The revolution will be digitized
Independent media outlets and protesters use modern technology to extend their reach

By Camille T. Taiara

Whether in El Salvador, Chiapas, or Seattle, the use of media to win popular support for political struggles is nothing new. But in San Francisco today, tech-savvy revolutionaries are lending their media skills to the antiwar movement in novel ways. As a result, protesters on the street have been able to share up-to-the-minute details on actions and police movements throughout the city and to document them for public consumption via radio, TV, or the Internet.

Not surprisingly, the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center (S.F.-IMC) is among those at the front lines of this different brand of digital revolution.

"One thing we have now, which is new for us, is a Web radio station," Natasha (not her real name) of the S.F.-IMC, tells us. The station has been facetiously named Enemy Combatants Radio and can be accessed at radio.sfimc.net. "People have been calling us from cell phones in the middle of actions."

Its reports, she says, are broadcast live, and anyone in the world can pick up its stream. Indeed, micropowered San Francisco Liberation Radio, at 93.7 FM, has been intermittently doing just that. "We're encouraging people, when they do go to actions downtown, to bring a transistor radio," says Natasha, who would like to see more local stations follow suit.

Of course, S.F-IMC's work doesn't end there. It has also activated a flash text-messaging system through which it is able to send immediate updates of conditions on the ground to protesters via cell phone. It's a scheme the S.F.-IMC has been using among a relatively small group of activists but hopes to expand into a broader network soon.

The group's biggest challenge now is raising the funds to rent enough bandwidth to handle the millions of hits it's receiving on its Web site every day.

On the video front, independent producers with satellite stations Free Speech TV and World Link TV have been collaborating with Collision Course Video Productions and KPFA to provide alternatives to what many argue is one-sided coverage of the antiwar movement by mainstream media.

"We put out two live broadcasts, two hours each," Collision Course's Doug Norberg says. "One on Thursday morning, broadcast right from the middle of the demonstrations, was at Fourth and Market. We bounced [the signal] from a satellite truck and from World Link TV's studio up in North Beach." The show included on-site interviews as well as footage by video crews on bicycles from different locations downtown.

"It's a brand new thing to be able to do this on a national scale," Norberg says. The programs have also been rebroadcast on public access cable stations throughout northern California.

In the meantime, other independent videographers have been producing their own content. Dozens showed their footage at Dolores Park on March 22 – just three days into the protests – and the S.F.-IMC has been streaming such video on its site. Many videographers are working on editing copy for future showings in the community and elsewhere. Producers also intend to make such footage available for legal purposes – in cases of alleged police brutality, for example.

Collision Course, FSTV, the S.F.-IMC, Whispered Media, Video Activist Network, and others present "War and Resistance," new videos from the first week of resistance to the war, Fri/28, 5:45 p.m., Centro del Pueblo, 474 Valencia, S.F. $5 suggested donation. (415) 587-0818. To donate to the S.F.-IMC, go to http://sf.indymedia.org.