By 1991, I was a graduate student at UCLA finishing my dissertation when word of the Santa Cruz massacre came across the Activist Mailing list, a list server for activists across the country. On the heels of the reports of Amy Goodman and Alan Nairn suffering severe head injuries and barely escaping the Indonesian Army while hundreds were massacred, someone sent out an email that just stated the need to a solidarity organization in the U.S. with East Timor. I immediately wrote back in support and that is how the East Timor Action Network started as one of the very first organizing efforts to effectively utilize the very new potential of the internet. Charlie Scheiner, Richard Koch, and John M. Miller became our center of gravity in New York, tirelessly organizing chapter in the various cities that had responded. They put me in touch with another young graduate student at UCLA who had written a paper for a class about the East Timor situation named Joe Nevins. Together, we formed the Los Angeles chapter of ETAN and protested in front of an Indonesian Trade show at the LA Convention Center with just myself, my 7 year old daughter and Joe.
In order to build the chapter in Los Angeles, Joe and I took turns sitting out in front of screenings of the film about Noam Chomsky called Manufacturing Consent in 1992 to sign up people as the left.
We held many demonstrations in front of the Indonesian
consulate and were clearly a thorn in their side. They
filmed us and attempted in other ways to intimidate us,
and then finally gave up and closed the consulate down
for the day. On the 25th anniversary of the invasion, I
put paper bags with sand and candles (Luminarias), one
for each year of the occupation with the year written on
each one and a cross, in front of the Indonesian
consulate. Another time we also walked over to the
Consulate's residence and wrote all the names of the Dili
massacre victims with sidewalk chalk on the public
sidewalk in from of his house.
But I always felt that the Lobby Days were the most
effective effort. I managed to attend only a couple of
times but they were always well organized and a powerful
experience.
By 1999, when the referendum was happening, I had moved to Oakland, and was arrested in front to the Indonesian Consulate in San Francisco protesting the destruction and mass killing in the wake of the successful plebiscite.
In Solidarity, Read additional reflections on ETAN's 20th Anniversary
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