Campus Activism

School Address

Knoxville, Tennessee 37920
United States

Permanent Address

Austin, Texas 78704
United States

Bio

At 16 Carl Webb dropped out of high school in 1982. A recruiter convinced the jobless Carl to join the U.S. military. He spent seven years on and off active duty from 1982 to 1994, which included two overseas tours. In 1993, while serving in the National Guard he got the opportunity to train in San Antonio at Fort Sam Houston, first as a combat medic and then as a licensed practical nurse. After his discharge in December of 1994, he decided to stay to work in the health care industry. After that he'd been active the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center doing things such as protesting Proposition 187. In September of 1995 he moved to Austin. One of the first political events Carl attended in Austin was a teach-in about the School of the Americas located at Fort Benning, GA, a military base he had once briefly visited while in the military. At this teach-in he met some local Austin activists with whom he developed an activist network.
A UT Austin student upon hearing about his travels in Asia invited him to help with a television program called Asian American Austin that was being produced for Austin Cable Access TV. It was a locally produced community-based TV talk show committed to developing programs that celebrated the cultural diversity of Asia and served as an avenue for the exchange of perspectives on Asian-American issues. He created his first website, which was for the TV show, using the skills he learned in a web design class the he learned from an organization called Austin Free Net he came to know at the library.. He was later asked to be a member of the Austin Free Net Collaborative Board. AFN is one of his favorite organization as he see the media as one of the most effective tools in class struggle. He became a frequent visitor to the Conspiracy of Equals Info Shop that was a non-profit, non-hierarchical, all-volunteer, collectively owned & operated radical bookstore. There he would debate the merits of anarchist and Marxist theory and practice. It was via this group that he was introduced to another called Accion Zapatistas that made him aware of concepts called electronic civil disobedience and cyber activism. One of the members of the group even had his professor to allow him to sit in on his class on Das Capital. The professor had a listserv, Chiapas95, which was the first listserv Carl subscribed to.

He also started to attend meetings of the International Socialist Organization. In 1996 the Austin Police Department and the District Attorney, Ronnie Earle, charged 12 year old Lacresha Murray with capital murder in the death of an infant a relative had been baby sitting. The ISO was one of the first and few campus groups to organize in support of the young women. And she was eventually released. His next struggle with the police state was when an African American woman was raped by a cop who got off with a misdemeanor charge and no jail time! Austin Cop Watch asked him to do a web page and since he had no computer he got into the habit of using the computer facilities at UT Austin library. He has started an online group called AISD Watch . Austin Texas School Watch is an electronic list for parents, teachers, students, and concerned citizens to read and/or post information and opinions about the Austin Independent School District. His most recent activism has been with Austin Against War. Excluding a five-month stay in Mexico and 2 weeks in Cuba, Carl has lived in Austin for the past decade.

http://www.carlwebb.net/biography.html