Hi!
I work at the Humboldt Community Switchboard, an information-and-referral phone line that provides references to people in Humboldt County, California, to get them connected to resources and services. I am training new volunteers, and I want them to get a sense of their work as fitting into a larger political picture, where they are interfacing with the whole network of oppression and injustice that lead people to be without services, housing, safety, etc.
Is there any history of the use of information-and-referral phone lines during times of great political activism? I know about pirate radio use during big events like the WTO protests, but I'm wondering if people have set up phone lines, rapid response networks, etc. during these types of events. I'm trying to put together a timeline for this type of use for information and referral services.
Thank you!
Lane
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Radical information & referral via phones
Hi, Lane --
This group in Pittsburgh, operated, or operates, using pre-paid cell phones, among other means:
Tin Can Comms
http://tincancomms.wordpress.com/
Looks like they were active during the anti-G20 in the fall of 2009.
Good luck! -- K
that's awesome, fantastic!
that's awesome, fantastic! just the kind of thing I was looking for.
thanks,
Lane
Radical Information and Referral Phone Lines
Information-and-referral phone lines often played an important part on the 60's counter culture and were established in many cities. See for instance this short article on B.I.T. Information service, one such group in the UK.
Information phone lines ) and rapid response networks a.k.a phone tree's were a very common tactic for protest movements in the pre-internet era. Cruise Watch a direct action program that monitored and harassed the deployment of nuclear armed American cruise missile convoys, utilized an extensive phone network that spread over large parts of the UK, for example.
It was common to announce meeting places via a recorded message phone line, in order to avoid announcing it in advance. This was used by Reclaim the Streets who helped organize the J18 Carnival against Capitalism, the first of the series of large protests against the WTO, though it's use certainly goes back much further.