Online Protest To Break Through APEC Barrier

Global Online Protest To Break Through APEC Barriers

While the city of Sydney is ringed by a 2.5m security fence, more than 500,000 global citizens are uniting using new forms of online protest that transcend physical barriers, in the form of an online email and photo petition aimed at getting the worldleaders at APEC to commit to binding climate targets.

GetUp.org.au today has emailed almost 200,000 Australians, inviting them to join the call, in partnership with its global sister organisation Avaaz.org, which boasts over a million members in every country worldwide. “The attention looks to be focused on the presence of a few vocal protest groups physically here to express their frustrations,” said GetUp Executive Director Brett Solomon. “But the reality is, in this era of instant global communication, the world is sending its leaders a message about a global issue in a way that cannot be fenced out.”

People are signing a petition (80,000 Australians have signed already, joining over 400,000 globally), and also uploading a photo of themselves with the image of a target to a global map that will be presented to world leaders this week. On Friday there will be a massive 144m-square banner unfurling and media event at Bondi Beach at 8.30am (northern end of the beach), which will be followed by similar events around the world over the following 48 hours. These include events at theNorth Pole, Kyoto, Great Barrier Reef, and Melbourne.

“There will be a much larger and more significant protest taking place this week than the one whose violent images will fill our nightly news broadcasts,” said Mr Solomon.

“The global protest movement is now a sophisticated network of likeminded global citizens, linked through new technologies.

“Using those technologies, we are sending our decision-makers a message that this global problem needs a global solution, and that message is being delivered in a way that put the people back in the inner circle of discussions that the ‘APEC fence’ excludes them from.” The head of that global protest movement, Avaaz’s Ben Winkler, is travelling to Sydney to work directly with GetUp, and will be available for comment from
Wednesday.

ENDS

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