At 12:42 AM 11/8/99 , you wrote:
>Who was that southern bell you crashed the GAC meeting with? And I
>understand the Irish delegate allowed you to speak - what happened there?
It's a wonderful story with a happy ending.
The three activist lawyers in LA - Nader's
Theresa Amato, Cleve Thornton representing
Tajikistan, and myself decided we would
insist on our rights under the ICANN Bylaws
to open meetings of the GAC.
So, on Tuesday morning at the appointed hour
of the GAC, we stood in the room as all the
good GACsters stared and wondered who we were.
The GAC Secretariat representative - a slight
young Aussie - came over and insisted that we
leave. We respond with a polite "no," that we
were going to stay and watch.
She went and huddled with her boss, Paul Twomey,
and then came back and re-iterated her order.
Cleve then looked down and in a polite southern
drawl, and said "young lady, if you want me to leave,
you're going to have to pick me up and move me."
To appreciate this sight, one has to see Cleve.
He's about 6 ft, 5 inches, tall and must weigh
300 lbs. He also ran the ACLU in Alabama during
the heydays of the civil rights movement, and
is quite experienced in passive resistance.
More huddling with Twomey.
Meanwhile Theresa went to the tables and found
a list of attendees. It listed several "observers"
at the bottom. We then approached Twomey and asked
if we could be observers. He responded that we
needed the sponsorship of a governmental representative.
So we went over to the US government representative
and formally asked to be observers. She firmly
declined. However, the representative of Ireland,
Aidan Ryan, overhearing our plea, came over and
offered to make us accredited observers of Ireland!
So we returned to Twomey with this arrangement.
However, the response was "no can do - you need
your own government representative."
So then we noticed that ICANN staff were present,
and questioned the appropriateness of a double
standard. At this point, Paul Twomey to his credit
relented and established a new rule for everyone
that as long as there was a non-governmental person
in the room, it would be an open meeting. As a
result, both the ICANN report and subsequent ccTLD
dialogue portions of the GAC became open, and a
new, more open general rule was established.
What was particularly amusing, however, was that
a few minutes later, one of the most powerful U.S.
Congressmen in Washington, Chris Cannon, and his
legislative assistant Todd Thorpe, unexpectedly
strode into the room and sat down prominently up
front. When it came time for us to leave, the
US GAC representative quickly added Cannon and
Thorpe as observers, and were not asked to leave.
During the open ccTLD session, Twomey even volunteered
to distribute the Internet Rights Coalition brief
to the GAC and allowed a short presentation on the
legal issues.
--amr
