Ten years ago, on January 1, 1994, a primarily indigenous rebel group, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), declared war on the Mexican government. It was the same day NAFTA went into effect.

From a brief history of the Zapatistas:

“The systematic brutalization of indigenous communities and the tight control of the political machinery that allowed for no democratic openings constitute the conditions against which the Zapatistas organized. NAFTA is a key factor, since it sells off Mexican sovereignty and further erodes the autonomy of indigenous communities. The institution of NAFTA was preceded by the repeal of Article 27 of the Mexican constitution, which protected communal land holdings from privatization, part of the victory of land reforms of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The Zapatistas have insisted that the further privatization of land means the death of indigenous cultures that are centrally determined by a collective relation to the land....

A key component of the Zapatistas’ uniqueness is that from the very beginning they have refused a vanguard role, calling out to different sectors of Mexican civil society to take up the struggle in their own ways.”

In February 2001, members of the EZLN began a march to Mexico City. The caravan included some of the oldest Zapatistas in the country who fought alongside of Emiliano Zapata at the beginning of the 20th century. Along the way they participated in the Third National Indigenous Congress with representatives of 40 of the 56 ethnic groups that live in Mexico. By the time the caravan reached Mexico City, it had grown to include several thousands of participants. [more]

While representatives of the EZLN addressed the Mexican Congress, in the streets, two groups of Mexican designers, Fuera de Registro and La Corriente Electrica postered the city in solidarity.

The posters were also distributed by email with the following statement:

“The EZLN has arrived to Mexico City.

To welcome them, to support the indigenous people claims, to demand peace with justice and dignity, we have produced these images. Help us to distribute them. Use, share, print the images. We need every one’s help to demand the Mexican Government the following conditions to re-initiate the peace negotiatons with the EZLN.

1. Constitutional recognition of the San Andres Agreements about Indigenous Rights and Culture.
2. Freedom to all the zapatista prisoners.
3. Withdrawal of the Mexican Army of the Chiapas Heights.

Mexico DF, March 2001.
Fuera de Registro, La Corriente Electrica.”

Rene Wanner has posted some images of the posters on his page, Zapata vive ! Mexican posters for peace in Chiapas.

“Fuera de Registro” is a pun which means “off register” in printing, as well as a person who can not vote because they are not registered.

Chiapas Indymedia has produced an audio documentary on ten years of Zapatismo.

A doctor in St. Louis is improving public health with customized graphic design.

From the BBC:

“A scheme which hands out a personalised calendar complete with pictures of your child is boosting vaccination rates in the US.

In St. Louis, where as few as a quarter of eligible children get all their [shots], uptake rose by 50% on average.

The calendars have key dates ringed so that parents find it easy to work out when to visit the doctor....

There are a plethora of different vaccinations offered to babies in their first two years of life, and the confusing sequence sometimes means that [shots] are missed.

St. Louis physician Dr. Matthew Kreuter came up with the idea of generating immunisation reminders tailored for each baby by computer.

To ensure that parents hung on to these calendars, they included a high quality image of their baby - as many patients in deprived inner-city St. Louis cannot afford to have professional photographs taken.

After one year, 82% of the ‘calendar babies’ were up to date with their immunisations — compared with 65% of children that did not receive calendars.

After two years, two-thirds of those with calendars were up to date, compared with 47% of those without....

Dr Kreuter said: ‘Getting babies immunised is very important for families and the community.

‘But it’s also difficult for many parents because of challenges with transportation, busy work schedules and finding childcare for other children.

‘We want to reward their efforts with this unique reminder to keep them coming back over time.’

Every time a child attends an immunisation session, the photograph is updated with a new one - so at the end of the process, the parents will have a varied selection of good quality photographs.

The whole process costs the public health system approximately $1,200 per child, but Dr Kreuter says this is worthwhile.”

Dr. Kreuter is the Director of the Health Communication Research Laboratory at St. Louis University. The program strives to “enhance the health of individuals and populations through the research, development, and dissemination of innovative and effective health communication programs.”

Dr. Kreuter has conducted extensive research in tailored communication, using new technologies to produce customized information for patients, both online and offline.

On the power of posters, pamphlets, and petitions in the time of globalization.

