[Corporations] Crandon Mine Purchase a Victory for Online Activism

EarthWINS tarawins at ezwebtech.com
Sun Nov 23 17:24:21 EST 2003 

Crandon Mine Purchase a Victory for Online Activism

For Immediate Release
November 23, 2003

For more information, contact Alice McCombs: 715-524-5998, info at earthwins.com

(Shawano, WI)  The decades long battle to stop the Crandon mine was won 
with the historic cooperation of Native American tribes, environmentalists, 
hunters, sportfishers, legislators, and people from Wisconsin and around 
the world. For the past eight years, the online activist organization 
EarthWINS was there every step of the way.

EarthWINS was started in 1995 in Shawano, Wisconsin, by Alice McCombs and 
her sister, T L Christen. Although the mission of EarthWINS was to help 
people work for peace, justice, human rights and the environment, its 
primary goal was to help stop the Crandon mine.

T L and Alice decided to make EarthWINS an online activist organization, 
because they realized the anti-Crandon mine effort needed an inexpensive 
way to communicate quickly with each other and the rest of the world. Alice 
McCombs says, "I knew if we could get the message out to the international 
community about what was happening in Wisconsin, the feedback would help 
stop the mine. I knew the Internet could make that happen."

EarthWINS began its online activism on Thanksgiving Day 1995 with EarthWINS 
Daily, an email list dedicated to "helping people who resist unsafe mining 
in their neighborhoods share information about their strategies, mining, 
and mining corporations." The newsletter was the first email listserv to 
share information online about the Crandon mine with other states and other 
countries. From 1995-1998 EarthWINS Daily distributed over 500 email 
newsletters to people and organizations around the world. And every bit of 
news about the Crandon mine, including  the effort to pass the Mining 
Moratorium, was posted to the Net in the newsletter.

While working as a research analyst for the Menominee Treaty Rights & 
Mining Impacts office from 1996 - 1997, Alice helped design and obtain 
content for the Menominee Tribe's website about the Crandon mine. The 
Menominee Indian Tribe put up the first website about the Crandon mine. It 
is still online today at http://www.menominee.com/nomining/

In November 1996, EarthWINS went on the web at www.EarthWINS.com. 
Information about the proposed Crandon mine was available through a Yahoo 
search on the Menominee and EarthWINS websites. McCombs says, "This was 
back in the days when the general public was just starting to use email and 
the World Wide Web was in its infancy. The Wisconsin Legislature and 
Department of Natural Resources were amazed to see emails coming in 
regularly from Wisconsin citizens, other states and other countries who 
were strongly opposed to the Crandon mine."

By the end of 1997, the Midwest Treaty Network and Wisconsin Stewardship 
Network had their own websites with information about the Crandon mine.

Recognizing how effective online activism was in the effort to pass the 
Mining Moratorium, the mining industry labeled EarthWINS and other 
organizations "Cyber-barbarians" in their mining journals and launched a 
multi-million dollar PR campaign to sway public opinion. But it was too 
little, too late. The mining industry's misinformation was unable to 
counter the facts about sulfide mining widely available to the public 
online and in print. With its support for thousands of Wisconsin citizens 
working for the Mining Moratorium, online activism against the Crandon mine 
became a significant factor in getting the Mining Moratorium passed in 1998.

The Mining Moratorium didn't stop the mine, so EarthWINS continued to 
distribute information about mining. As a way to expand the network of 
people and organizations working against the Crandon mine, EarthWINS began 
to design and maintain websites. Since 1998, EarthWINS has provided free or 
at-cost services such as website domain registration, hosting, design, and 
promotion, as well as training in website design at various times to the 
following organizations:

Clean Water Action Council of Northeast Wisconsin, Midwest Treaty Network 
and Wolf Watershed Educational Project, Northwoods Economic Development 
Project, Mining Impact Coalition of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Resources 
Protection Council, the Town of Nashville, Rusk County Citizens Action 
Group, Protect the Earth, Protect Our Wolf River, Citizens for Safe Water 
Around Badger, Friends of the Mecan, Concerned Citizens of Newport, Save 
Our Unique Lands, Nukewatch, Red River Riders, and the Central Wisconsin 
Wildlife Center.

In 1999 EarthWINS designed the www.NoCrandonMine.com website for the Wolf 
Watershed Educational Project. Links on the other EarthWINS sites to the 
NoCrandonMine website made it one of the main sites for people to learn 
about the Crandon mine. By January 2000, simply entering "Crandon mine" 
into a Yahoo search would result in pages of links to Wisconsin 
organizations opposing the mine. Easy access to detailed information about 
sulfide mining on multiple websites helped make Wisconsin the least 
favorable place to mine in the world in 2003.

Effective use of the Internet linked thousands of people together into a 
powerful global alliance. Their relentless opposition to the fatally flawed 
mining project made it possible for the Mole Lake Sokaogon Chippewa and 
Forest County Potowatomi to purchase the Crandon mine. Online activism 
helped protect the land and water in north Wisconsin for generations of 
children to come.

EarthWINS will help tell the story by continuing to maintain the 
NoCrandonMine site, archiving all the EarthWINS Daily newsletters online 
and publishing new newsletters beginning today. See 
http://www.earthwins.com/ewd/index.html (Table of contents for today's 
issue below).
In addition, EarthWINS has started a new site, CyberHeroes Tools for Online 
Activists, at www.cyberheroes.org.

We welcome any help you can give. Please feel free to add a link to 
EarthWINS on your site.
Donations are very much needed and appreciated. You can send your donation 
to the address below or donate online by clicking this link:

https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=info%40earthwins.com&item_name=EarthWINS&no_note=1&tax=0&currency_code=USD

Thank you!

Alice McCombs, President
EarthWINS

============================================

Table of Contents for Nov 23, 2003 issue of EarthWINS Daily
http://www.earthwins.com/ewd/ewd_112303_a.html

EarthWINS Daily 6.1
November 23, 2003

Contents - Crandon Mine Victory

1. Sokaogon Chippewa & Forest County Potawatomi Celebration Pow-wow
    a. Wolf Watershed Educational Project meeting
2. Crandon mine victory in Wisconsin won by a historic alliance
3. Crandon Mine Purchase a Victory for Online Activism
4. Life after stopping the Crandon Mine
5. List of links to articles and editorials about the Crandon mine purchase

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
People have the power to redeem the work of fools.

EarthWINS
P O Box 573
Shawano, WI 54166
715-524-5998
www.EarthWINS.com
info at earthwins.com

More information about the Corporations mailing list