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1984 Network Liberty Alliance is a loose group of software programmers, artists, social activists and militants, interested in computers and networks and considering them tools to empower and link the various actors of the social movement around the world. They are part of the hacktivism movement.
The group was formed in November 1984, during a "debriefing" workshop of the European Peace Marches on the Hartmannswillerkopf in Alsace, France, following the struggle against the installation of Pershing II and SS-20 nuclear missiles in Germany (Mutlangen). From 1978 to 1985, this European-wide peace movement had mobilized millions of citizens, protesting the arms race, the growth of military spending and joining in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
In reference to George Orwell's novel 1984 and to the Rebel Alliance of the movie Star Wars , the group chose the (ironic) name 1984 Network Liberty Alliance. Founders are André Gorz, French philosopher, Dov Lerner, MIT computer graduate and disciple of Saul Alinsky, as well as Gregoire Seither, free radio activist, Frauke Hahn who had led the woman's resistance ('Commons Women') at Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, David Szwarc from the Israeli Peace movement and Adama Drasiweni, computer graduate from the University of London, future founder of N'DA, Africa's first independent telecom company.
Other members, like Australian co-founder of Indymedia Matthew Arnison, south-African anti-apartheid militant Peter Makema and Israeli peace activists Uri Avnery and Michel Warchawsky, joined later on. All were active in various social movements and peace initiatives in Europe and the USA.
When Richard Stallman published the GNU Manifesto in March 1985 and called for participation and support, Dov Lerner and Gregor Seither started organizing regular meetings and workshops in order to train activists in the use of information technology and gather support for the Free Software movement. Adama Drasiweni, owner of a computer business in London, set up similar workshops in Kibera, a giant slum outside of Nairobi, Kenya.
In France, the Alliance used the network of the Maisons de l'Informatique that had been set up under the presidency of François Mitterrand as well as the computer labs of Paris University, who access to academic networks and Billboard Systems. The group ran a number of BBS, among them 'Pom-Pom', devoted to the Apple Macintosh and 'PeaceNet', an "electronic pow-wow" to help social activists and community organizers exchange information around the world, offering free mail accounts and file hosting services.
Very soon the issues of free speech, software patents, civil rights and surveillance became some of the major topics addressed by the Alliance, the group being accused of hacking and forking software. One of the BBS run by the group 'Gaia rising', was accused by the German government of being a meeting point for radical environmental activists as well as anarchists.
The Liberty Alliance was particularly active in the popular worldwide resistance to Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) in the mid-1990s, networking multiple groups and providing "open cyberspaces" for activists to share information and experience.
In the summer of 1998 the first alternative media centre was set up in a bus in Birmingham, United Kingdom during the Global Street Party, an international day of protest and festive actions coinciding with the 24th G8 Summit. The alternative media centres also provided interpretation and language services to international militant meetings, like during the July 1999 Global Carnival against Capitalism , or J18 London, a giant rally and party in the heart of the London City, meant as a counter-summit to the 25th G8 Summit in Köln, Germany.
Members of the team travelled to the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 in Seattle to set up an alternative media centre during the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 protest activity. The project joined with that of other media activists and, out of the necessity to bypass the corporate media and report on a WTO conference but also to show how one could bypass corporate software (Windows), the independent media agency Indymedia was born.
Language diversity and the lack of interpreters led a number of activists to start thinking about a way to help militants from around the world to bridge the language barrier. Three years later, during the 27th G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, this would lead to the creation of the Babels network of volunteer interpreters and translators for linguistic diversity and social change.
Members of the Network Liberty Alliance have worked on social IT projects in North America (San Francisco Free Software movement, Chicago community cybercenter), Central America (Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama), the Middle-East (Egypt, Israeli Civil Administration area) as well as in the Asia Pacific region (Indonesia, Nouvelle-Calédonie, Australia, Papua Niugini) and Africa (Malawi, Mali, Cameroon).
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, another member of the Alliance, Stefan Ostrowsky, transferred "NET(te) Bude" (a play on the word NET like network, and 'Nette Bude', nice crashpad in German), a community IT training centre to East-Berlin, thus becoming the first 'Cybercafe' behind the iron curtain.
The Independent Media Center is an open publishing network of activist journalist collectives that report on political and social issues. Following beginnings in London and Sydney during the 1999 Carnival Against Capital, the first Indymedia Media Center was founded to report on the protests against the World Trade Organisational Ministerial Conference in Seattle. Indymedia became closely associated with the global justice movement, which criticized neo-liberalism and its associated institutions.
A black bloc is a tactic used by protesters who wear black clothing, ski masks, scarves, sunglasses, motorcycle helmets with padding, or other face-concealing and face-protecting items. The clothing is used to conceal wearers' identities and hinder criminal prosecution by making it difficult to distinguish between participants. It is also used to protect their faces and eyes from pepper spray, which is used by police during protests or civil unrest. The tactic allows the group to appear as one large unified mass. Black bloc participants are often associated with anarchism, anarcho-communism, communism, libertarian socialism and the anti-globalization movement.
