A-Infos (en) Zapatistas & Int'l Circulation of Struggles -VI- of -VI- 6. Difficulties in Cyberspace

[Ilan Shalif <gshalif@netvision.net.il>]

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H.Cleaver:
        From: owner-chiapas95-english@eco.utexas.edu

6. Difficulties in Cyberspace

        As described in point two above, cyberspaces have been created

as extremely important terrains for the rapid circulation of
information,
discussion and effective cooperation.  Those who are plugged into the
flows are far better informed than those who are not. Those who
participate have access to and are able to dialogue with a much
greater
array of individuals and groups than they could ever do locally.  In
moments of crisis and mobilization, such as January and February
1994, February and March 1995 and again in December and January of
1997 - 1998, the rapid exchange of information, ideas and experience
of
struggle, the coordination of methods and timing of protests, the
mobilization of observers and material aid and the coordinated
counterattack against the Mexican government the Internet has made
possible a quickness and effectiveness of organization across dozens
of
countries and regions of the world almost unprecedented in human
experience.  Furthermore, the interpenetration through the Internet of
the
Zapatista struggle with those elsewhere, both in Mexico and around the

world, has contributed not only to an acceleration in the circulation
of
struggle, but to increased complementarity among struggles and ways of

thinking about them.  All this has been inspiring and demonstrated the

absolute necessity of pushing forward in the exploration and
elaboration
of these new circuits of communication and cooperation among peoples.

        On the other hand, this experience has also highlighted some
serious difficulties. The best that we can hope is that by clearly
perceiving the difficulties we have a better chance to overcome them.

        First, the rapid elaboration of cyberspaces devoted to keeping

track of and circulating information about the struggles in Chiapas
and
the pro-democracy movement in Mexico have grown to include all
related activities around the world.  The flow of information simply
from within Chiapas is heavy and when you add in all the rest, as we
have done, the flow is huge. Even on the filtered Chiapas95 list the
number of e-mail messages with related information ranges from an
average of 20 to 70 messages a day, and even more in periods of
crisis.
Even for activists who want to keep track of events and know what all
is
being done to support the struggle that is an enormous amount of
information, in several different languages.  As a result there is now
a
Chiapas95-lite and a Chiapas95-english for those who just canıt handle

the flow and get tired of deleting all the stuff they donıt have time
to
read and process.

        With the growth of interconnections among struggles and the
search for mutual understanding and complementary action the practice
of cross-posting material from different struggles has spread. In the
case
of the Chiapas lists, I am not just talking about say, stories from
Guerrero or those of demonstrations in Italy, but material from
efforts
like the one to save the life of Ken Saro-Wiwa, spokesperson for the
Ogoni people in Southern Nigeria. During that campaign --which failed
unfortunately-- material from the African lists were cross posted to
the
Chiapas lists and material from the Chiapas lists cross posted to the
African lists.  The intent was not only to gain names and signatures
on
protest petitions, boycotts, etc. but to compare and understand the
similarities between the struggles in Southern Nigeria and those in
Southern Mexico. There have been any number of such
interpenetrations and linkages between cyberspacial circuits. This
kind
of phenomenon was only multiplied by the Intercontinental Encounters
which brought diverse people from many different struggles together
where they got to know each other and discovered how they might
interlink.  It is now possible to imagine, given the exponential
growth in
the Net and the rapid spread of its use by groups in struggle, that
before
long we may have access to detailed information about most struggles
on Earth and the possibility of building linkages among them all. The
implications are both gratifying and sobering.

        While the possibility of having access to such a rich array of

material and ready access to the means of linking struggles would seem

to hold enormous potential for building networks capable of
transforming world history, already the flow of information has grown
so large as to threaten instead to overwhelm and paralyze activists.
It is
too much for anyone to absorb.  Future development will only add to
this problem. Yet we must find a way to cope with this situation if we

are to realize the potential latent within it.

