January 20, 2005

Digital Defiance - Inauguration To Be A Mob Scene

Internet Guru Andy Carvin has created a "mobcasting" blog for protesters planning to attend this week's Presidential inauguration in DC. His personal experiment in podcasting and mobile blogging can be found at http://bushprotest.blogspot.com.

From Carvin:

The site is set up so that anyone attending the protest can call a number on their telephone, leave a message and have it posted as an MP3 podcast on the site. For the same of experimental equity, I may set up a similar page for Bush supporters attending the event, but I haven't decided yet.

Some other digital defiance-taking place on Inauguration Day:

• RedefeatBush.com will retire the name ReDefeatBush, with the launch of Left.org, the new entity that will replace it. Creators will also debut a one-hour documentary on the counterinaugural that will have been filmed that day entitled "Left Up to Us."  The video will be shown at (Dream DC's largest nightclub) and to a worldwide audience via the Internet.
• At the "Not One Damn Dime Day" website you can join efforts "with those who oppose what is happening in our name in Iraq can speak up with a 24-hour national boycott of all forms of consumer spending. "

Bush supporters also have a fair share of digital deference :

• Over 32,000 house parties nationwide have been organized through GOP.com's Party for the President page.
• The committee organizing US President George W. Bush's inauguration said on its official website, http://www.inaugural05.com/ , that as of Saturday over  "25.5 million dollars in gifts from private citizens and businesses had been received as of January 14. Just in the past week, 27 individuals and 45 companies gave 7.7 million dollars."
• The YRNC chose inaguration week launch itsr new website - http://www.yrnc2005.com/, marking the beginning of our aggressive campaign to promote the next Young Republican National Convention held in Las Vegas Nevada from July 6 th to July 10th.

UPDATE: Jesse Gordon, Democratic activists in Cambridge Massachusetts and creator of NotOneDamnDime.com sent us this note

On our success: The huge press response to this boycott (200 articles this week, plus several dozen TV and radio appearances by our volunteers) indicates that the mainstream press has learned their lesson from their pre-war failure. We have succeeded in making our voices heard, and people are thinking about this protest and about future policy in the Iraq war.

Our purpose is to incite a more open debate on the Iraq war issue. In 2003 we had 5 million people on the streets in one worldwide rally on Feb. 15 -- and Bush dismissed it as "a focus group." So if he won't listen to millions at rallies, we'll use economic methods instead.

The "wisdom of the streets" at the anti-war rallies before teh Iraq War was to doubt the existence of WMDs and to doubt the al Qaeda-Saddam connection. I published an article saying that, but was by no means particularly insightful -- it was common wisdom. The mainstream press ignored that viewpoint, and the country suffered as a result, rushing headlong into a pointless war based on those two false premises. The Washington Post and NY Times both apologized on their editorial pages for their poor pre-war coverage.

We were proven right then, and we feel now that the voice of the millions of anti-war protestors should be heard again. We feel we're at a tipping point in Iraq -- if we continue along the current course, it will become another Vietnam. The Bush Administration needs to hear the wisdom of the anti-war street to avoid more suffering by US troops.

-- Jesse

Thank you Jesse. We'd love to hear from the other isle, if any Bush supporters want to comment.

Posted by Buzz Webster at January 20, 2005 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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