A number of peace symbols have been used many ways in various cultures and contexts. The dove and olive branch was used symbolically by early Christians and then eventually became a secular peace symbol, popularized by a Dove lithograph by Pablo Picasso after World War II. In the 1950s the "peace sign", as it is known today, was designed by Gerald Holtom as the logo for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), a group at the forefront of the peace movement in the UK, and adopted by anti-war and counterculture activists in the US and elsewhere. The symbol is a super-imposition of the semaphore signals for the letters "N" and "D", taken to stand for "nuclear disarmament", while simultaneously acting as a reference to Goya's The Third of May 1808 (1814).
The European Social Forum (ESF) was a recurring conference held by members of the alter-globalization movement. In the first few years after it started in 2002 the conference was held every year, but later it became biannual due to difficulties with finding host countries. The conference was last held in 2010. It aims to allow social movements, trade unions, NGOs, refugees, peace and anti-imperial groups, anti-racist movements, environmental movements, networks of the excluded and community campaigns from Europe and the world to come together and discuss themes linked to major European and global issues, in order to coordinate campaigns, share ideas and refine organizing strategies. It emerged from the World Social Forum and follows its Charter of Principles.
The Committee of 100 was a British anti-war group. It was set up in 1960 with a hundred public signatories by Bertrand Russell, Ralph Schoenman, Michael Scott, and others. Its supporters used mass nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience to achieve their aims.
Direct Action Network (DAN) was a North American confederation of anti-corporate, anti-authoritarian and anarchist affinity groups, collectives, and organizations. It grew out of the Seattle chapter which had been formed to coordinate the nonviolent civil disobedience portion of the anti-WTO mobilization in Seattle in 1999.
Katharine Jane Hudson is a British left-wing political activist and academic who is the General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and Media Officer of Left Unity. She served as Chair of CND from 2003 to 2010 and has been an officer of the Stop the War Coalition since 2002.
Janet Elizabeth Bloomfield was a British peace and disarmament campaigner who was chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) from 1993 to 1996.
The Indypendent is a progressive newspaper based in Brooklyn, New York. It is published monthly, distributed worldwide and is available for free throughout New York City and online. It currently prints 30,000 copies per issue, covering local, national and international news, food, cinema and culture. Reader donations comprise the bulk of The Indypendent's funding.
The Carnival Against Capital took place on Friday 18 June 1999. It was an international day of protest timed to coincide with the 25th G8 summit in Cologne, Germany. The carnival was inspired by the 1980s Stop the City protests, Peoples' Global Action and the Global Street Party, which happened at the same time as the 1998 24th G8 Summit in Birmingham. The rallying slogan was Our Resistance is as Transnational as Capital.
The Sumac Centre is a self-managed social centre in Nottingham, UK. It provides resources, meeting spaces and workshops for groups and individuals, and supports campaigning for human rights, animal rights, the environment, and peace. It is part of the UK Social Centre Network and the radical catering group Veggies is based at the centre. It receives no regular funding, the core groups each pay rent that goes toward the mortgage and running costs. Some of the groups are run by volunteers. Its origins can to traced to the Rainbow Centre, which was established in 1984.
Fri, a New Zealand yacht, led a flotilla of yachts in an international protest against atmospheric nuclear tests at Moruroa in French Polynesia in 1973. Fri was an important part of a series of anti-nuclear protest campaigns out of New Zealand which lasted thirty years, from which New Zealand declared itself a nuclear-free zone which was enshrined in legislation in what became the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987. In 1974, coordinated by Greenpeace New Zealand, the Fri embarked on a 3-year epic 40,233-kilometer "Pacific Peace Odyssey" voyage, carrying the peace message to all nuclear states around the world.
Anti-nuclear organizations may oppose uranium mining, nuclear power, and/or nuclear weapons. Anti-nuclear groups have undertaken public protests and acts of civil disobedience which have included occupations of nuclear plant sites. Some of the most influential groups in the anti-nuclear movement have had members who were elite scientists, including several Nobel Laureates and many nuclear physicists.
The anti-nuclear movement in the United Kingdom consists of groups who oppose nuclear technologies such as nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Many different groups and individuals have been involved in anti-nuclear demonstrations and protests over the years.
Nick Cooper is an American drummer, record producer and composer best known for his work with Free Radicals. Nick is also an activist with indymedia, and food not bombs, a writer for the Free Press Houston, and Houston Peace News. He is also a documentary filmmaker, a workshop facilitator, a student of capoeira angola, and a visual artist.
Warcry is an Indian-American environmentalist and anarchist activist, filmmaker, writer and political organizer.
Advocacy groups, also known as interest groups, special interest groups, lobbying groups or pressure groups use various forms of advocacy in order to influence public opinion and ultimately policy. They play an important role in the development of political and social systems.
The Stop the War Coalition (StWC), informally known simply as Stop the War, is a British group established on 21 September 2001, shortly after the September 11 attacks, to campaign against what it believes are unjust wars.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is an organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It opposes military action that may result in the use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and the building of nuclear power stations in the UK.
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