Riseup.net Turns 25

Riseup is a small anarchist, anti-capitalist, volunteer-run, social movement organization offering secure email, email lists, a VPN service, chat, and other online services to support activists engaged in various social justice causes. Riseup.net was launched in Seattle in 1999 with borrowed equipment by activists, who became known as "Riseup Birds." It quickly grew, and twenty-five years later still provides vital anti-surveillance digital infrastructure.

The Riseup Collective states that they are "an autonomous body based in Seattle with collective members world wide. Our purpose is to aid in the creation of a free society, a world with freedom from want and freedom of expression, a world without oppression or hierarchy, where power is shared equally. We do this by providing communication and computer resources to allies engaged in struggles against capitalism and other forms of oppression."

One of the Riseup Birds, Snow Owl (Bubo scandiacus), explains that they "helped start Riseup when living in Seattle because he was dismayed by all the activists who showed up to shut down the WTO with their hotmail and yahoo accounts."

As part of an autonomous effort to support and celebrate Riseup's 25 years of autonomous communications, a project called #montreal4riseup features 20 songs, released (or not) between 2020 and 2024, that span a large range of genres. They say that it is important to support Riseup and that, "Over time, with the rise in popularity of Signal and the creation of large so-called secure companies like Proton Mail, some activists have abandoned trusted autonomous communication services. It's important to shine a light on these alternatives."

In an interview published in 2013, an anonymous Riseup member discussing privacy and surveillance told Vice, "We cannot rely on corporate providers for confidentiality of sensitive communications. Not only are their commercial interests at odds with what we are doing, but monitoring and association mapping gives them (and by extension the state) the ability to build a detailed map of how our social movements are organized. This gives them precise information about what links should be disrupted in order to disrupt larger social movements."

Time to pass the hat! Can you make a contribution?

Running Riseup services takes a lot of labor and financial resources, so if you’re in a position to make a donation, even the smallest amount, that’d be really helpful. Riseup provides all of their communication services free of charge, but they have to have our help to make that possible. If you can, please take a moment and make a financial contribution towards the work that Riseup does to make another world possible.

https://riseup.net/donate/