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Anti-globalization movement

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The anti-globalization movement, known among its supporters by such names as the Global Justice Movement, the Fair Trade Movement, the Movement of Movements or simply The Movement is a worldwide movement opposing the mechanisms of global capitalism--particularly organizations like the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Economic Forum (WEF) and World Trade Organization (WTO) and free trade treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI), as well as the governments which promote these agreements.

Ideology/Causes

There are many different causes championed by movement members, including labor rights, environmentalism, feminism, preservation of the cultures of indigenous peoples, biodiversity, food safety, organic farming, opposition to the green revolution and genetic engineering, and ending or reforming capitalism. Many of the protesters are veterans of single-issue campaigns, including forest/anti-logging activism, living wage, labor union organizing, anti-sweatshop campaigns, homeless solidarity campouts, urban squatting, urban autonomy, and political secession. Some protesters identify themselves as revolutionary anarchists, Gaians, or communists; others agree ideologically but don't immediately identify themselves as such and still others want to reform capitalism, e.g. democratic Greens, some pagans. Movement members see most or all of these goals as complementary to one another, together forming a comprehensive agenda touching on nearly all aspects of life.

One common thread among the disparate causes is that the World Bank and IMF are seen as undermining local decision-making methods. Local or national sovereignty is seen as key to protecting cultures and ecologies. Governments and free trade institutions, on the other hand, are seen as acting solely for the good of trans-national (or multi-national) corporations (e.g. Microsoft, Monsanto, etc.). These corporations -- rhetorically likened to locusts or rapists -- are seen as having rights that human persons do not have - to move freely across borders, extract natural resources, exploit human resources, and move on having depleted human capital, natural capital, and biodiversity itself - imposing a kind of global monoculture. Therefore, some of the movements common goals are an end to corporate personhood and the dissolution or dramatic reform of the World Bank, IMF, and WTO. As protest slogans summarize: "People and planet before profits", "The Earth is not for sale!", or "Teamsters and Turtles, Together At Last!"

Some of the movement's agenda is shared by major economic theorists who argue for much less centralized systems of money supply, debt control, and trade law. These include George Soros, Joseph E. Stiglitz (formerly of the World Bank), and David Korten. These three in particular have made strong arguments for drastically improving transparency, for debt relief, land reform, and restructuring corporate accountability systems. Korten and Stiglitz have actually been involved in direct actions and street protest.

Influences

Several influential critical works have inspired and summarized the anti-globalization movement. These include, most influentially:

Naomi Klein's book No Logo, which criticized the omnipresence of brand-driven marketing usurping popular culture and the production practices of multinational corporations. Vandana Shiva's book Biopiracy, documenting the way the natural capital of indigenous peoples and ecoregions is converted by forms of intellectual capital recognized as property under colonialism and exploited by marketing to create monoculture. Amartya Sen's "Development as Freedom" (winner of the 1999 Swedish Bank Prize for economics), arguing strongly against traditional macro-economics, and for a system of money supply where currency would be based on free time.

Perhaps more influential than any printed book is the vast array of material on spiritual movements, anarchism, libertarian socialism and the Green Movement that is now available on the Internet. The previously obscure works of Arundhati Roy, Starhawk, Carol Moore and John Zerzan in particular - these inspired a critique favoring feminism,consensus process and political secession, opposing a "tyranny of Number" by which the critics seem to mean any global measurements of people or profit at all. Perhaps the only axiom shared widely by such critics is, in line with this critique, that biodiversity is good, extinction bad. Other than this vague "biodiversity good, extinction bad, numbers harmful" summary, which would no doubt enrage many followers of specific ideologies, there seems to be no leader who is universally accepted by "the movement". In this respect it resembles the peace movement, environmental movement, ecology movement, Green Movement, and various forms of anarchism and fundamentalism, all of which generally abhor usurpation of power by "leaders", while paradoxically elevating previously obscure figures or doctrines. Some call this an anti-monoculture movement, and make strong links between ecological, social, and ideological diversity doctrines.

Organization

The movement's largest and most visible mode of organizing is mass demonstrations, usually at the site of or in contrast to meetings of organizations they object to. This mode of organizing, sometimes derided (within and without the movement) as "summit-hopping" serves to tie the many disparate causes together into one global struggle. Exposure to the other causes helps create solidarity and slowly lays the groundwork for a consensus process and basis of unity for the movement itself, which may eventually include any, all, or none of the doctrines listed above.

In the process, it also helps to focus global attention both on the institutions of global capitalism (whose policies most movement members feel people would object to if they knew about them) as well as bring attention to the movement itself. In many ways the process and organizing matters more than the avowed goals or achievements of any given action in the movement. As Ralph Nader has put it: "You may support some of the goals. You may even like some of the decisions. But you can't reasonably support the way these decisions are being made."

