Brief Report of New York April 10 Demonstrations for Chiapas
        by Stefan Wray, April 11, 1998
        New York (April 10)--An afternoon vigil in front of the NYC Mexican
        Consulate drew several people who distributed leaflets to people passing by.
        Between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. there was a rally of about 30 people including
        members of New York Zapatistas, members of the Westchester Zapatista
        Solidarity Group,students from Yale, Columbia, and NYU. A modified version
        of the Stationsof the Cross was performed - given that it was Good Friday -
        and excerptsfrom a letter written by Zapata were read. As many are well aware,
        the Consulate was closed today. It was also closed on April 9. So in some ways
        our message was falling upon deaf ears. To compensate, though, we did get
        good media coverage. The Spanish cable version of CBS came as did a
        photographer from Newsday, a Long Island based newspaper.

        At 7:00 p.m. many from the consulate went downtown to the Federal
        building to join a Stations of the Cross protest in response to recent INS
        raids and rounding up of undocumented workers. Several people captured in
        last week's raid had participated in New York Zapatista meetings and
        activities. At the Federal building, INS headquarters, there were at least
        200 people, the vast majority (95%?) were from New York's Mexican
        communities. This event, which was well covered by the media, including
        international Spanish language television like ECO, was pulled together in
        less than a week by the Asociacion Tepeyac de New York and several from NY
        Zapatistas. At each Station of the Cross a statement was read. Throughout
        there were links made between low intensity war in Chiapas, INS raids and
        roundups in New York, and how they are situated in neoliberalism,
        neocolonialism, and globalization. The first paragraph of the first station
        read as follows:

        "Los que gobiernan este mundo imponen el llamado Neoliberalismo, Nuevo
        Colonialismo, o Globalizacion dondequiera. NAFTA o el tratado de libre
        comercio con Mexico es una de sus concrecione."

        The beta actions of Electronic Civil Disobedience had mixed reviews, both
        in face-to-face reaction and on-line reports. The actions also had mixed
        results. The strongest critique of Electronic Civil Disobedience revolved
        around the meaning of "civil disobedience." Others were less concerned with
        the literal meaning of these words and enjoyed some of the features on the
        April 10 web site. There were mixed reports about the impact. Remember this
        was an experiment, a test, a dress rehearsal. Part of the experiment was to
        see if people all around the world can act at the same time on the Net.
        This seems to be the case. Yesterday, when some tried to access the web
        site of Zedillo, they could not. But when others tried, they were able to.
        It seems that numerous people were tuned in to Flood Net: Version 1.0.
        Probably at certain points during the day a critical mass was reached at
        which points access to Zedillo's web page were temporarily cut off.

        Please send both positive and negative critical reaction to what appeared
        on the April10.html web page, the dress rehearsal of The Electronic
        Disturbance Theater, to mailto:sjw210@is8.nyu.edu and to mailto:rdom@thing.net

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