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What's Free Communication got to do with Free Movement?

ionnek | 25.06.2003 15:07 | Migration | Technology

During the protests against the Evian G8 Summit, the noborder demo in Geneva on May 30 2003 highlighted the connections between free communication and free movement: through the choice of places visited, the speeches, and the chosen forms of articulation. See the Imc Uk Full Feature for a report on the demo, the issues, the targets.

Some aspects of the border regime have implications for both migrants and global protesters: its ability to close borders to defined groups at specific times, and the collection of personal data in multi-national databases like the Schengen Information System.
The demand for free movement is not only about speaking out for others, but also for ourselves. The large crowds on the various counter summits etc are made up from many geographical locations, and they obviously need to cross borders. This time, the borders were not closed, despite minor incidents report.

The rich alternative coverage of the protests against the Evian G8 show that free communication and information is just as important as free movement.
Through wires and airwaves, the crowds in the Lac Leman area were connected to uncounted other groups and individuals all over Europe and beyond. An exercise in remote reporting.
Radio- and Videostreams from Geneva and Lausanne were running throughout the protests. Information from chatrooms, mobile phones, landlines, text messages and the streams was processed on a dispatch website and fed onto local imcs as well as the multilingual G8 Global IMC reporting site. Not only imc participated in this massive distribution of grassroots coverage:

ionnek