Today marks the third annual OneWebDay (Earth Day for the Internet) and communities around the world are holding events to learn about and advocate the Internet. Gatherings are being held in major U.S. cities as well as Melbourne, London, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Copenhagen, Singapore, Tunisia and elsewhere.

New York City is the real-world epicenter for One Web Day 2008. Gathering in Washington Square Park today are some of the Internet’s great visionaries, including: Sree Sreenivasan (Columbia Journalism & WNBC-TV); Tim Westergren (Pandora); Prof. Lawrence Lessig (Stanford Law); Craig Newmark (Craigslist); Dharma Dailey (Ethos Wireless); City Councilwoman Hon. Gale A. Brewer; John Perry Barlow (Electronic Frontier Foundation); Andrew Baron (Rocketboom); S.J. Klein (One Laptop Per Child); and the founder of OneWebDay, Susan Crawford, among others.

“Earth Day was the model when I founded OneWebDay in 2006,” says Susan Crawford, a professor of law specializing in Internet issues at the University of Michigan. “In 1969, one man asked the people to do what their elected representatives would not: take the future of the environment into their own hands.” By 1972, the United States had a federal agency devoted to protecting the environment, the E.P.A., and today a worldwide citizens’ movement has put the environment front and center politically. According to Crawford, “peoples’ lives now are as dependent on the Internet as they are on the basics like roads, energy supplies and running water. We can no longer take that for granted and we must advocate for the Internet politically, and support its vitality personally.”