Paul Mason reports to the BBC from Kenya on the use of mobile telephones by the poor to fight evictions:

They came together to fight evictions. The street theatre Marcy took me to in Kibera tells the story of what usually happens. A rich guy in a white cap comes along and buys the land, then he goes to the local chief and “gives him something for his breakfast”.

At this point the crowd of about a thousand Kibera people watching the play burst out laughing. “And my dinner, and my supper!” says the man playing the local chief - and the laughter of the audience gets raucous.

June Arunga, BBC
June Arunga: Mobiles show the way forward
A brown envelope is slipped into the pocket of the chief, and now he calls for his askari - a big security guard with a stick. “They come at night with bulldozers,” says Marcy. “They take off your door, your window frame or your roof and throw your things into the streets. That’s eviction”.

So what the Nairobi People’s Settlement Network did was use mobiles and the internet to get organised against evictions. They used what we would call flashmobbing to call people from across the many different and rival settlements together where big evictions were planned, and threatened to sit down in front of the bulldozers.

It has not been completely effective, since the bulldozers simply wait a few days - but it is starting to change the dynamics of grassroots politics. In Kibera most ordinary people can’t afford mobiles instead they use the community mobile service, Simu Ya Jamii, which has been partly developed by the GSM Association, the world industry body for mobiles.

Most of the activists do have mobiles and they use texting when they are out of talktime. And, says Marcy, it’s breaking down the usual arrangement between movements like this and the political elite.