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From...
Grassroots Y2K efforts sprout
Community activists give practical help and nag officials to plan, too.
January 22, 1999
Web posted at: 3:30 p.m. EST (2030 GMT)
by Nancy Weil
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(IDG) -- The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency issued an advisory on January 6 urging communities, emergency services agencies, and the public to prepare for possible problems from the Year 2000 computer glitch. But thousands of people across the country were hard at work well before FEMA offered advice.
The effort appears orderly and calm but an underlying sense of urgency grows as the days tick by. Generally, groups encourage people to stockpile food, bottled water, medicines, medical supplies, and other necessities and to have cash on hand -- the same sorts of preparations needed for an approaching hurricane or blizzard.
The grassroots leaders are also building awareness that problems may occur over the course of this year and into 2000. We might see glitches linked to July 1 and October 1, when fiscal years roll over.
Practical preparation
As part of the effort, some communities are considering how to depend less on supply chains that rely on technology. Meeting agendas cover ways to find energy from alternative sources and developing neighborhood gardens and food cooperatives that can be sustained long after the millennium dust settles.
Whatever the approach, the effort involves people from all walks of life. Some are high-tech professionals who are particularly able to help their communities because they know what efforts businesses and government are making to deal with Year 2000 problems. They also know what questions to ask officials.
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Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility encourages other computer professionals to get involved. Some in the industry, however, have said publicly they will move away from urban areas to avoid any mayhem that might ensue. Others argue they have no particular responsibility to help their communities.
"If you have skills or knowledge that can be used constructively, you shouldn't walk away," says Marsha Woodbury, CPSR chair.
Based on interviews, e-mail exchanges, chat boards, and listserv postings on the Internet, it appears community organizers are persevering -- despite what they perceive as indifference by government officials and neighbors, and media cynicism. They express hope that January 1, 2000, will come and go with scant problems. But they all seem to expect disruptions of varying severity. Some portend a time of tremendous upheaval.
Aging code
The Year 2000 problem results from two-digit date fields being used in most older software code. As a consequence, computers will interpret the "00" in 2000 as "1900" and fail to calculate correctly. Many embedded processors also have two-digit date fields, though no one seems to know exactly which ones will fail as a result.
Not even the so-called experts have consistent theories about what will happen. That presents perhaps the greatest challenge to grassroots organizers.
"It's such a difficult thing for people to get a handle on -- how a little two-digit problem could have such global ramifications," says David Sunfellow, director of the Y2K Task Force in Sedona, Arizona.
There is a plethora of opinions on the consequences, making it difficult to know what to do. Should you stockpile a week's worth of food and water, or enough to last a year? Should you join the list of people waiting for a new supply of generators to come in at the hardware store? Or should you figure the power grid really will, as the U.S. government predicts, operate well enough to avoid widespread failure? How much cash is enough?
"The nature of the situation produces uncertainty and confusion," Sunfellow says. "Obviously, it's very difficult to mobilize a grassroots response out of that."
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But mobilize they have, in communities small and large.
Millennial troops
Two umbrella groups have emerged as leaders in grassroots coordination and information-sharing. The Cassandra Project, based in Louisville, Colorado, formed to promote preparation, monitor government activities, and provide information. Its Web site lists contacts across the country and in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
The Joseph Project 2000 in Woodstock, Georgia, has Christian roots and works primarily through local churches to offer preparation help.
The Utne Reader, a monthly magazine, produced a Y2K Citizen's Action Guide offering a wealth of details on starting a neighborhood group.
"As we prepare for Y2K, something surprising and unexpected and quite wonderful is going to happen," Utne founder and editor-in-chief Eric Utne wrote in his introduction to the guide. "We're going to get to know our neighbors. Probably for the first time in our lives, we will begin to know what it means to live in a real community."
Utne, perhaps somewhat dreamily, predicted that the Year 2000 problem is "the excuse we've been waiting for to stop making so many compromises in how we know we should, and want to, live our lives. Y2K is our opportunity to stop polluting and wasteful practices, and start living more sustainable, environmentally friendly lives. Y2K is the conversational gambit that can lead to discussions that begin to knit webs of affiliation, care and mutual support."
Impeachment, not Y2K
It would be helpful, say those on the front lines of this grassroots effort, if discussions were headed by national leaders. Numerous organizers said the lack of comments from President Bill Clinton and others is a tremendous source of concern. The credibility of the U.S. Congress further suffers as that body pursues impeachment proceedings related to the sex scandal that has embroiled Clinton.
"I think that (lack of dialogue) is contributing to the overall anxiety level," says Rebecca Kaplan, co-founder of the Oakland 2001 Y2K Network for Community Preparedness and Advocacy in Oakland, California.
Kaplan and others worry that national leaders' silence (with a couple of notable exceptions) will encourage panic at some point. People may get nervous as more states say they will mobilize the U.S. National Guard -- if things won't be dire, why are state governments taking such actions?
Lack of discussion contributes to denial in some cases, Kaplan says.
"A lot of people are in denial. They say that this can't be serious if the government doesn't think it's serious," she says.
Lacking leadership
FEMA, which responds to disasters and is in charge of planning for the millennium bug, has not yet dealt with its own computer systems, and that jeopardizes the agency's credibility, Kaplan said.
"What will cause panic is people feeling they are being lied to and kept in the dark," she says.
Other organizers say the media has created problems by not taking the Year 2000 bug's possible effects seriously. Most news reports fall into a couple of camps, both of them hostile to grassroots preparedness efforts. Some reports convey dire, frightening consequences that leave readers thinking no amount of preparation will be enough. The others cynically dismiss concerns.
Indeed, one grassroots organizer declined to speak to the IDG News Service, saying he has been "burned" too many times by the media when discussing the subject.
A recent newsmagazine article included a graphic of Jesus returning to Earth at the millennium, amid people looking frightened. Then, "two-thirds of the way through (the story) they talk about what can be done. Why not reverse that," said H.A. "Red" Boucher, a community activist in Anchorage, Alaska. Boucher is a former mayor of Fairbanks, Alaska, state lieutenant governor, and representative, and now works to bring Internet connectivity to the largest and most remote state.
"It's moved beyond a technical issue to solely a leadership issue," he said.
Boucher wishes that Y2K talk would focus on the psychological process of coming to grips with what could be a disaster -- denial, anger, fear, depression, panic, acceptance. All are common reactions, and some of those grassroots leaders say they experienced those emotions before they could take constructive action.
Long ago, Boucher reached the point of insistence.
"I don't want maybes," he says of responses from utilities and others whose computer systems must work to avert global problems.
"Never mind, 'We're taking care of it.' That's a bunch of baloney. My last question to them is always, Do you have a written contingency plan? If you do, I would like to see it," Boucher says. "If they don't have a written contingency plan, as far as I'm concerned it's gross negligence."
Those pushing the grassroots effort have a growing sense that doing nothing in neighborhoods and communities also constitutes negligence. Some turmoil will result from the changeover to the Year 2000, they agree. Actually having a fixed date presents a unique opportunity to prepare.
"There's no sense in waiting as people watch the clock roll around the world to see if London crashes before New York," Boucher says of what might happen on January 1, 2000. "That's stupid."