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While it is easy to take for granted today the free online distribution of information through blogs and sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc, one of the earliest forms of internet media was pioneered by grassroots social justice activists. In 1999, an historic convergence of tens of thousands of activists from across the political spectrum confronted the World Trade Organization in Seattle, Washington. In the build up to that convergence, activists understood that they could not rely on corporate mainstream media to tell their stories of protest and struggle. And so they created the infrastructure for their own media outlet called the Independent Media Center or Indymedia. Providing ordinary people and journalists alike free access to online platforms and the freedom to create content, Indymedia launched what quickly became a global movement to take ownership of people’s stories. Organized horizontally rather than through traditional top-down models, Indymedia also helped spawn a proliferation of collectively run organizing models that relied on consensus-based decision making. Today there are still hundreds of Indymedia chapters operating around the world including right here in Los Angeles.

GUEST: Originally from Cameroon, Sphinx was active in the African student movements in the 1990s and helped start Indymedia chapters in Ambazonia, Kenya, and Congo among other places. He is a film maker, grassroots organizer, and a trainer on consensus-based decision making.

Find out more at www.indymedia.org.