only in a distant memory, Reclaim the Streets with hooliganism or terrorism. RtS was in a difficult, unacknowledged para-
dox: to be able to effectively challenge a false testimony, one needs the truth, It can be more effective than propaganda, and
it feels much better but it may also need to be as ubiquitous as the message that you are trying to counteract.

Not least, the illegality of the activities means that you cannot give the whole story. Months later, when interviewed for the
film, most of the activists still refused to speak about the organisational failures or anything regarding planning, which are
essential part in the diffusion of tactics. In that week, hundreds of reporters contacted the office, from Newsweek to local
gazettes. They were mostly ignored, thus losing a chance to spread some information on a global scale. London RtS activists
generally refused to give names or interviews, sign articles or have one person appear as a figure head. News media, just
like the police or a historian, needs to attach a name to a statement. It authenticates it and qualifies its relevance to the sub-
ject. By then, most RtS activists had already been through their fifteen minutes, and no longer accepted to embody the mes-
sage.

The film, which took 15 months to complete, set itself to be a vehicle for the emotions that could not be portrayed in any
other media. By its very nature, film is probably the most subjective means of representation, The camera is never objec-
tive, yet documentary film has a formidable claim to reality. More importantly, it is the predominant tool for social control,
and if successfully subverted, it can provide support to a movement facing an almost uniformly hostile media.

Sydney RTS: http:/members.xoom.convsydneyrts/
Berkeley RTS(US): http:/www.xinet.comvbike/reclaimthestreets/
London RtS: http/www.gn.apc.org/tts/
Lancaster RTS (UK): http:/www.geocities.com/RainForesv6096/index. html

THIS IS THE MILIEU OF TODAY’S

NET.ACTIVIST

Ten years ago, there were few online activists and they believed that “cyberspace” was all theirs, a territory from which

uenapng eg

to emerge anywhere, outflanking the lumbering second-wave dinosaurs responsible for the Cold War and its successor,
the McWorld. In the future that actually unfolded, the dinosaurs learned to boot up computers, connect to the Internet and
post Web pages, or pay someone to do all this for them. What was a poor online activist to do? Even the son of Slobodan
Milosevic has a Web site, to promote his Belgrade dance club.

Online activists have lately been busy. The last 12 months saw a flurry of politically motivated online actions. Electronic
Disturbance Theater, a New York group, staged “virtual sit-ins" at Web sites maintained by the Mexican government and
the state of Pennsylvania. (The former oppresses sympathizers of the Zapatistas and the latter recently renewed its at-
tempts to execute prison journalist and alleged cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.) Someone else hacked the Great Firewall of
China, hijacking a Web page and compromising proxy servers used to shield the Chinese people from pornography and
sedition. Yet another group occupied a Shell office in London and posted a protest Web site from inside the building using
a phone and a palmtop computer. And broadening the category of electronic activism allows inclusion of the LOphT and
Peacefire, who make software that respectively opens humiliating holes in Microsoft server software and circumvents