        This problem is a familiar one to capitalist policy makers, if
not
to grassroots activists. Because their job is to manage class
relationships
all over the world, the policy makers of the US State Department, or
those of the World Bank or International Monetary Fund have created
huge bureaucracies and networks of scholars and analysts to not only
gather information but to sort, sift and distill it into manageable
quantities.  Such is the role of individual researchers in
universities,
teams at various country desks at the State Department and sub-units
of
specialists at the Bank or the Fund.  They carry out their work within
a
highly refined division of labor which has been constructed and framed

by the policy concerns of those at the top.  Unlike activists involved
in
struggle, these specialists don't have to do anything except generate
information and process. Their superiors will take what they have
done,
boil it down, synthesize it and hand it over to the decision makers.
That
small elite will survey the overall picture that emerges from the
syntheses and make judgments about policies. If they have doubts about

the briefs they are handled they have the power and channels of
communication to tap the raw data and re-evaluate the analysis drawn
from it.  In the most efficient situations they will have an educated
overview of a complex array of situations and will take action based
on
it.

        This top-down, hierarchical system, however, is clearly
inappropriate to any kind of democratic, non-elite network of decision

making.  On the one hand, the cogs in this machine accept their
subordination to the whole, the outside definition of their roles and
their
exclusion from policy making only in return for the kinds of income
and
status which no contemporary social movement or network of
movements have to offer. On the other hand, the very structure is
anti-
thetical to our aspirations to democracy and we would have no business

replicating it even if we could afford to. So, what to do?

        Perhaps we might approach the problem by contemplating our
own needs and limitations.

        First, our needs.  In order to confront capitalist
globalization, we
do need something homologous to what capitalist policy makers need:
an overall grasp of the pattern of development of lines of force and
directions of movement, a clear assessment of our own strengths and
weaknesses and those of the enemy. But we need this for all of us, not

just for an elite, if we are to construct truly democratic patterns of

interaction and decision making.  Like the current elite we also need
to
be able to reach behind syntheses to the materials on which they are
based when we doubt their formulations or conclusions.  Because we
are also, all of us, engaged in particular concrete struggles and
intersections of struggles, we also need to be able to generate
reports
from our own experience and to use that experience to evaluate and
critique others' analyses and propose alternatives. We need,
therefore,
to be able to participate freely and effectively in both the
production and
consumption of information, or, better, to be able to both speak and
listen effectively.

        These are neither small, nor simple things.  We bring to
cyberspace our habits acquired in other spaces and many of those have
been counterproductive and continue to be so in this new terrain.
Personality conflicts, arrogance, sexism, racism and all the other
behavior patterns that have tortured or destroyed other kinds of
political
efforts have been reproduced on the "Net".  Few are the activists who
have not abandoned a discussion or unsubscribed from a list or avoided

returning to newsgroup because of flame-wars, unbridled antagonisms
or endless dialogues of the deaf.  The history of struggles to develop

generally accepted rules of "netiquette" shows the difficulties
involved.
Cyberspace is no privileged arena.  All of the problems and battles we

are familiar with elsewhere reappear there in all too familiar forms
and
constitute the first set of limitations to our ability to get our
needs met.

        Other limitations.  Clearly we cannot as individuals be
simultaneously engaged in a multiplicity of concrete struggles that
take
different forms with different contents. Anyone with activist
experience
in cyberspace is familiar with the frustrations of being confronted
not
only with detailed reports but also with urgent pleas for action on
the
part of those in struggles and situations that we know little or
nothing
about and feel incapable of evaluating.  As successful mobilizations
like
those around the Zapatistas have demonstrated the potentialities of
such
efforts and as those in other struggles come on line, the barrage and
the
frustration can only mount.  While we need to act in ways which are
effective on a wider scale, we know that we can only be truly well
informed about a limited range of experience.

