Alfredo Lopez

Alfredo Lopez, a veteran activist and writer, is a founder and member of the Leadership Committee of May First/People Link, the country’s largest progressive Internet membership organization. Alfredo is the original designer and coordinator of MF/PL’s People of Color Techie Training Project. He has been an organizer of several major national demonstrations and scores of smaller ones; an editor of two publications (Claridad and Sevendays Magazine); a radio and television producer (and host); a college teacher; and the author of six published books and hundreds of published articles. He lives in Brooklyn.

Cooperation against surveillance
There can be no successful use of the Internet by progressive cooperative projects without a full guarantee of privacy and protection from data collection. Invasive authorities, like the NSA, will undoubtedly focus their data-collection efforts on cooperative ventures in general because there is a high probability that movement activists will be involved in these project and in supporting and collaborating with them. This is most true of tech co-ops, who are at the center of Internet activism and are already a major surveillance target. For our movement for change to succeed, technology coops must be able to function freely with full interaction between themselves and the rest of us because it is that interaction (between them and, specifically, our movements) that guarantees humanity a future. The government spying and disrupting makes that impossible.