From “Sailing the Black Atlantic,” by Adam Hochschild, a review of Making the Black Atlantic. Britain and the African Diaspora, in The Times Literary Supplement, October 6, 2000:

“By requiring a complex skein of transport, trade, credit and insurance ties that connected Europe, Africa and the Americas, slavery and the slave trade were the core of the eighteenth century’s version of globalization.

In turn, one might call the black diaspora the era’s Internet. As Walvin points out, it was an information network. Word of the dramatic blossoming of abolitionism in England, for instance, was eagerly carried back across the Atlantic by black sailors, and by black domestics brought back and forth across the ocean by their West Indian masters. Slaves waiting on plantation dinner tables in Jamaica or Barbados listened hard when their owners cursed the do-gooders in Parliament, or the Quakers, who organized a huge boycott of slave-grown sugar. News from each side of the Atlantic affected the other. Reports of hundreds of abolitionist petitions flooding Parliament helped spark some of the revolts among impatient slaves in the Caribbean. The first major uprising, in the French colony of Saint Domingue (later Haiti) in the 1790s, provoked a backlash in Britain against the abolitionists, but a later one, in Jamaica in 1831-2, was crucial in hastening emancipation.”

From Reuters, November 13, 2003:

“As political parties and businesses take advantage of a power vacuum in a country with as yet no elected government, constitution or parliament, Baghdad has become a city of graffiti.

Walls around the city of five million have been smothered with competing slogans since three decades of stifling state control and dictatorship ended in April with the ousting of Iraq’s president Saddam Hussein.”

From Al-Ahram Weekly via the Utne Reader:

“[Graffiti] has quickly become an important mode for Iraqis to freely express opinions of every nature. Nermeen Al-Mufti, reporting from Baghdad, writes that during the last two months the walls near her house have ‘been witness to the sentiments and longing of the Iraqi people.’ Before the fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces, the walls were entirely blank except for the face of Saddam Hussein. Now buildings throughout the city are covered with political and personal commentary from hugely differing perspectives.

Much of the writing is political in nature. After American troops entered Iraq many of the pictures of Saddam were defaced. A poster near Al Mufti’s house that had previously read ‘yes, yes to Saddam,’ was changed to ‘no, no to Saddam.’ Later someone added the word ‘criminal’ in front of Saddam’s name. However, anger and resentment is not, by any means, limited to the former leader of Iraq. One wall reads, ‘Americans, sooner or later we will kick you out.’ And at times the two opinions clash, ‘Thank you Mr. Bush,’ was later crossed out by someone else.

Ali Omer, a young writer in Baghdad, commented, ‘I discovered the draw-back of democracy, it dirties the walls!’ Metaphorically, the ‘dirty’ masses of opinions covering the walls reflects the greatly commingled ethnic and religious groups in the country. Shatha Hassan, a teacher in the Institute of Fine Arts, says that the walls reflect the massive instability of the country. Thus, some of the writing directed towards the future possibilities of an Iraqi government. Walls read, ‘Yes to a secular government,’ or, ‘There is no democratic Iraq without resolution of the Kurdish issue.’ On this note, there is also the positive outlook, ‘Arab and Kurds together will rebuild Iraq.’ Sadly, the walls are also representative of a war-torn country where positive steps forward are taken very slowly. One university student writing on the wall said, ‘We still don’t know if we’ll be taking our exams or not. Nobody reads the papers, so maybe our demands will be seen on the walls.’”

For a few more translations see Newsday.

The Design Action Collective, the Ruckus Society, and Change the Game are holding a conference on design for social justice.

Designs on Democracy: Communication for Liberation is billed as:

“a forum for networking and dialogue on the strategic role of graphic communications, public relations and guerilla marketing in the service of organizing for Justice.

The Designs on Democracy conference is for activists working in graphic design, communications, public relations, Web and new media, issue advertising, guerilla messaging, and emerging and student activists in these fields.

Through three days of speakers, workshops, panels and networking, participants will:

• Strategize about the role of activist design and communications in supporting critical struggles in the coming years.
• Build and strengthen long-term working relationships between individuals and firms specializing in activist design and communications across the United States.
• Share skills and experience to improve the services available to movement organizations.
• Create a forum where emerging designers with activist interests can connect with established firms for career, intern and volunteer opportunities.
• Provide an opportunity for campaigners and organizers to connect with design and communication activists.”

