I have been thinking about the changes that have taken place in the world in the last decade or so, and in particular the effect of the Internet. And I’ve been thinking about Iraq. Let me explain.
\nYesterday I was supposed to have a meeting to discuss a website. But instead of that, I found myself displaying the enormous power of the Internet as a campaigning tool for trade unions.<\/p>\n
I have been thinking about the changes that have taken place in the world in the last decade or so, and in particular the effect of the Internet. And I’ve been thinking about Iraq. Let…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-industrial-worker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMy meeting was with the London representative of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), Abdullah Muhsin, at the headquarters of the RMT<\/a> union, which represents, among others, the people who work on the London Undergound. Abdullah had recently returned from Baghdad and we were due to discuss the creation of the union’s first website, which will be located at http:\/\/www.iraqitradeunions.org<\/a>. But we didn’t get to that — instead, we had to deal with a crisis.
\nAbdullah had just received a phone call from the brothers in Baghdad telling him that three days earlier, US occupying forces had driven up to the union’s temporary headquarters in ten armored vehicles. Dozens of troops participated in the raid. Eight IFTU officials were arrested. Windows were smashed. The sign with the union’s name on it was defaced. Banners and posters condemning terrorism were torn down. (Obviously the American soldiers couldn’t read Arabic.) No explanation was given.
\nA day later, the eight arrested men were released. (“Released unharmed,” Abdullah stresses.) But the union’s efforts to get the news to the outside world were blocked — they were unable to use their computers, and couldn’t get a phone line out of the country until two days after the release. The raid had taken place three days ago.
\nNevertheless, it was urgent that we bring this story to the attention of the international labour movement. And to demand of the US government that, at the very least, they investigate what happened — and guarantee that it will not happen again.
\nWhile Alex Gordon of the RMT got on the phone to journalists and members of Parliament, Abdullah and I sat down at the computer to see what we could do.
\nWe had a draft IFTU statement in hand which had been dictated to Abdullah by phone, and which he had translated into English. We published this immediately to the web using LabourStart’s Labour News Network<\/a>, a feature of the LabourStart site that allows anyone to post news stories. (This was something we had created in order to allow strikers, for example, to get their own side of the story up on the net.)
\nWe then added a link to that story to LabourStart’s main database, and afterwards, we made it the top story of the day. This meant that it would not only appear on top of our home page, but also on the nearly 520 trade union websites that use our service — including six IWW websites in the USA, Canada, Australia and the UK.
\nWe digested the news story into a single paragraph and also drew up a one paragraph message to President Bush demanding that the US investigate the raid and guarantee that it would not recur. We put these into LabourStart’s ActNOW online campaigning system and the campaign went live on the net. Trade unionists were now only a click away from sending on their messages to Bush.
\nThe final stage was the mass mailing. Merely putting up the information, or allowing a simple one-click online protest, would not produce results. Email is the most powerful weapon we have in the online arsenal and we used it at once. We drafted a short email message to be sent to the 16,200 people on LabourStart’s mailing list pointing them to the page on the web where they could read more — and make their feelings known to the White House.
\nIn essence then, the process consists of three parts: getting the information onto the web, creating a simple online facility to allow people to act, and then spreading the word using email.
\nWhile we were handling the online part of the campaign — and the whole process took less than an hour — Alex had managed to get a friendly member of Parliament to agree to raise the question in the House of Commons the following day. (Even though British troops were not involved in the incident, the UK is the senior partner in the US-led coalition.) Contacts were made with journalists. Unions (such as the powerful Congress of South African Trade Unions) began issuing statements of protest and solidarity.
\nAn hour after I had come into the RMT offices with the intention of discussing a website with Abdullah, we had managed to demonstrate the enormous potential of the net. There was nothing that could compare with the speed or the reach of email and the web.
\nNow imagine if all this had happened in 1991, during the first war between the US and Iraq. Imagine if Saddam had been deposed then, and a new independent trade union movement had been formed. What would have happened if US forces back then had raided their offices and arrested their leaders? How would we have known? How would we have spread the word?
\nThe differences between then and now are vast — thanks to this fantastic new technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"