Citizen Empowerment and Information Technology: Grassroots Lobbying via the Internet

September 14-30, 2003, Washington, DC, San Francisco, New York City and Detroit
Contact: Washington Foreign Press Center Officer Algis Silas
Telephone: 202-504-6317, Email:SilasA@state.gov

The Washington FPC, in coordination with the LAFPC and NYFPC, organized a 16-day working reporting tour for eight NEA journalists from Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen and the West Bank.

In Washington, the group met with information technology experts and interest groups to discuss how the information technology sector (the Internet and email technology) in the U.S. has had an effect on advocacy groups, grassroots lobbying, professional lobbying and political campaigns within the last five years.  Their schedule included meetings with the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee; Dr. Michael Cornfield of George Washington University's Institute for Democracy and the Internet; Sheeraz Haji, the President and CEO of the software company Get Active, which works with advocacy groups; Co-Editor of the Washington Post's Online Division, Mark Stence; MoveOn.org; Mike McCurry of Grassroots Enterprises; and with the Republican National Committee's Network and Online Services Division.

In San Francisco some of the visits included meeting with representatives of the Arab Cultural and Community Center of San Francisco; WorldLink TV, the first national network which offers a global perspective on news, current events and culture, seldom covered in the U.S. media; meeting with representatives of SafeVote Inc. to discuss secure and trustworthy election technology for paperless voting systems (electronic and Internet voting); meeting with Dr. Lawrence Lessig, the country's leading commentator on legal aspects of new communications technologies and cyberspace; visiting the Computer History Museum; meeting with the foreign desk editor of the San Jose Mercury News; meeting with representatives of TechSoup.org, the nation's oldest and largest nonprofit technology assistance organization; New California Media, a consortium of ethnic news organizations which aims to raise public awareness of the ethnic media in Californiaa; and with the publisher and managing editor of Wired.com.

In New York, the journalists' schedule included meetings with Wall Street Journal.com Managing Editor Bill Grueskin; ABCNews.com Executive Producer Randy Stearns; Thomas R. Keene of Bloomberg News; a meeting with the Commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Communications from the Mayor's Office of the City of New York and a briefing at Ground Zero with 9/11 survivor Greg Trevor the of the New York Port Authority.

The journalists concluded the tour by covering the first-ever, three-day U.S. Arab Economic Forum, in Detroit, Michigan.  The journalists met with members of the Arab-American community and also interviewed  William Burns, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Liz Cheney, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and Anthony Wayne, Assistant Seccretary, Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs.