Over 40 participants at the Foro Social de las Americas in Guatemala joined a dozen activists at New York's Brecht Forum for the first bi-continental on-line workshop in the Forum's history: writing a ten point document of Internet rights for the Hemisphere's peoples.

The event was sponsored and coordinated by May First/People Link.

So far, I have managed to not write anything public about Barack Obama.

I've relished this little dance of non-declaration primarily because I have had nothing intelligent and/or productive to say about the man and the Presidential campaign has proven itself equally unintelligent.

But two things have happened: the progressive movement's support for Obama has grown exponentially and deepened. Movement people I know and trust are making startlingly starry-eye declarations about the changes this man will bring and my raised eyebrow has morphed into an expression of shocked concern.

At a workshop sponsored by May First/People Link about 40 activists got together for an exercise in what we called "collaborative democracy". Here's a description of the process written by Co-Director Jamie McClelland and myself.

The workshop centered around a collaborative and democratic process of writing a Declaration of Rights for Internet participants.

(written for and published originally by portside)

by Alfredo Lopez

There was a time some years back when progressive activists debated the importance and usefulness of the Internet. It is a reflection of our movement's progress that, today, that debate is over. Most progressives now use the Internet as an important component of our campaigns and organizing; some rely on it entirely.

This happened about 25 years ago. In a late-night conversation with some organizers from the Mid-West, I was asked to describe my "organizer's fantasy". I was still drinking back then and the combination of beer and wee hours can nurture adventures in speculation.

I answered that I'd want a huge mass movement made up of people with diverse skills and backgrounds and I'd want to be an integral part of it -- not just something I would join after it was developed or something I would "intervene" into or work to support. Not the usual organizer's scenario. This would be a movement in a community of which I was an integral part day to day and that suddenly spawned this amazing movement.

I remember calling it an organizer's dream. I think that describes the Internet. And in this last of a three blog series I want to explain what I mean.

To understand the nature, popularity and importance of the Internet, I think it's critical to look not at the tools we use on-line but at what we do when we're using them.

If we picture our lives in contemporary society as unfolding in a physical space, we might use the metaphor of a closet.

If we had to define the Internet and were suddenly blind to the wires, machines and code that most of us think of when we hear the term, what would we be left with?

It's a question worth thinking about. In a society saturated with and stifled by alienation, our fetish with the props of our human drama too often clouds our ability to see and analyze what's really happening.

We tend to see technology as its "things" and that makes it virtually impossible to understand technology and where it's going.

I am not, by any stretch, a technologist. Years of work and friendship with techies have left me with the certainty that one becomes a techie through genetic pre-disposition or an early childhood experience. Personally, given what these peopIe must endure, I can't conceive of any adult in his or her right mind actually choosing to do it.

It's a tribute to the super-sexualism of a sexually confused society that one of the most popular explanations for the explosive growth of Myspace system dwells on sex.

The popular culture pundits are fond of describing the short-cut boy meets girl adventures as Myspace's raison d'etre. In fact, as I can attest from the experiences of the young men on my staff here, such adventures are rampant.

The debate over how to deal with Spam ignores the most important issue: censorship on the Internet is already an accepted and publicly acknowledged policy and most people don't realize that.

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Recently America On Line announced its intention to start charging people a "license fee" to send bulk email to AOL subscribers.