We at HRDAG are devastated by the loss of Scott Weikart, who died on August 15, most likely from complications from his kidney disease. Our hearts are very heavy.

Scott spent his life thinking about how to use his prodigious skills to make the world better for other people. Soon after he got his PhD in Computer Science in 1979, he founded Community Data Processing with Dave Offen in 1981. They used partly-working hardware discarded by Hewlett-Packard’s research center to cobble together (what we now call) servers. They used these machines to offer tools to activists working on the environment, women’s rights (thanks to his wife, JoAnne!), and supporting the people of Central America in their struggles against violent dictatorships.

I wouldn’t meet Scott in person for another 15 years, but I first used Scott’s work through Peacenet. While I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan in the late 1980s, I read voluminous reports about human rights violence and political conditions in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. The reports by journalists and activists on the ground were an essential support for the US-based movement in solidarity with the people in those countries. Remember that information moved almost exclusively by paper mail in this era, and you could only publish what you could afford to print and send. These daily electronic reports enabled student activists to be more deeply informed about las coyunturas than just about anyone, including academic area specialists and journalists. It was a heady power.

(Continue reading Patrick’s remembrance.)