Digital Rebellion

The Birth of the Cyber Left

Todd Wolfson

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780252080388
  9780252038846
• eBook ISBN:
  9780252096808
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Digital Rebellion examines the impact of new media and communication technologies on the spatial, strategic, and organizational fabric of social movements.

Todd Wolfson reveals how aspects of the mid-1990s Zapatistas movement--network organizational structure, participatory democratic governance, and the use of communication tools as a binding agent--became essential parts of Indymedia and other Cyber Left organizations. From there he uses oral interviews and other rich ethnographic data to chart the media-based think tanks and experiments that continued the Cyber Left's evolution through the Independent Media Center's birth around the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle.

Melding virtual and traditional ethnographic practice to explore the Cyber Left's cultural logic, Wolfson maps the social, spatial and communicative structure of the Indymedia network and details its operations on the local, national and global level. He looks at the participatory democracy that governs global social movements and the ways democracy and decentralization have come into tension, and how "the switchboard of struggle" conducts stories from the hyper-local and disperses them worldwide. As he shows, understanding the intersection of Indymedia and the Global Social Justice Movement illuminates their foundational role in the Occupy struggle and other emergent movements that have re-energized radical politics.

PART I

Origins

Imperfect, insurgent, sleepless, and beautiful, we directly experienced the success of the first IMC in Seattle, and saw that the common dream of a “world in which many worlds fit” is possible—step by step, piece by piece, space by space, pdf by pdf, word by word, over the net, on pirate broadcast, in the streets, streamlining live, and most importantly: face to face. . . . [F]anned by the real showdown of the WTO and our capacity to bypass corporate media, the IMC brushfire spread.

—Greg Ruggiero, indymedia organizer

Death at the Barricades

On October 29, 2006, the homepage of the New York City Independent Media Center (IMC) was transformed from a local news portal to a “virtual memorial,” celebrating the life and sudden death of indymedia journalist and activist Brad Will. The Web site was overflowing with reports of Brad’s murder and messages of mourning, outrage, and solidarity from his friends and comrades across the globe. Mingled with the sad news and passionate testaments was a montage of photos and videos that included images of Brad strumming his guitar, defending community gardens, and documenting political protests (with an HD video camera he picked up on eBay.) The illustrations captured Brad’s gentle spirit, indomitable will, and passion for international activism. Sitting in front of my computer in Philadelphia, I explored the proliferating material and found a link that transported me to Brad’s final video: Infamia en Oaxaca/Infamy in Oaxaca.¹ I waited with apprehension as the video uploaded and then watched as images of a street battle in Oaxaca City, which took place just two days prior, unfolded before my eyes.

The video opened at the Santa Lucia del Camino barricades outside Oaxaca City. In the midday sun, community members explained the roots of the conflict between the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) governing the state and the Asemblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO), a grassroots coalition comprised of teachers, social workers, and citizens. A distressed yet resolute woman captured the intensity of the struggle, staring into Brad’s camera and declaring, “We are townspeople here who are fighting for our rights . . . we don’t want to live like this anymore, we don’t want to live in a state of repression.”

The confrontation between community members and the governing party flared up during the summer, when members of the teachers’ union went on strike and seized the town center, el zocalo, demanding funding increases for schools and students and pay increases for teachers. The governor of the state, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, responded by sending in state police to eject the teachers from the public square. The violent conflict, in which the teachers expelled the police from the center of the city, led to the founding of the APPO and a six-month standoff between the two groups.²

Brad landed in Oaxaca three months after the initial confrontation, to document the ongoing rebellion as part of the growing indymedia movement. Indymedia is a global, federated network of Independent Media Centers that work to create an open, accessible media infrastructure, “for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth.”³ Founded as a direct challenge to the corporate media, the aim of the first Independent Media Center was to report on the 1999 World Trade Organization meetings and counter-demonstrations in Seattle. In the decade since the now-famous Battle of Seattle, the indymedia movement has expanded rapidly and at the time of Brad’s death consisted of thousands of activists, computer programmers, and independent journalists, as well as hundreds of interlinked Web sites, radio stations, newspapers, video collectives, and community-organizing arms throughout the world. As indymedia developed, it has become more than a conventional alternative media outlet, at times playing the role of think tank, organizing arm, activist laboratory, and mobilizing tool for the Global Social Justice Movement.⁴

The mood of indymedia is captured by the pervasive phrase, “Don’t hate the media, be the media.” The embodiment of this do-it-yourself (DIY) sensibility, Brad Will spent the final months of his thirty-six-year life filming social movements throughout the Americas. Seeking out political hot zones, Brad’s camcorder became a conduit, relaying stories and images of people fighting for social change throughout the hemisphere—from indigenous communities rising up to stop multinational coal companies from seizing lands in northwestern Venezuela, and urban squatters fighting eviction in central Brazil, to activists struggling against gentrification and displacement in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Following this trajectory, the flashpoint in Oaxaca was a logical destination for Brad, and when he touched down in Mexico the conflict was quickly hurtling toward its violent zenith. The APPO, still in control of large parts of Oaxaca City, was demanding the resignation of Governor Ortiz. Meanwhile, Mexican President Vicente Fox threatened an imminent suppression of the “radical groups, out of control” in Oaxaca City.