        On the other hand, needing to develop strategies and tactics
that
are complementary to struggles elsewhere, and that we judge can
contribute the most effectively to advancing the overall movement, we
need to situate ourselves within broader patterns which we can only do

by confronting and contributing to the processes of synthesis,
overview
and contemplation of what the military calls "Grand Strategies" being
wielded both from the bottom up and from the top down.  Now, I know
from experience that different people will spend different amounts of
time and energy in these two different kinds of study and creative
thinking.  Some will spend a lot of time grappling with the large
picture,
others will spend a lot less, and focus their energy on the struggles
in
which they are most intimately engaged.  I don't see this as a
problem,
as long as all flows of information and intersections of analysis and
debate are transparent and easily accessible. In corridors of power,
this
is not the case. The higher you go the more and more access is
restricted
to "need to know" and data, reports, and summaries are "classified",
"restricted" and "top secret".  This secrecy is dictated by the
structure of
power and its exclusivity. Even when you move out of such restricted
domains, it is often the case that access to the conversations of the
elite
is restricted by the high prices of books, of subscriptions to elite
journals, and of admission to the spaces of elite discussion.  Our
need
for transparency is dictated by our refusal of such configurations of
politics that are based on the desire of the few to control the many.
The
free flow of information on the Internet makes such transparency more
possible than ever before.  As more and more relevant material takes
digital form and is archived in cyberspace, the easier it is to trace
and
cross-check data and references.  For academics accustomed to the long

and painful process of reconstituting the evolution of interacting
ideas
and verifying information, the advent of hypertext papers where a
click
of the mouse can take you directly from a footnote to the referenced
document or piece of data dramatically simplifies such processes.
Exactly such interlinkages give everyone with access to the Web such
facility.

        Which raises another much discussed limitation of the role of
cyberspace in the elaboration of struggles and the interlinking of
struggles: the fact that not everyone has immediate access to that
space.
Its population is a very small subset of all of those engaged in
struggle.
>From the perspective of those spheres of struggle with extremely high

computer-population ratios, the existence of other areas of the world
with very low ratios looks like a major obstacle to generalized
participation in this dimension of political mobilization.  Those
preoccupied with this limitation have taken some heart from the
extremely rapid spread of the "Net", even into sectors of society
traditionally deprived of effective means of communication. The very
rapid spread of computer networks among Native Americans, for
example, has proceeded much faster than anyone expected, even in
rural, isolated areas.  On the other hand one has only to look South,
towards Africa say, to see that vast areas not only lack any kind of
Internet backbone, but even telephone lines through which computer
communications could be established if the computers were available.

        However, the experience of Chiapas and of the Zapatista
communities in particular suggest that thinking about this problem in
terms of computers and modems per capita is often quite inappropriate.

As mentioned above in point two, neither the EZLN nor any of the
Zapatista villages in Chiapas are directly connected to the Net.
Their
connections have always been mediated, at first through journalists,
then through NGOs and today through groups like the FZLN or Enlace
Civil. Yet we have seen how they have not only learned to use the Net
despite this handicap but to use it extremely effectively.  Today,
this
experience has led many of the Zapatista communities to want to be
tied
directly into the Net, but not through a computer in each home.  What
they have in mind is a computer in each village or town through which
the community can collectively participate interactively with each
other
and with the larger world.  Therefore, although major obstacles remain

to the realization of this goal, it does suggest that the common
comparison of computer per capita data dramatically overstates the
problem of accessibility.

        To conclude.  Recognizing such needs and limitations --and
there are surely a great many others-- is one thing.  Finding
effective
ways to meet the needs within the constraints of the limitations or to
find
ways around the limitations is quite another.  Within the evolution of
the
Internet dimension of the Zapatista struggle --as well as in others--
we
can see a slow painful process of tatonnement as we have groped both
toward better understanding of our needs and more and more effective
methods of meeting them. It is very much an ongoing process.  For all
of the difficulties, I must admit that I am basically optimistic.
Partly this
comes from studying the anxious efforts of the state to cope with what

we have been able to accomplish so far.  While capital, in both
corporate
and governmental forms, has plenty of money and therefore easy access
to equipment and skilled manpower the fact of the matter is, as far as
I
have been able to see, we are still way out in front.  We have more
experience, a vast network of expertise and far better ideas about
elaborating this electronic dimension of our political struggles than
it
does.  We can not rest on our laurels, but we can certainly draw
courage
from what we have accomplished and the directions in which we are
moving.

Harry Cleaver
Austin, Texas
February, 1998
(hmcleave@eco.utexas.edu)


Zaps & Int'l Circulation of Struggle (Rough Draft)               / /




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