The conference will be held from March 26-28, 2004 at the University of California, Berkeley. Contact the organizers for more info.

The provisional agenda seems to focus heavily on marketing, but the organizers are open to suggestions. I’d recommend a session on design that facilitates organizing and public pariticipation. Perhaps one on information design and mapping for advocacy.

I attended the Tech Toolbox Action Camp that the Ruckus Society threw back in June 2002 and certainly got a lot out of it. I might just try to make it to this one, too.

Reading the catalog for Me, Myself, and Infrastructure, I stumble onto this:

“The corporations with the highest revenues in the U.S. are Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil, General Motors, and Ford. They base their business on the supremacy of the road in American life.”

Wow! Incredulous, I consult Google. It’s true. Sometimes, living blissfully without a car in New York City, one forgets how the rest of this enormous country lives.

But then, via Planetizen my revelation is adjusted again. Sprawl is not propelled simply by consumer demand, but by lobbyists and politics that protect and promote the interests of those same companies.

A publisher of graphic design books in Barcelona will soon produce a book compiling a selection posters against the war in Iraq designed by artists around the world. When soliciting submissions, the editor announced that profits from the book would be donated to Amnesty International.

I informed the editor that it was a little strange for a book of anti-war posters to support an organization that never actually opposed the war. He was shocked to hear this.

He quoted from Amnesty’s Web site:

“In February 2003, before the start of the war, Amnesty International handed to the UN a petition signed by more than 60,000 people in nearly 200 countries and territories calling on the Security Council to assess the human rights and humanitarian impact on the civilian population of any military action against Iraq.”

This is true, but this is not the same as opposing the war. In fact, this actually implies that the invasion is just fine as long as the humanitarian and human rights impact is within some acceptable limit. This is consistent with International Humanitarian Law. Under IHL, a certain amount of “collateral damage” is assumed. You can kill plenty of civilians, as long as you are not specifically targeting them and have taken some measures to minimize harm.

Amnesty does wonderful work on behalf of prisoners around the world, but they are not an anti-war organization. They are not actually opposed to war, but war crimes. Contradictions abound: Amnesty opposes the use of land-mines as “inhumane,” but takes no position on nuclear weapons. Amnesty also recently launched a campaign to control the trafficking of small arms, though they say nothing about the general trade of large weapons.

The editor wrote, “I went through a list of charity organizations and Amnesty is one that gets one of the highest marks for how much money they use from donations for actual causes rather than promotion etc. Also, they were only one of many charities who responded to my query.”

I pointed out that Amnesty’s is not structured like other organizations. Amnesty’s London office does all the research and generates materials for advocacy, but does no fundraising or marketing at all. It is Amnesty’s autonomous national offices that do the fundraising and marketing. The national offices send a portion of their funds back to the international headquarters in London. Thus, if you looked at the international headquarters of Amnesty it would appear that they spent all of their money on program work and none on fundraising. This is true, but misleading.

I also noted that Amnesty is a well-funded organization. The budget of the its international headquarters was £23,728,000 in fiscal year 2002. That headquarters employs 410 staff. In contrast, many of the small organizations and coalitions that came together specifically to oppose the war are struggling to stay afloat and to keep the pressure on. These groups could use the money a lot more than Amnesty.

The editor considered my arguments and later circulated a poll to let the contributing artists decide who should receive the proceeds. He wrote:

“My original plan for the book was to donate a portion of the profits from the book to a non governmental organization (NGO) which could use the money to help promote peace, non-violence, and help people affected by war. There are many such organizations around the world and it has been very hard to choose one to be the recipient of this donation. I am hoping that you, the artists, can help me choose one of these NGOs and make this a truly democratic project.

The following is a list of NGOs which are internationally recognized and are currently making efforts to help the people in Iraq, either by organizing people against the occupation, or helping people on the ground.

