Tag: social media

SF activists use Twitter, pirate radio to manage anti-war protesters

Posted on By 3arabawy

Here’s an article on the San Francisco activist community’s use of Twitter in the antiwar protests last March. Interesting to read when you have the time…

San Francisco anti-war protesters marking the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq are using the micro-blogging service Twitter to coordinate their movements throughout the day.

The group, called Direct Action to Stop the War, has planned protests and staged events at strategic locations around the city, such as AT&T’s facilities on Folsom, where whistle blower and retired AT&T technician Mark Klein says the company has installed equipment to snoop on Americans’ internet communications. They’re using Twitter to text people’s cellphones to get them to come to support the protest and to lend it critical mass at opportune times.
David Taylor, a DASW volunteer and veteran political protest organizer, says that Twitter has been a useful and cost-effective way to keep participants updated at strategic moments on their cellphones.

“What’s new in the last four years is the addition of the text messaging,” says Taylor. “In the past, (street protest organizers) have had walkie-talkies out there and a bullhorn, but the people with the radios would always get arrested by the police.”

So, once again, I hope as many of you would get on twitter. I’m curious by the way: Does anyone how popular (if at all) Twitter is in the rest of the Arab World and in Iran? Is it only popular among the Egyptian dissidents or do activists elsewhere in the region use it too?

The Revolution will be Twitterized

Posted on By 3arabawy

I just wanted to share this (already known I’m sure) tip with you: GET ON TWITTER!

Though most people tend to use Twitter as a means to update other friends on social, personal events, etc., it has proved to be a savior in the case of James Buck, and in general it’s been popular for a while (say for the past couple of years) among Egyptian activists, for political mobilization and spreading news. It is one I strongly recommend for IST bloggers around the world.

During the Mahalla Sept ’07 strike and Apr ’08 uprising, in addition to downtown Cairo demos, Twitter was widely used by the Egyptian activists to disseminate information about the demonstrations or arrests. You can also install a simple plug in and your tweets will be posted automatically on your blog (Please look at the right side bar of my blog, under “3arabawy on Twitter”). This means you can blog while you are at demonstrations in the streets, provide continuous updates, as well as alarm your comrades about police moves, arrests, minute by minute. I also recommend that comrades in Egypt have a ready-typed text in the “drafts” of your mobile phones messaging menu saying something like: “State Security is at my house” ready to be sent out right away to your twitter page. And just click “send” as soon as the SS pigs show up at your doorstep, to quickly alert your comrades as well as the world that you are getting arrested. There are all sorts of other tips and applications Twitter can make your blogging life easier with, so I recommend you check Twitter Blog for more info.

Make sure you also add your website link to your profile on your Twitter homepage, as a way to increase the internet traffic to your blog. Once you get a Twitter account and install it on your blog, add me to your network of contacts and I’ll add you back. This way we can exchange information much faster.

Some notes on the 6 April ‘general strike’

Posted on By 3arabawy

Over the past week email messages and blog postings have been circulating calling for a general strike on 6 April. If this happens, then it will be the first time in history that a general strike is organized by emails and facebook messages.

I’m afraid this will NOT happen.

Don’t get me wrong. I think anyone who follows this blog knows well I see no other way to overthrow the Mubarak’s dictatorship but a general strike. But what we have here is something different.

What is confirmed up till now is that Ghazl el-Mahalla, the biggest textile mill in the ME with its 27,000-strong labor force, is going on strike 6 April. There will be series of protests and solidarity actions planned in some industrial centers as well as protests by political activists in Cairo and other provinces…

But the call for general strike has another story… The opposition groups got together to discuss how to support the Mahalla strikers in April.. and that’s when Magdi Hussein, of the Islamist-leaning Labor Party, made this quixotic call for a general strike, and Abdel Halim Qandeel of Kefaya followed suit.. Hussein and his group, which has tiny presence in the political arena, have been known for such quixotic and highly sensationalist calls for general strikes (that never happened) since the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000. This is adventurism that even borders on political opportunism.

General strikes cannot be organized by basically issuing a call via emails, facebook messages and blog postings.. General strikes are organized when you have grassroots activists in the workplaces part of a national network that can push for such general strike from below.. not by some call dropping from the sky via an email from elitist groups. We neither have a mass revolutionary party rooted in the workplaces that can execute such general strike, nor do we have yet the national labor union that parallels the state-backed General Federation of Trade Unions and can push for such national action (like what happened in South Korea, Poland and elsewhere).

We have to focus comrades, and we cannot utter calls for actions that we are incapable of achieving on the ground.. coz the price of such quixotic actions will be high, in terms of demoralizing activists and supporters whose hopes are skyrocketing for a general strike and we can risk losing our credibility in the eyes of the public.

So again, let’s focus. Mahalla is confirmed to go on strike, so let’s channel our energies around this event which will have huge impact, if it succeeds, on the political arena in Egypt and the region.