The stated goal of most demonstrations is to shut down the summit it is protesting. Some demonstration slogans to this effect include: "WEF? SHUT IT DOWN!", "CAPITALISM? NO THANKS! WE'LL SHUT DOWN YOUR FUCKING BANKS!", and "WTO? NO! WTO? NO!". Although the demonstrations rarely succeed in more than delaying or inconveniencing the actual summits, this energizes the mobilizations and gives them a purpose. The movement's organizational model is notable - despite (or perhaps because of) the lack of formal coordinating bodies, the movement manages to successfully organise large protests on a global basis, using information technology to spread information and organise. Protesters organize themselves into "affinity groups", typically a non-hierarchical group of people who live close together and share a common goal or political message. Affinity groups will then send representatives to planning meetings. However, because these groups are easily and frequently penetrated by law enforcement intelligence, important plans of the protests are often not made until the last minute.

One common tactic of the protests is to split up based on willingness to break the law. This is designed, with varying success, to protect the risk-averse from the physical and legal dangers posed by confrontations with law enforcement. For example, in Prague, the protest split into three distinct groups, approaching the conference center from three directions: one breaking the law only in unlawfully assembling, one advancing through "tactical frivolity" (costume, music, and artwork), and one engaging in violent conflicts with the police, the police armed with water cannons and batons, the protesters with cobblestones lifted from the street. These demonstrations come to resemble small societies in themselves. Many protesters take training in first aid and act as medics to other injured protesters. Some organizations like the [[National Lawyer's Guild]] and, to a lesser extent, the ACLU provide legal witnesses in case of law enforcement confrontation. Protesters often claim that major media outlets do not properly report on them; in response, some of them created the Independent Media Center, a collective of protesters reporting on the actions as they happen.

Seattle

The first major mobilization of the movement, known as N30, occurred on November 30, 1999, when protesters blocked delegates' entrance to WTO meetings in Seattle, USA. The protests forced the cancellation of the opening ceremonies and lasted the length of the meeting until December 3. There was a large, permitted march by members of the AFL-CIO, and another large, unpermitted march by assorted affinity groups. The Seattle riot police, in conjunction with the National Guard and, according to some sources, the Delta Forces of the United States Army, assaulted protesters with night sticks, pepper spray, tear gas, and rubber bullets. Scores of protesters were arrested and dozens were injured. Three policemen were injured by friendly fire, and one by a thrown rock. Some protesters destroyed the windows of local storefronts which were owned by targeted corporations, such as a large Nike shop and many Starbucks windows. The mayor put the city under the municipal equivalent of martial law and declared a curfew. As if 2002, the city of Seattle had paid over $200,000 in settlements of lawsuits filed against the Seattle Police Department for assault and wrongful arrest, with a class action lawsuit still pending.

Law Enforcement Reaction

Although local police were surprised by the size of N30, law enforcement agencies have since reacted worldwide to prevent the disruption of future events by a variety of tactics, including sheer weight of numbers, infiltrating the groups to determine their plans, and preparedness to use force to remove protestors. At the 2000 protest of the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, John Sellers, a key organizer of the Ruckus Society, one of the groups organizing the protests, was arrested on charges of jaywalking and held in jail on $1,000,000 bail for the duration of the protests. At the same protest, the police made a point of arresting anybody with a cell phone to impede the organization of the protest. Many protestors have been prevented from crossing borders for the purpose of joining a protest, either because their names matched a list of known protestors or because of their appearance.

At the site of the protests, police use tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper spray, night sticks, and water cannons to repel the protestors, as is common when policing large demonstrations. In Quebec City, municipal officials walled off the portion of the city where the FTAA summit was being held with a 10-foot-high wall, which only residents, delegates to the summit, and certain accredited journalists were allowed inside. Although police claimed that violent elements in the protesters required a firm response, they fired tear gas and rubber bullets indiscriminately, dispersing peaceful assemblies and even teams of medics assisting the wounded; they gassed areas not involved in the protests, even firing off the mountaintop where the confrontations were taking place into the city below. The medical centre and independent media centre were evacuated by police at gunpoint.

In Genoa, the Carabinieri conducted night visits to convergence sites (called "inspections" by police, "raids" by protestors), resulting in 93 arrests, 61 injuries, and a parliamentary inquiry [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,526484,00.html Guardian]]. In an unrelated incident, one of the protestors, Carlo Giuliani of Genoa, was killed while charging a Carabinieri jeep holding a fire extinguisher during prolonged guerrilla warfare on the streets. The town of Genoa was left severely damaged by these battles. For the first time in its republican history, Italy suspended the constitutional freedom of movement within its national territory. As the G8 summit was held on board of a boat, there was little chance for protesters to meet the participants.

The response from protestors to such police tactics has included them of brutality in interrupting their right to non-violently protest. However, police and responsible politicians argue that attempting to blockade a meeting is in itself a violent event and an attempt to impede the processes of democratically elected governments. They also argue that police use the minimum force necessary to achieve their goals, and that the protestors claims are exaggerated.


Excerpt

The following passage by journalist, author, and movement member Jeffrey St. Clair, taken from 5 Days That Shook The World, recounts his experience at N30, capturing well the euphoric sense of connection that many movement members feel toward one another, the culture of mutual antipathy between the movement and law enforcement, and the loosely organized nature of the demonstrations.

