States bombing in
Afghanistan that she began scouring the Internet for others
who shared her views.
She was not having much success in her hometown, Parker,
Colo., where only the rare minivan does not fly an American
flag. Rather than risk alienating the other mothers in the
neighborhood, Ms. Hemerda, 30, has refrained from voicing
her antiwar sentiments as they shuttle the children to and
from school.
Even her husband, who threatened to boycott Thanksgiving
dinner with his parents if they could not respect Ms.
Hemerda's right to her opinions, stops short of endorsing
her viewpoint.
Like many of the small and scattered group of Americans who
disapprove of the Bush administration's response to the
terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, Ms. Hemerda is finding the
Internet to be a powerful tool for reaching other
dissenters. After joining thousands of others in signing an
antiwar petition on the Web site www.9-11peace.org, she was
emboldened to speak out at a local gathering about the
death of Afghan civilians.
"Knowing that there were other people out there with my
opinions made it a lot easier," Ms. Hemerda said. "It's
just really nice to know that you're not alone."
With opinion polls showing overwhelming support for
President Bush, war protesters are relying heavily on the
Internet to weave their fragmented constituents into a
movement. Though they number far fewer than the opponents
of the war in Vietnam or even the Persian Gulf war, the
first generation of Internet activists may well be
spreading their message farther and faster than their
predecessors in political protest.
Protesters making use of the Internet range from former
hippies in rural Vermont who download ready- made leaflets
to hand out at their weekly demonstrations to David H.
Pickering, 22, of Brooklyn, who started an online peace
petition that was presented to Prime Minister Tony Blair by
members of the British Parliament last month with 500,000
signatures from around the world.
And then there are those like Cleo Meek, of Los Angeles,
who simply typed "protest" into the Internet search engine
Yahoo (news/quote) a few days after the bombing began in
Afghanistan and discovered the International Action Center,
which has organized several protests since the airstrikes
began. Ms. Meek has since joined the center's volunteer
staff.
"The character of political action organizing has
completely shifted since the gulf war," said Brian Becker,
co-director of the International Action Center, which was
founded in 1992 by Ramsey Clark, a former United States
attorney general. "Instead of a physical location like our
office, the Web site has become our mobilization
headquarters."
The relative anonymity of the technology also allows
Internet users to absorb and express alternative views
without fear of reprisal or to do so anonymously at a time
when some protesters say the nation's patriotic fervor
makes it more difficult to voice dissent.
People opposed to the war are "certainly one of the most
vocal groups on the Net," said Andrew Carvin, who runs an
online discussion forum about Sept. 11 and its aftermath.
Mr. Carvin said many participants use free, disposable e-
mail addresses and do not identify themselves.
America's first war of the Internet age is spawning a new
cohort of protesters who take for granted the ability to
consult a vast array of international news sources with a
few mouse-clicks and is teaching old activists new tactics.
Jack Smith, a veteran of the movement against the Vietnam
War started using e-mail only a year ago. But when he saw
the names of student antiwar protesters at Vassar College
in a local newspaper article, he looked up their e-mail
addresses on the college Web site and persuaded them to
join in the activities of a community group in New Paltz,
N.Y., committed to social justice causes.
"Everyone has their own e-mail list," said Mr. Smith, 67,
of New Paltz, adding that those networks are one reason
that "at this stage an antiwar movement, and quite a vital
one, has formed faster than any I can remember."
When students at Occidental College in Los Angeles decided
to begin a 56-hour fast on Nov. 9 as a show of solidarity
with Afghan civilians injured in the bombardments, they
sent e-mail messages to their friends at other colleges,
who forwarded them to their friends, and so on. One message
found its way to an e-mail list called ActionLA and caught
the attention of activists on several other Los
Angeles-area campuses. Soon students at Princeton, Boston
College and Oxford University in England had signed on.
"I don't understand how Vietnam got organized in the way it
did," said Robert James Wallace, 18, a freshman at
Occidental who helped organize the hunger strike. "Without
the Internet there's no way we would have gotten 17
colleges on board in two weeks."
Of course, those 1960's peaceniks somehow did manage to
make themselves heard without the Internet, and some
latter-day advocates argue that the tool can be overused.
"We need to talk to people face-to- face about why we think
the war is bad," said Kirstin Roberts, 30, a student at
Harold Washington College in Chicago. "I spend way too much
time in front of my computer."
Still, Ms. Roberts said the Internet was vital to pulling
together three regional student antiwar conferences in
recent weeks. Alyssa Erickson, 21, a senior at Luther
College in Decorah, Iowa, saw an announcement for the Nov.
10 Chicago conference on the Protest.net Web site.
After returning from Chicago, Ms. Erickson, who had
previously been hesitant to express her views, organized a
teach-in to discuss nonviolent options for bringing to
justice the terrorists responsible for the Sept. 11
attacks.
To those who pointed out that the Taliban has almost been
defeated, she replied by handing out information from the
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
criticizing the Northern Alliance.
"When people say `Why are you opposed to the war, the
Northern Alliance is winning,' I say `Look at what the
women of Afghanistan are saying about the Northern
Alliance,' " Ms. Erickson said. "More people are refugees
and more people are starving and they still don't have a
government of their choosing."
She said she had downloaded the information from
www.rawa.org.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/technology/21ANTI.html?ex=1007356539&ei=1&en=8789e1198db8d60b
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