About Charlie Harvey

I’m Charlie Harvey from Oxford, UK. I’m interested in all things techie, especially free software and GNU/Linux. I’m also into punk rock, dub reggae, and good cider. I’m fairly involved with anarchist politics and direct action and media activism for an anarchist society.

Professional

• I work as the IT Manager for New Internationalist — a publishing workers co-op that has been working for over 30 years to highlight radical issues not covered in the corporate media
• I’m involved with the grassroots web hosting collective OX4.
• I used to work as the IT Systems Manager for People & Planet, an organization that works with UK students to empower them to campaign on issues of Human Rights, world poverty, and the environment.
• I sometimes help out at Corporate Watch, the UK-based activists who investigate corporate misrule of the planet.
• I used to work as the IT Manager for hotrecruit, a dotcom involved in recruitment for students and young people.
• You can view my CV elsewhere on the site. If you like that sort of thing.

Activism

These are some of the areas of activism I try to be involved with from time to time. I have various activist pages on this site.

• Free and open source software. Means that you, not a company get to decide what happens on your computer. I used to be involved in the campaign against software patents in Europe, as well as with the aktivix collective. Now I’m involved in hacktionlab. I’m a member of the FSFE Fellowship.
• I’ve done some anti-cuts campaigning and helped No Shock Doctrine for Britain make a What Will George Osborne Cut Next gizmo
• Climate Change is the biggest threat to our species we’ve yet faced. I was involved in organising the Camp for Climate Action to help develop a grassroots resistance to it. I also used to campaign with the radical direct action group Thames Valley Climate Action.
• The G8 is a group of wealthy nations who dictate how the rest of the world should live their lives (as slaves to corporate misrule seems to be the normal conclusion). Me and some pals did an action to protest when the G8 came to Gleneagles in Scotland. I also helped People & Planet run their G8 summer festival there.
• I support the various campaigns against corporate-owned GM foods being introduced.
• Nuclear power won’t solve climate change. I got arrested for saying so.
• Consuming stuff makes you miserable and fucks up your planet. Unless you’re in a consumer cult.
• Indymedia is a grassroots media collective who I support.
• OARC is the Oxford Action Resource Centre. It used to be called OCSET.
• I’m a member of the Open Rights Group and a supporter of EFF, both groups campaigning for digital freedoms.
• I haven’t done much road protesting for a couple of years now.
• I was involved quite heavily in anti-war activism against the immoral invasion of Iraq.
• NO2ID is a campaign against the introduction of compulsory biometric ID cards and a total surveillance database in the UK.

Pals

Here are links to a few of my friends’ websites

• My flatmate Manishta Blogs at Leftstream.
• My colleague Michael has set up an ethical media and ad sales company called EMSM to help charities and social enterprises get their message out there.
• Nor is my lover. I helped build her PHP-based website/art experiment. She also does radicalX sex-positive activist art.
• My flatmate Graham has a cool site. And a Penguin’s Playground, where he is learning about Drupal
• Nishma has a good wordpress where she writes about global justice stuff, the topsoil
• My colleague Tom Ash has a philosophy web site called PhilosoFiles.
• I used to go out with Rose, and we’re still good friends. I helped her build her website, which she was once planning on using to drum up business for her artistic talents...
• Mike is a techie buddy
• Oxford-based artist and general cool geezer Stig does lovely art on his site
• Adam writes about politics on Bright Green Scotland
• My activist buddy Jon Leighton has a sort-of-bloggy site.
• My pal Bobban runs ultra marathons for some crazy reason.
• Crispin and Fi are pals from a long while back and blog about their Mediterranean Yachting adventures
• Tom has a site called Geecologist, geddit?! He used to be my flatmate back in the day.
• Phillip Smith used to work with me at New Internationalist, he blogs about tech and the interwebs.