Around 10 am, I ran into my friend Michael Donnely, a veteran Earth First!er from Oregon. Donnely and I walked up to 6th and Union, where we heard that a group of forest activists had taken control of an intersection. Here was to come the first violent attack by police on protesters. A band of about 200 protesters had sat down in the street. Others were playing music. Even more were dancing. A squad of riot cops approached. The sergent mumbled something over a megaphone. "Fifteen minute warning", Donnely said. "We've got fifteen minutes and then these guys are going to try to clear us out."
About ten minutes later, a Peacekeeper vehicle arrived, more cops clinging to its side. The back of the truck was popped open and dozens of tear gas canisters were unloaded. And, then very suddenly, a tear gas can was launched into sitting demonstrators. It oozed grey-green smoke. Then seconds later another one. And then five or six more of them were fired into the crowd. One of the protesters nearest the cops was a young, petite woman. She rose up, plainly disoriented from the gas, and a Seattle policeman, crouched less than 10 feet away, shot her in the knee with a rubber bullet. She fell to the pavement, grabbing her leg and screaming in pain. Then, moments later, one of hber comrades, maddened by the unprovoked attack, charged the police line, Kamikaze-style. Two cops beat him to the ground with their batons, hitting him at least 20 times. As the cops flailed away with their four-foot long clubs, the crowd chanted "The whole world is watching, the whole world is watching". Soon the man started to rise. Somehow he got on his hands and knees and then he was shot in the back by a cop who was standing over him. His hands were cuffed behind him and he was dragged away across the pavement.
The so-called rubber bullets are meant to be fired at areas of the body with large muscle mass. Like the thighs or the ass. But over the next two days Seattle cops would fire off thousands of rounds without exhibiting any caution. Dozens of peopole, none of them treatening the cops with harm, were shot in the back, in the neck, in the groin, in the face; in places that the ammunition's manufacturers, ever conscious of liability questions, warn could cause severe trauma or death.
By now another volley of tear gas had been throw [sic] into the crowd and the intersection was clotting with fumes. At first I was stunned, staring at the scene with the glazed look of the freshly lobotomized. Then my eyes began to boil in my head, my lips burned and it seemed impossible to draw a breath. When it's raining, the chemical agents hug close to the ground, taking longer to dissolve into the air. This coumpunds the tear gas' stinging power, its immobilizing effect. I staggered back up 6th Avenue toward University, where I stumbled into a cop decked out in his storm trooper gear. He turned and gave me a swift whack to my side with the tip of his riot club. I feel [sic] to my knees and covered my head, fearing a tumult of blows. But the blows never came and soon I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder and woman's voice say, "Come here".
I retreated into a narrow alley and saw the blurry outline of a young woman wearing a Stetson cowboy hat and a gas mask. "Lean your head back, so that I can wash the chemicals out of your eyes", she said. The water was cool and within seconds I could see again. "Who are you?" I asked. "Osprey", she said, and disappeared into the chemical mist. Osprey, the familiar, totemic name of an Earth First!er.

Influence on Developing World

The major mobilizations have taken place in the developed world, where there are strong traditions of free speech, police restraint, civil rights, and the rule of law. In these countries, one of the objectives is to demonstrate that the protesters self-govern better than they could ever be controlled by violent force: on March 15 2002 in Barcelona, 250,000 people "rioted" for days with no serious injury on either side - far fewer casualties than would be expected in a typical European soccer riot. By demonstrating general restraint against attacking persons and restricting demonstrative actions to property damage, the mobilizations have acted as an important influence on the developing world. In Argentina during the winter 2002 economic crisis, millions of ordinary citizens took to the streets for days with similar results, forcing several changes in the federal government.

In India, the views of Vandana Shiva and Amartya Sen and Arundhati Roy are very popular, effectively they enjoy full celebrity status. The acceptance and interest in their ideas and in the methods of Mohandas Gandhi are forming a major and specific challenge to both Muslim and Hindu fundamentalism.

Criticisms

The anti-globalization movement has been heavily criticized on many fronts by many people.

One of the most fundamental criticisms of the movement is simply that it lacks coherent goals, and that the views of different protestors are in fact fundamentally contradictory. For instance, it is argued (for instance, as a constant editorial line by The Economist), that one of the major causes of poverty amongst third-world farmers are the trade barriers put up by rich nations. The WTO is an organisation set up to work towards removing those trade barriers. Therefore, it is argued that people really concerned about the plight of the third world should actually be encouraging free trade, rather than attempting to fight it. Further to this vein, it is argued that the protest's anti free trade goals are really aimed at protecting the interests of Western labour rather than the interests of the developing world.

Some have criticized its claim to be non-violent. Aside from the indisputibly violent tactics by a minority of protestors (possibly aggravated by the police), some see a blockade of an event as in and of itself a violent action (although many protesters would counter that blockades are a time-honored technique of civil disobedience.)

Finally, the motivations of the organisers of the protests is often questioned. Some believe that the key organisers are really Trotskyite, who are simply using whatever grievances they can find to enlarge their protests with the aim of provoking violent revolution.

Mobilizations

1999

2000

2001

2002

External links:

World Social Forum See also:

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