PBS’s Frontline had a feature on Students for a Free Tibet a couple days ago which I’m just finding now. It’s a great piece, with both video and text at the following link. The intro by Alison Satake really captures the essence of SFT and the Tibetan independence movement today.

It’s the night before the highly anticipated Olympic torch relay in San Francisco, and I am watching a training session for protestors led by Students for a Free Tibet, the group who scaled the Golden Gate Bridge to unfurl two banners the day before. A stream of young Tibetans files into the back of a Berkeley church until the room is filled. Lhadon Tethong, the executive director of the organization, arrives with a caravan of weary protesters who had attended a candlelight vigil in San Francisco. Nobel Peace laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu had spoken there. So did actor and activist Richard Gere. Draped in Tibetan flags, with their face paint reading “Free Tibet,” the protestors look like sports fans after a long tournament.

But the outcome of this event is still to be decided.

The organizers of Students for a Free Tibet are sophisticated. In their black American Apparel tracksuit jackets with “Team Tibet ’08” on the back, they immediately plug their white Apple laptops, iPods, and Blackberrys into the available jacks in the room and get wired. One organizer, a tall Tibetan in a black leather jacket said I could subscribe to their Twitter account to receive text message updates on my cell phone. He shows me how.

The leaders are recent college grads, who are savvy when it comes to the media and technology. They immediately begin drilling the group of mostly teenage immigrants about “message discipline” and “how to talk to the media.” The trainer, Gopal Dayaneni, tells them “Free Tibet” has been a useful message, but he encourages them to trade it in for a stronger catch-phrase: “End the Occupation.”

This is definitely the next generation of Tibetan activists.

The ironic thing with this description is that SFT is not a new organization. It has existed, with many of the same members and leaders, since the mid 1990s. The level of effectiveness that SFT has achieved in recent years is not a product of youth, but experience. Core organizers have done and seen many actions, trained many students in nonviolent tactics, found new ways to fund raise, and stayed in tune to new technologies that make their organizing more effective. But it is true, this is the next generation of activists, defining themselves in a moment brought on by the global spotlight of the Olympics in China and the imperative of human rights and freedom for Tibet.

Satake’s piece goes on through her experience in San Francisco during the protests of the torch relay minute-by-minute. It’s a detailed retelling of the actions and activities surrounding the relay and it’s worth a read.