Community organizers obsess over power. Not “how do we get it?” but “how do we destroy it?” Destroy, break, fracture, re-distribute, re-invent. We do this work because we believe that directly-affected communities DO have the power to fix the systemic imbalances that result in oppression and poverty… but we also do it, especially after a couple of years, with a certain degree of cynicism about whether the institutions by which the status quo maintains itself can ever be made just. Maybe we can imagine a criminal justice system that doesn’t screw over people of color so obscenely… but years of experience have made it hard for us to imagine the existing mechanisms of power (elected officials, agency administrators, facility operators) making any of the changes we want to see. Or when change does happen it’s at a glacial pace, with every step forward taking literally years - the victory of the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, after six hard years of brilliant organizing, is a great example of that.

Which isn’t to say we should stop - just that community organizing is ONE OF many strategies that’s needed. More and more I’m wondering: what role can technological direct action play in creating systemic change?

I’m not talking about MoveOn.org-style online organizing. I’m talking about code interference intended to disrupt the function and administration of oppressive systems.

Looking at it from that perspective, this new article becomes particularly intriguing - from The Technology Review, Moore’s Outlaws, by David Talbot:

“Code is more complex, and that means more opportunity to exploit the code. There is more money to be made in exploiting the code, and that means there are more and more sophisticated people looking to exploit vulnerabilities.”

The article talks mostly about criminal interference - hackers, etc. And when he does discuss political cyber-interference, it’s generally carried out by some big scary players: the Chinese government, the Russian government (or, at the very least, the hacking advances the interests of those players, and punishes their enemies, even if it’s not at all clear if the attacks were carried out by the governments themselves or by zealous and patriotic computer geniuses…. but if suddenly the Dalai Lama’s email account is hacked and all his contacts find their computers wiped clean, I don’t imagine he sees much of a difference whether it was Beijing or just an enterprising lone cyber-gunman).

Looking Talbot’s outlaws, it’s fascinating to think about how direct action shaped by the demands of low-income people and backed up by solid technicians, carried out in cyberspace, could mess with business as usual… disruptions that could be carried out against BP and Monsanto as much as the U.S. Government; Scientology as much as terrorist networks. Wikileaks is a brilliant example, but the potential is so much wider. Think about how much of the work of governments is carried out through software - and therefore mediated by code: emails, logistics, distribution, coordination of massive amounts of resources. Think about how code can flip the script, so that “a small, committed group of people,” instead of distributing flyers outside a government agency office, can shut the office down for the day. Think about all the delicious new openings for subversion from below.

Everything is code. So let’s get to work.

Santa Claus came early, and he brought unmanned aerial drones.

These flying robots, semi-autonomous and semi-remote-controlled, pumped out by aerospace/defense contractor Northrop Grumman, are bringing joy and happiness to the American heartland.

Over at Alternet, the brilliant Laura Flanders is reporting on recent mega-million-dollar contracts to create “drone base controls”; it’s hyped as a sure-fire job creator, and local communities in Wisconsin and Missouri and South Dakota are rejoicing. It’s nice that folks can get jobs, but it would also be nice if there was money to create jobs that didn’t in turn create “the charred flesh of children killed by accident, by remote.”

Meanwhile, the US Department of Homeland Security “will deploy additional Border Patrol agents, ICE investigators, two drone aircraft and other technologies to its border with Mexico as part of a new effort to combat organized crime and illegal immigration…. In the Texas-Mexico border, two additional Predator drones will patrol the area and nearby areas in the Gulf of Mexico region, once Congress approves the 500 million dollars President Barack Obama has requested for such purpose.”

500 million dollars for two Predator drones? Those are some expensive robots!

These border deployments amount to a proxy war between defense contractors and drug cartels, with the government handing out massive wads of cash. Corporations and organized crime - these are the new epicenters of power. Fiscal insolvency is leading to the “erosion of the nation-state’s power to protect/advance the well being of its citizens;” an abandonment of political power for the sake of financial power. That’s the point of the Bush tax cuts and Reaganite policies in general; to take away the power of government to help people (de-funding and demolishing public education, housing, health care, unemployment, etc), and turn government into a funnel for money - out of taxpayers’ pockets and into the hands of businesses and foreign militaries and the “right kind” of global insurgents, the ones resisting governments we don’t like, the ones who probably hate us but will take the cash and weapons we throw at them and then use them on us ten or twenty years down the line.

At the U.S. Social Forum there’s a workshop on “Challenging Robotic Empire.” I’m sad I’m not in Detroit to check it out, but it’s good to see that anti-militarism folks in the US are already thinking through the ways in which military robotics will change the nature of warfare, and therefore the nature of our response to it. I’m hopeful that as we learn how to respond to the new challenges posed by soldier-robots, we take it as an opportunity to take radical anti-militarism work in a new direction…

Looking at oppression and resistance on the global scale, it’s tempting to look at a nation like Haiti and think that poverty and oppression are a consequence of lack of resources. But then, looking at other nations - particularly in Africa - it’s the exact opposite.

In Impact Lab’s recent “20 Failed States Report,” I found this fascinating quote: the Democratic Republic of Congo is “blessed with perhaps the world’s single most abundant, diverse, and extractable supply of minerals.” Yet the country has “one of the world’s most desperate humanitarian situations,” with millions dying from disease and conflict.

And when I visited the Dominican Republic in 2008, after hearing stories from Dominican immigrant friends about how impoverished the country was, I was shocked to see an incredible richness of produce: plantains and mangos and bananas and rice everywhere you looked, growing in astonishing abundance. Poverty and hunger were very real and very obvious, even among so much food production.

The open market turns resources into a liability. The Congo’s richness attracted brutal colonialist exploiters for centuries, and after the colonialists came corrupt local government and violent insurgents and corporate parasites, leading to a brutal war that’s still raging. Farmers in the Dominican Republic are like any other merchant; they’re going to sell their goods wherever they’ll fetch the highest price. And US corporations can pay a lot more than their own neighbors.

So what are we going to do about it? How can the poor flip the script of global exploitation and underdevelopment? The deck is so clearly stacked against outright revolution or non-compliance with market capitalism, going back to Haitian independence - the big powers have a lot of weapons and long memories - if anything, developed nations and major corporations are eager for domestic instability, as it gives them an excuse to take by force what they had formerly needed to haggle and barter and bribe away.

But what disruptive opportunities are created by new technologies? Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about John Robb’s theories around deviant economies, networked tribes, coercing organizational hierarchies, and resilient communities; including some speculations on “potent coercive tools for non-violent protest (in a post-Gandhi world).”

I’ve got nothing particular to add, except that us community organizers and activists in the developed world need to start reading a lot more blogs and talking to a lot more folks, from all corners, from corporate consultants to hill-country insurgents to hackers. All voices in the choir, as James Baldwin said.

Strong plot, characters. Big challenge - to create a compelling universe without living beings - well-handled. Maybe too much time spent filling world with quirky details.