• Amnesty International
• International Answer
• International Committee of the Red Cross
• Not in Our Name
• Oxfam
• Peace Action
• Stop the War Coalition
• United for Peace & Justice
• Win Without War
• War Resisters League

Of the organizations listed, Amnesty International is the only one that has neither opposed to the occupation nor delivered supplies and relief to the people of Iraq. Instead Amnesty asks the occupying forces themselves to ensure that provisions and medical supplies are delivered. Take a look at Amnesty’s own briefing paper on Iraq. Amnesty calls for oil revenue to benefit the people of Iraq, but does not name specific U.S. contracts and companies profiting instead. Amnesty calls for “justice and security,” but not for the transfer of power to the people of Iraq. Amnesty calls for investigations into cases of abuse by US and UK soldiers in Iraq, but would never call for Bush or his administration to be held accountable for the lies that put them there.

No matter. When the votes were tallied, Amnesty International won by landslide.

Wouldn’t it be great if we never had any need for a military? Failing that, how about a military forever sworn off of war? Japan’s military has done this for the last 50 years. This will soon change, however, as they enter the war in Iraq.

Article 9 of the constitution of Japan states:

“The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.”

This is interpreted as permitting a standing army known as the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), but has prohibited those forces from being deployed outside of Japan or possessing nuclear weapons.

Still, with nearly 240,000 military personnel and an annual budget of nearly $50 billion in 2002, Japan’s military outstrips Britain’s in total spending and manpower. [source]

In the past Article 9 prevented the SDF from participating in military conflict and limited Japanese involvement to mostly financial support.

However, just as the United States wrote that constitution, Japan is slowly amending it under U.S. pressure.

“With each global ‘crisis,’ the Japanese government has taken the opportunity to enact new legislation to circumvent Article 9 and its clear renunciation of war.

One of the larger circumventions was the Peace Keeping Operations Law of 1992 which was passed during the Gulf War. This law allowed Japan to take part, if in a limited way, in United Nations-led peacekeeping operations. Other laws that have eroded the force of the Peace Provision are the 1999 law on Japan-U.S. security cooperation in dealing with emergencies around Japan, and the 2001 anti-terrorism special measures law.

The terrorist acts of September 2001 and the subsequent pressure from the United States has provided the latest opportunity for the Japanese government to pass legislation increasing the country’s legal right to conduct war.” [source]

Following the lead of the United States, the meaning of “self-defense” has now been expanded to include “pre-emptive” attack. In February 2003, Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba warned that Japanese military would launch a pre-emptive military action against North Korea if it had firm evidence Pyongyang was planning a missile attack. It would be “a self-defense measure.”

In July 2003, the Diet approved a plan to send 1,000 troops to Iraq. The vote turned into an outright brawl on the floor between MP’s for and against the vote. (See the pic.)

This is not the first time Japan has cleaned up after a U.S. war. Japan gave $13 billion during the first Gulf War in 1991, but did not send troops. More recently, Japan deployed an SDF demining team to Afghanistan.

Yesterday’s New York Times reports that deployment for Iraq is scheduled for early next year.

That July article notes that the Japanese troops will help “resettling refugees, rebuilding and providing fresh water supplies that.” The Times, also states that the Japanese will “engage in unwarlike activities,” though ominously matches the article with photos of Japanese soldiers in camouflage make-up, members of an “antitank unit” during exercises in Japan.

The Times article also notes:

“Not one Japanese soldier has been killed, or has killed, in combat since the end of World War II.

That remarkable fact is being repeated here often these days, precisely because, as Japan prepares to send ground forces to Iraq, things could change in the near future. The death of a soldier, a sad though common reality for most nations, would be a pivotal point in Japan’s postwar history.”

The “harmlessness” of military service, a deception implied by U.S. recruiting material, is actually thus far depicted honestly in SDF materials. Here are some links to some images of SDF posters. While U.S. recruiting posters sell adventure spiced with danger and travel, the pitch here displays neither — instead mixing the adventure with uniforms, aviation, and naval technology.

The posters also seem to sell the SDF as something like a sports club, a way to impress your country, kids, and co-eds, and, recently, a distinguished career option for women. And then there’s that bizarre sci-fi poster. But then I can’t read Japanese so could be totally misinterpreting the signs.

As the Japanese military is a “Self-Defense Force,” their logo brands them as keepers of peace. The SDF are “Peace People Japan.”

The posters have been removed from the SDF site so the links above point to the Web Archive.

However, this small collection of cuddly cartoon characters is still online.

