Shut up, Schultz...

So a G-20 protester was arrested, then raided by the FBI, for his Twitter usage regarding police whereabouts during the summit.

Two articles have come to my attention - this one written by Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman. It’s titled Watch What You Tweet. Although the title may lead a person to believe that she suggests protester actions require a social networking face-lift of sorts, she points to governmental censorship as the societal ill, acknowledging the opportunity that decentralized sites like Twitter and Facebook present “to strengthen our democracy and dissent.” She does a decent job of connecting this particular case to the Obama administration/Iranian protest use of social media.

The other, from Ars Technica, is called Anarchist arrested after tweeting out the fuzz to protesters. It opens with a welcoming subhead (If you’re the subversive type, you might want to reconsider tweeting the revolution…) and reads less like a piece of journalism and more like a misguided and condescending how-to for street sheep. It goes on to suggest that those who organize ‘activities of a questionable legal nature’ are unwise to use a public and widely used communications tool like Twitter. It concludes by suggesting that protesters use lower-tech communications that aren’t so easily traced.

Now, I’m going to try to take it easy. This was obviously not written by someone who understands a whole lot about radical organizing. But I am really fucking tired of reading articles that use a corrective tone when discussing matters of protest as if no one in the streets has ever fucking thought about protesting before. And it’s not lost on me that the very first thing that we read about this particular individual is that he might consider himself an anarchist. Don’t get me started on that one. Or about the assumption drawn that someone who is running a communications network for a huge ass event has somehow had a hand in organizing actions at said huge ass event.

Guess what? People who organize ‘activities of a questionable legal nature’ don’t fucking tweet about it. They form these things called affinity groups with people they trust, plan direct action in secret if that’s what they’re into and practice good security culture in public meetings to keep themselves and everyone in a community safe. You don’t tend to write about these people because they aren’t using Twitter.

People who organize communications efforts for huge ass events are generally interested in keeping people who are attending said huge ass event safe. That includes disseminating as much information about a situation as possible to as many people as possible so that individuals can make decisions for themselves about the level of risk they feel comfortable taking on. These comms folks don’t tend to prescribe or assume what is best for an individual. They spread the facts as best as they know them, and leave the decision-making to the people.

Weird. Perhaps journalists have a lot to learn from (anarchists like) Elliot Madison.



***Big ups to chriseats for the second article. I’ve had a bit of writer’s block lately, and you may have cleared it right up.