Last night at BTUB I met Michael Meloni from Somebody Think Of The Children (along with lots of other great people) and we were talking (of course) about the Australian government’s absurd plan to filter the internet.

I’ve been wondering over the last few months about what we, the Internet community, can do to alter the decision of the Rudd government on this issue. Signing petitions and writing letters to the Minister are great, but I suspect they aren’t enough to change the course he’s on. This morning I was reading Howard Zinn’s awesome “A People’s History Of The United States” and he was discussing the many strikes that occurred in the USA during the 19th century and I started wondering if a strike is one way we can get politicians to take notice of our concerns.

If the IT and Internet community in Australia went on a general strike over the issue of Internet censorship, I have no doubt that we could cause many Australian businesses and government agencies pain. A strike by the IT/Internet community would also generate a lot of press.

Then I started wondering how we’d mobilize the community. We don’t have a union or any kind of genuine organization. There are groups like AIMIA and the AIIA but I seriously doubt they would support any kind of industrial action, nor do they represent many people working in the industry.

So we need to organize and mobilize. We need to create a single focus point for action. Any ideas?