This introduction has taken me time because we have
been busy—despite the record snowfall in Boston this winter, there
have been a few 'fires' to put out. Once the fires were extinguished
we had more snow than I could ever imagine, followed quickly by
LibrePlanet, so perhaps this should be taken as my six-month
introduction.
Why would people in the Latin American free software community know
me? Well, before moving back to Boston, I spent nearly three years
south of the U.S., living in San Marcos, Guatemala and Distrito
Federal (aka Mexico City), Mexico. In that time, I traveled to Brazil
for the World Social Forum Free Palestine as a free software tech
activist working to maintain the conference site (Drupal
7) and registration
(CiviCRM), and to participate in a collective
session on tech security for activists. However, tech has not always
been my path. I became an activist before deeply
delving into the free software movement.
My work began with political organizing for the Howard Dean campaign
in the U.S. in 2003. During that time, I learned and organized using
the labor union organizing model of César Chávez of the United Farm
Workers. Why might that be of interest to the free software movement?
The database system we used to track, update, and engage voters is
mirrored in CiviCRM. The methods and models of our organizing focused
on sharing stories and getting to know our supporters more closely. We
kept detailed notes from our one-on-one meetings with supporters and
input that information into our database with ease, but more
importantly, we were able to track friends, family, and neighbors who
expressed support. We could pinpoint the meetings they attended; all
of this was easily put into the database in a form that, if another
organizer picked up our work, they could catch up pretty quickly and
continue without missing a beat. Impressed? I know I was, to the point
that I felt the desire and need to learn more about this organizing
model, with the hopes the tech would not be too far behind.
Soon after the election was over and George W. Bush was reelected, I
found my way into a graduate program at the University of
Massachusetts Amherst. The graduate program in Labor Relations and
Research (we just called it Labor Studies) altered my life and
understanding of the world, including free software. Though I had used
GNU/Linux before, it was in graduate school that I began to see the
connection between free software movements and labor/social
movements. I saw that we cannot just sit on the sidelines waiting for
people to individually choose to use and build free software, we need
to organize and engage people to understand why free software creates
a better future for us all. The first step came with my fellow union
members (graduate students in the UMass system are organized in the
United Auto Workers union) where we began to replace the Windows
systems in our office with Ubuntu (which was only a step away from
proprietary, as I later learned how Ubuntu is not so free as in
freedom, despite being free as in beer). Though it was a good step
with our local, in other labor union interactions the idea of
GNU/Linux was foreign, as the tide of MacBooks swept in (I was guilty
of it too, but that did not last long).
In labor circles discussing technology is a challenge. The labor
movement itself never adapted well to technology, usually fighting it
off instead of learning how it could improve their bargaining position
and offer their own technology ideas before the 'boss' enforced
them. Discussions about office computers were equally challenging, as
computers are seen as just a tool. Seeing this, I began actively
conversing with free software folks on identi.ca (later StatusNet and
now GNU social), where I met a comrade named
Walton (aka @leischa), who wrote his masters
dissertation
on adapting the free software development method (making code
available for others to look at and contribute to) to labor movements,
which historically has been rather closed and don't share experiences
with other unions and groups. So, we both share the viewpoint that
labor unions need to work together not just in solidarity, but in
reality. There are strengths in some unions and weaknesses in others,
and we both advocate for unions to accept those differences and move
forward, adapting to the system we reside in -- that is when we
decided to create a podcast to discuss this issue.
With our shared vision, me and Walton created the Cyberunions
podcast. We began before—but in the
same year as—the Occupy movement. We discussed in great detail
software that we knew would be beneficial to the labor movement, as
well as elements in the labor movement that free software communities
could adopt. Walton and I had and continue to have visions of labor
unions funding free software, but we also felt it was a struggle to
convince a union to use free software, let alone support its
development. The podcast has been around for a while now, though we
have been bad about keeping it up to date as of late—but there are
plans to bring it back.
In the four years that the Cyberunions podcast has been around, I have
had the chance to meet and learn from many amazing folks, mostly from
the May First People Link community, but also
with folks from StatusNet/GNU social—and that continues to this
day. If it were not for chance meetings and connections, I would never
be where I am now, working for an organization at the foundation and
forefront of free software. It was activism and organizing that got me
where I am, and I see no reason to stop now. I will continue to
organize and work with unions to adopt free software even our own (FSF
staff are also in the UAW -- more like United Aferro Workers). If you
see me around in IRC (marxistvegan on freenode or mv on oftc and
indymedia) or on GNU social, I look forward to engaging with the
community and plan to keep organizing while maintaining our servers
through rain, sleet, hail, and snow. I only draw the line when the
temperature are in the 90s (30s in C). I hate the heat.
in solidarity && happy hacking
