[COMM-ORG] Black demand for web-democracy predates Obama's net-generation

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From: "Melinda Chateauvert" <mchateau at aasp.umd.edu>


Subject: Black demand for web-democracy predates Obama's net-generation

From: thechronicle <tb at thechronicle.demon.co.uk>

Black demand for web-democracy predates Obama's net-generation
By Thomas L Blair, tb at thechronicle.demon.co.uk, 20 January 2009

Barack Obama's "net-generation" ignited his journey to the White House
as 44th President of the US - and its first Black leader. On the
campaign trail, young "net-geners" attracted millions of donors and
volunteer in a multicultural political coalition.

The brilliant tactic of Internet social networking was clear, however,
at least a decade before. Globally, the "net-roots" commitment for
change swept the Black World - Africa and the Diaspora. Black
communities were adapting the instruments of the digital age- the
Internet and computers -- for equality and social justice as early as 1996.

This surely must have impressed the young Obama, when organising
community action in the politically volatile, working poor voting
districts of Chicago.

In Britain, online Black communities promoted "digital cities" that
value citizen participation. African communities trained cyberactivists
and challenge media companies and Internet providers to close the
"digital divide" between the "info-haves and have nots".

In America, the early Black cyberorganisers were blooded by "dreams" for
a changed America -- from the civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and
Fannie Lou Hamer, and Martin Luther King, Jr and Malcolm X to Rev Jesse
Jackson's rainbow campaigns of 1984 and 1988 for jobs, education and
health care.

Armed with the rousing anthem "We shall overcome", and Sam Cooke's "A
Change is Gonna Come" may have provided the highlight, cyberorganisers
preached the radical idea of "net-working with your neighbours". They
carried their Internet-based redemptive message into schools,
universities, churches, clubs, beauty parlours, community halls and
workers' unions.

Obama's net-geners and Internet-savvy voters inherit this demand for
change and thrust the revolutionary idea of power sharing into electoral
politics.  From the rise of Obama 2006 to 2008, they forged the biggest
user-friendly, special interest group in the nation. Undoubtedly, the
first truly "wired" presidency owes its origins in no small part to the
precursors of Internet social action, Black communities.

Hands that once picked cotton now "internetwork" for social change and
participatory democracy.


Thomas L Blair publishes the Internet journal Chronicleworld.org and is
the author of the forthcoming book Audacity of Cyberspace: The struggle
for internet power. See book content and details at
http://www.thomblair.org.uk/audacity.htm
All enquiries, comments and interest will be gratefully received
tb at thechronicle.demon.co.uk