In the same sitting, I stumbled into two articles on the use of cellphones to coordinate street protest in real time. One in La Paz, the other in London, the former well organized, the latter ad-hoc. One from the country, the other from the city.

From Anarchogeek:

“The use of cell phones is interesting in how it relates to transforming the rural/urban power divide within the developing world. This isn’t something entirely new, rural community radio stations have played very large roll in communication and social transformation. In Bolivia, the revolution of 1952 lead by the miners unions, was coordinated by a network of rural community radio stations. With high illiteracy, little infrastructure, very poor communities these communities have relied on radio as the primary form of mass media.

In the last decade there has been an upsurge in the political power of indigenous movements in the Andes who have their power base in rural mostly disconnected communities. A lot of that upsurge is due to the many years of organizing by indigenous leaders, social movements, and NGO’s. That said, cell phones have acted as a major amplifier of their work. Increasing the ability for people to coordinate their actions and build robust social networks.

Unfortunately, I’ve not seen much written about the use of cell phones and other communications technology in the general strike and ‘Gas War’ in Bolivia last month. From my working with the rather small group of indymedia people in Bolivia I’ve heard some of how cell phones transformed the conflict. It helped people lay a more than week-long siege to La Paz. It also helped coordinate the marches of people from other parts of the country to the capital. When women went on hunger strike in churches the communications network made it a coordinated act, not simply the act of a few brave women in one location.

I think what happened in Bolivia is quite different than the much talked about ‘smart mobs’ as there were relatively few people will cell phones. The groups were not flexible, but rather quite well organized with cell phones used to coordinate between the leadership of existing organizations and networks. The use of cell phones facilitated the biggest indigenous siege of La Paz in almost 300 years.

Other important factors was Pios Doce and other community radio stations which played a vital mass media roll during the crisis. The Pios Doce transmitter in Oruro was bombed, by people who clearly didn’t expect the police to investigate anything. What the government didn’t figure out how to do was shut off the cell phones of known organizers, or towers which serve indigenous communities. My guess is the reason they didn’t shut them down was in part because cell phones were a vital communications tool for the police and army. Even the US Army in Iraq makes extensive use of consumer walkie talkies and unencrypted Instant Messenger. In India texting has been shut off at critical points to stem the spread of rumors and coordinated race riots during communalist uprisings in the last year. I expect as social movements turn to using cell phones and related technology as a tactical tool during protests and uprisings the governments will eventually learn how to turn off the ability to communicate at will.”

This last point is also noted in the BBC article about protestors chasing Bush in London:

“Some newspapers and websites were reporting mobile phone signals could be blocked for fear they could remote-control a bomb. But Scotland Yard has denied reports that police were considering shutting mobile phone masts during protests.”

In contrast to the Bolivia protest which shut down the capitol, the UK protests are intended to be a media hack and an adjunct to the big, organized, legally-sanctioned anti-war march on Thursday.

“The Chasing Bush campaign is asking people to ‘disrupt the PR’ of the visit by spoiling stage-managed photos.

They are being encouraged to send location reports and images by mobile to be posted on the Chasing Bush site....

Technologies like text messaging and weblogs have been successfully used in the past to co-ordinate routes and meet-up points for mass protests.

But the gadgets are now being used more proactively to make protests more visible and disrupt any potential stage-managing of the President’s visit.

‘We are trying to spoil the PR, so we are not doing anything directly, but encouraging people to protest by turning their backs in press photos so they can’t be used.’

The campaign organisers have also asked people to go into protest ‘exclusion zones’ to send SMS updates and on-location reports about his appearances, and events at protests.”

See this previous post for more notes on electornic advocacy.

I’ve been taking a break from blogging to wrap up a few projects, but here’s a quick follow-up to a previous item from June on supportive housing:

“Common Ground Community and The Architectural League of New York’s First Step Housing design competition ended this week with five entries sharing top honors.

Competitors were asked to design a prototypical individualized dwelling unit and the layout of 19 such units on a typical floor of The Andrews � Common Ground’s lodging house on the Bowery - which will shortly be renovated to house the First Step Housing Program. First Step will offer private, safe, clean and affordable short-term accommodations to individuals who are transitioning to housing, facing homelessness, or who have rejected or failed in other programs.”