In only two days the number of participants in the protest of the nominations of George W. Bush and Tony Blair for the Nobel Peace Prize has surged to over 2,200, more than doubling the count in only 2 days. I haven’t even seriously promoted this campaign in the past 5 or 6 days. Back then I posted it to some IndyMedia sites, sent it out to a couple of mailing lists, and let it take off from there. It’s things like these which really affirm my faith in the potential of the Internet as a space for democratic political transformation. Tapping into these grassroots networks for an email protest campaign is only a small step, but the important thing is the amount of real popular power that we are beginning to be able to manifest. These networks we are developing — informal and formal, organized and loosely affiliated — are important. I honestly believe that much of the hope for the future lies in our ability to maintain these networks online, expand them and make them more inclusive, and translate them into organization and action, on and offline.

Take action! Urge the Nobel Prize committee to reject the nomination of George W. Bush and Tony Blair!

For further reading:

• Journalism, Diversity, and the Promise of the Internet (an open letter to Yahoo! News)
• GT 2001/12/09: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Models for Online Politics
• GT 2001/05/29: The Battle for a Grassroots Internet Experience
• GT 2001/03/28: Grassroots Infrastructure and the Real Internet Revolution
• GT 2001/06/09: Misogyny of Internet Culture Betrays the Promise of Democratic Spaces Online
• GT 2001/05/10: FBI Fishing Expedition Against Seattle IMC Tries to Chill Dissent Online