As soon as Brad disembarked in Oaxaca City, he began filming the struggle. Over several days he captured the excitement and unease that saturated the chaotic streets. About a week before his death, Brad sent a report to the New York City Independent Media Center in which he fervently described what he was seeing in Mexico: “What can you say about this movement—this revolutionary moment—you know it is building, growing, shaping . . . it is clear that this is more than a strike, more than expulsion of a governor, more than a blockade, more than a coalition of fragments—it is a genuine people’s revolt.”⁵

The accompanying video that he shot during the crisis, Infamy in Oaxaca, is comprised of two distinct segments. The opening portion of the video consists of interviews with community members, recorded shortly after a skirmish with local paramilitary, in which a young man who was a member of the APPO was killed. Eight minutes into the video, however, there is a striking shift in tone. The camerawork becomes shaky, and the audio track changes from dialogue to the immediacy of sporadic gunfire. The accompanying images are unmistakable—cars ablaze, the frenzied energy of tangled masses, and the chilling mixture of fear and excitement in the eyes of people as they decried injustice. As I watched the second half of Infamy, it became clear that I was no longer watching interviews about a struggle in Oaxaca; instead I was in the front seat of a battle over the Santa Lucia del Camino barricades.

As if to mark this shift, the video captures the briefest glimpse of Brad’s lanky shadow crossing a stark landscape, the silhouette of a camera hoisted atop his shoulder. The footage then becomes dark and blurry, as Brad ducked down and shimmied underneath a semi-trailer, dodging gunfire. “The one with the white shirt,” he intones, using his camera to get positive identification of the assailants, members of an unidentified paramilitary force. In the same moment, the assailants see Brad underneath the trailer and shoot at him. The gunshots kick up dirt a few feet in front of the makeshift bunker, and Brad is on the move. Moments later, Brad joins a surging crowd attempting to hold off the paramilitary and keep control of the barricades, and by extension the town center.

Suddenly, seemingly driven toward its own tragic internal logic, the video is punctuated by a gunshot, the cry of pain, and a disorienting spin of images. The camera falls to the ground, but continues filming. At this point, it was difficult to make out what was happening, but it is evident that a body is being carried to safety, and while the camera was still recording, it is clear that Brad was no longer behind the lens. Sixteen minutes into the video, the screen fades to black. Unfortunately, Brad never made it to safety that day, dying an hour later from a gunshot wound to the chest, en route to a local Red Cross. Epitomizing the spirit of the indymedia movement of which he had become such an integral part,⁶ Brad’s camcorder captured his own death, leaving a trace of his final moments for the world to witness.⁷

Brad Will and the New Ethos of Struggle

The day after Brad’s death, I received a call from Darcy,⁸ a friend, “informant,” and Oregon-based indymedia activist who told me about the tragic event. At the time of Brad’s death, I had been studying the indymedia movement for over a year and had been both an active participant in the Philadelphia-based Independent Media Center (Philly IMC) as well as a member of the national and global editorial teams. Darcy asked me to spread the news of his passing and post a “breaking news” report on the Philly IMC Web site, which I did. Within days, the haunting video and story ricocheted across the indymedia movement’s global digital-communications infrastructure, leaving the incandescent image of Brad filming at the Santa Lucia barricades in its wake.⁹ In the months to follow, Brad became an icon of the indymedia movement. His picture appeared on the banner of local IMC Web sites, and his spirit was invoked in discussions about the strategic direction of the network.

The symbolic power of Brad’s life was partly due to his magnetic personality, but it was more than just his charisma. Brad exemplified the essence of what it meant to be an indymedia activist and a member of the larger Cyber Left. Brad was white, college-educated, and he came from a relatively privileged background, growing up in a sleepy suburb outside of Chicago. But he devoted his life to the cause of freedom and justice, both his own and that of broader humanity. As Brad explained in an interview: “My major focus is . . . how like the creative voice can participate in the political struggle. . . . I’m a poet and I’m an activist, . . . and those two things should not have to be mutually exclusive.”¹⁰

It was through his camera that Brad expressed his art and his politics. As cinema-studies scholars often argue, the goal of a filmmaker is to lure the audience into associating with the viewpoint of the camera, thus taking on the identity of the omniscient eye. This was certainly the case with Infamy in Oaxaca. While I watched the struggle at the barricades in Oaxaca City, it felt like I was a target of paramilitary gunfire. This suspicion was correct, as it turned out that Brad was a marked man. Almost a year after his death, the San Francisco Bay Guardian reported that a local pirate radio station in the region was repeatedly broadcasting the chilling phrase, “Si ves un gringo con cámara, matanlo” (If you see a gringo with a camera, kill him) (Ross 2007).

