[Lowdown] February 2009

[Mallory Knodel]

  LOWDOWN FEBRUARY 2009

This month, MFPL broke borders by acting through the World Social  
Forum process and responding to repression against independent media  
in England.

  World Social Forum 2009 Report Back

Our WSF work was a resounding success. This event occured in a period  
of enormous uncertainty and unveiling crisis world-wide. Our  
contribution was to use our collaborative democracy software to begin  
thinking about a response to the economic crisis. We had a solid 50  
participants in four cities: Sherbrooke, Canada, New York City, where  
we had over 25 young people, Belem, Brazil, and a small group in  
Guatemala City. The average age of the participants was younger than  
in any other instance of this workshop. The event proved to be a huge  
learning experience, out of which an understanding of potential  
challenges having to do with language, culture, pace, and so many  
other factors have now come into focus for us.

The outcome rights are here:
  http://fsm2009.mayfirst.org/

Photos here:
  http://fsm2009.mayfirst.org/photos/

  IMC SERVER SEIZURE AND MFPL'S RESPONSE

We are currently extending support and assistance to Indymedia after a  
police raid and seizure of an Indymedia server in Manchester, England.  
We consider events in England to have a special relevance to what  
happens in the U.S. For more information,  
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/01/420278.html. We are providing  
space on and use of a May First/People Link server to re-enable two of  
the sites that were hosted on the seized server, allowing these  
services to return to use.

  QUICK NEWS: MEMBER ALERT

Warning: May First/People Link members may receive emails claiming to  
come from us asking that you enter your username and password into a  
web form or respond to an email with your username and password to  
prevent your account from closing (or any other number of reasons).

This is a scam - please do *not* provide your password to anyone in  
response to an email message. May First/People link will never ask you  
for your password. Thanks for keeping May First/People Link secure.

  Welcome! New MF/PL Members

Citizens for Legitimate Government
JusticeWorks Community
Jamie Stafford-Hill
Institute for Social Ecology
Poly Patao Productions
CDLBox
Howl
Sylvain Berube
B-word Worldwide / Bitch Magazine

  FYI: IF YOU'RE A MF/PL MEMBER, DID YOU KNOW...

... about your OpenID? OpenID is a system that allows you to have a  
single login that gives you access to multiple web sites.

Whenever you encounter a web site that offers the option of logging in  
with OpenID (several May First/People Link web sites do, as well as  
other sites, like LiveJournal and hundreds of others) you can choose  
to login using your existing OpenID account, rather than go through  
the bother of registering a new username and password on yet another  
site.

If you are a May First/People Link member - the good news is that you  
already have an OpenID!

To login with your OpenID, you'll need to know your "OpenID identity URL."

For May First/People Link members it is:
  https://id.mayfirst.org/username

Just replace "username" with the username you use when logging into  
your email, Secure FTP, or the support site. For example, if your  
username is "jamie" your OpenID identity URL would be:  
https://id.mayfirst.org/jamie

Lowdown is published by May First/People Link
Editor: Mallory Knodel
Comments or news additions? info at mayfirst.org