Posted 11:25 AM by Carl Webb

Carl Webb's Biography

Carl Webb is originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, the 7th of nine brothers and sisters. Carl was exposed to various political ideas at an early age by his older brother and his sixth grade teacher who spent his own money to ensure that his students would have access to Black history that the Louisiana public school textbooks did not include. His involvement with political struggle began in his teens when he met members of the Socialist Workers Party who invited him to a documentary on the revolution in Grenada. Awed by what he saw he continued attending meetings with the SWP and later declared himself a Marxist Leninist Trotskyist at the age of 15. Ironically, his initial encounter with the SWP began in 1980 when he attended a teach-in about draft registration that then President Ronald Reagan had implemented.

He attended public schools until dropping out of high school in 1982. Later that year, after not finding work, a recruiter convinced Carl to join the military. He accumulated a total of seven years of active duty from 1982 to 1994, which included two overseas tours to Germany and Korea. While in the service his political beliefs were intensified by people he met and locations where he was stationed. Ironically during military training he met another soldier that was from Grenada who was able to verify everything he learned at that first teach-in and a few months later the U.S. invaded Grenada in the fall of 1983. That was only one of the first of his military experiences that further influenced his political development. Arriving in South Korea in 1984, four years after the nation's last political coup, Carl found himself part of an occupying army in one of the world's most brutal dictatorships. This experience only reinforced what he had learned about U.S. imperialism.

In 1993, while serving in the Louisiana National Guard he got the opportunity to train in Texas at Fort Sam Houston, first as a combat medic and then as a licensed practical. After leaving the service in 1994, he decided to stay in San Antonio to work in the health care industry. Since his discharge from the military he'd discovered the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. It was a organization that was an advocate for a variety of social, economic & environmental justice issues such as protesting Proposition 187 which was passed in 1994 to deny public benefits to undocumented workers in California. As a healthcare worker that believes in socialized medicine he was disgusted by the thought of having to ask patients about their citizenship or immigration status to determine if they were to receive treatment or not. At another of their events he met a Cuban American that would later inspire him to visit the island. He was glad to be free from the military's oppressive environment and back in a progressive atmosphere but he was anxious to experience more. And while marching in a parade for International Women's Day he met some people from Austin who convinced him to check out Austin if he truly wanted to become involved in political activism. So after driving up to Austin to hang out with these guy he decide to relocate to the capital.

The next day in Austin didn't go so well. The previous day he'd been shown an apartment and was told to come by the next day to complete a rental application. The on-site manager assured him that he get approved. So he showed up with every thing he owned in the back of his station wagon. But when he sat down with the the on-site manager's boss he was disapproved. He wondered if it had something to do with the radio broadcast of the O.J verdict that was on at the time.

Not having much work experience made it difficult to find full-time employment. I ending up working for a temp nursing agency. But after reading a book called the "Overworked American" I came to see my downtime as leisure. 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 visited while attending school in Georgia as an ROTC cadet. At this teach-in he met some local Austin activists with whom he developed an activist network. This network led him to KOOP Radio, which had just began operation in 1995.

While on the campus of UT Austin he got into a conversation with a communications student. Upon hearing about his travels in Asia she 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. A few issues discussed were East/West Parenting, Asian American Studies at UT, domestic violence in the South Asian community, and the Nuclear Legacy in Asia which was produced soon after India and Pakistan conducted nuclear testing. While trying to do research for one of the shows he began to become aware of how limited he was because of his lack of internet skills. This was to be short lived as he was soon encounter an organization called Austin Free Net while at the library. He went online for the first time and was taught basic internet skills at the computer lab they provided for the East Austin community. He created his first website, which was for the TV show using the skills he learned in their web design class. 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. While walking around downtown Carl came upon the Conspiracy of Equals Infoshop which was a 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 disobediance and cyberactivism. One of the members of the group even had his proffesor to allow me to sit in on his class on Das Capital. His listserv called Chiapas95 was the first listserv Carl subscribed to.

In addition to the anarchist meetings he started to attend meetings of the only group in Austin that called itself marxist, the International Socialist Organization, which he was already biased against because the people that had invited him to Austin were all ex-members that had left or had been purged from the group. As he disagreed with their theory of state capitalism as opposed to his troskyist beliefs he didn't get too involved with the group. Even though they refused to let him debate with them he did get involved in one of the most memorable local struggles. In 1996 the evil Austin Police Department and the evil District Attorney, Ronnie Earle, charged 12 year old Lacresha Murray with capital murder in the death of infant a relative had been baby sitting. The ISO was one of the few campus groups to organize in support of the young women. And eventually after getting some national and international press coverage such as the New York Times and CBS TV show '60 Minutes' she was eventually released. His next struggle with the police state was with a group called Austin Cop Watch which is a community based volunteer organization that keeps an eye on the police in an effort to defend the rights of the people, to prevent and discourage police brutality and harassment, and to work towards police accountability. An African American woman was raped by a cop who got off with a misdemeanor charge and no jail time! Some friends asked him to do a webpage and since he had no computer he got into the habit of using the computer facilities at UT Austin library. One late night as he was updating the website he was approached by the police and told to show my indentification. When it was discovered that he didn't have any UT ID they exscorted him out of the library. Now indeed he was in violation of the library use policy which states that the it's off limit to anyone without UT ID. But what was strange about this was that it wasn't the campus police as usual and they didn't ask anyone else for ID. It was obvious that they had been called specifically for him. He wondered if it had something to do with his use of the university computer.

The next local issue he was to get involved with was education. He 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. Excluding a five-month stay in Mexico and 2 weeks in Cuba, Carl has lived in Austin for the past decade.