The speed and ease with which we can inform ourselves and communicate with like-minded persons using the Internet is a departure from past means. Now people can expose and sabotage the best laid plans instantly and at almost no cost. Even in New Brunswick, where use of the Internet is lower than the national average, activist groups make significant use of email and the Web. How they have become so and what that means, are questions that urgently need to be addressed. And activism has become globalized.
Resistance can be as international as capital itself.
When in 1997, Western nations were preparing to sign an agreement which would have superseded national laws and given massive advantages to multinationals with little protection for workers or the environment, along came an activist group which actually read it and posted it on the Internet. Citizens' groups mounted a massive international campaign to ambush the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. Such leaderless online coalitions are a nightmare for the authorities. Websites have eye-witness accounts, including video, within hours of protests, wars or disasters. Sweatshop workers describe online their working conditions to North American campus activists.