This striking detail brings up a seemingly uncomplicated question: Of all the people in the crowd on that hot October day in Oaxaca—from local political figures to protestors with firearms—why was the person with the video camera the target? The question is not simply one concerning the facts on the ground during the Oaxaca uprising. Rather, it is a historical and political question that captures a set of shifting dynamics regarding the role of information and communications in a globalized and increasingly digitized world.

To speak to this question, at one level this book chronicles the practices of indymedia journalists like Brad, who have devoted their lives to documenting people struggling for social change. It is an investigation of organizers, activists, and community members who recognize the growing importance of tools like the video camera and an independent Web server as weapons to be utilized in social struggles over land, a living wage, and what is understood as “the good” or “the just.” Building on the work of anthropologists focused on indigenous media,¹¹ or what George Marcus (1996) has called the activist imaginary, this frame opens a window on the ways communities use new media to “talk back,” converging with the growing ethnographic studies of media production, reception, flow, and appropriation.

At a second level, however, the way indymedia activists utilized the Web to cultivate a community of supporters from across the globe to quickly act online and offline around Brad’s death and the struggle in Oaxaca marked something deeper. As I watched the news of Brad’s death move rapidly across a transnational communications network, mobilizing communities to hold protests and vigils around the world, it crystallized a growing conviction that the novel use of digital communication technologies by activists has shifted the fabric of sociality and, in turn, social movements. At this secondary level, this study is an account of the nature of social change, and the deep shift in the structures, strategies, and scale of contemporary social movements, like indymedia, as they are impacted by and in turn reappropriate new information and communication technologies. It is these deep structural shifts in an informational, capitalist society that set the conditions for indymedia’s birth and growth.

The Battle of Seattle and the Birth of Democratic Media

While many factors led to the development of the first IMC, one of the key triggers was the ongoing state deregulation, and correspondent corporate consolidation, of the media sector.¹² As Ben Bagdikian (2004) details, the process of consolidation unfolded over the latter half of the twentieth century and continued unabated in the first decade of the twenty-first century, leading to a drastic reduction in the number of companies that own mass-media outlets. According to his oft-cited research, today there are five mega-companies that own the majority of the world’s media outlets from television, radio, and newspapers to book publishing and film. As academic analysis on the process of consolidation begins to mount, there is growing consensus among scholars that the lack of diversity of ownership and opinion in mass media poses a fundamental challenge to democratic processes.¹³ In one of the foundational analyses of mass-media bias, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky (1987) argue that mass media must, by its very nature, construct a worldview that conforms to the needs of corporate advertising. This profit-driven equation has led to the valorization of some political perspectives and the marginalization of other perspectives, narrowing political dialogue, in a process Stuart Hall (1979) aptly described as “the great moving right show” (14).

Recognizing the marginalization of “progressive” perspectives and left-based social movements in the mass media, members of the U.S. and global left began to organize around the mass media in the late 1990s.¹⁴ This has led to three complementary strategies. The first approach was the development of strong movements for structural reform of the media sector. Within this branch, which is alternatively called the Media Reform or Media Democracy movement, a growing number of organizations have fought to establish laws that increase the diversity of media ownership, challenge media and telecommunications consolidation, and forge new channels of communication such as low-power FM radio.¹⁵ Alongside policy-based reform of the media sector, a separate overlapping contingent of groups focused on the unequal treatment and stereotypical representation of people of color, poor people, young people, women, and other oppressed groups in the mass media. Developing a framework around media justice groups within this paradigm have focused on fighting for equal access to and control over the means of communication, while recognizing the critical intersection between media justice and social justice. The founder of the Center for Media Justice, Malkia Cyril, captures this vision: “The biggest defining characteristic of media justice is that it’s not about the media, it’s about justice, justice comes first,” Cyril continues, media “is a medium for change, it is not change itself.”¹⁶

Finally, a third distinct constellation of actors recognized the manifold possibilities of participatory media in the age of the Internet and thus fought to build an alternative media infrastructure to challenge the mass media. While there are many organizations and institutions that characterize this outlook, the materialization of indymedia in Seattle was arguably the most critical moment in the development of an alternative media infrastructure.

The first Independent Media Center came to life on the contested streets of Seattle on November 30, 1999, during the World Trade Organization (WTO) Third Ministerial Conference. The goal...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: History, Capitalism, and the Cyber Left
• Part I. Origins
• Part II. The Logic of Resistance
• Conclusion: Social Movement Logics—Past, Present, and Future
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index