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Title: Back Story Author: L.A. Kauffman Date: September 2000 Language: en Topics: Free Radical, anti-globalization movement Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20021205011539/http://www.free-radical.org/issue10.shtml Notes: Issue #10 of Free Radical
If there's one point on which everyone in the movement seems to agree,
it's that action-hopping is getting old. The big mobilizations, like the
April World Bank/IMF protests and this summer's actions at the
Republican and Democratic conventions, are wearing people down. Hardball
police tactics have made them cost more, while the sneering corporate
media has made them matter less. These days, many of the people who
worked on the big actions of the past year are reassessing, looking
toward more community-based organizing and moving away from big blockade
events.
The magic of this moment in time, though, is that the urge to get in
power's way has become irrepressible. New people and new groups are
clearly feeling inspired to make things happen, often in places that
haven't yet seen much action. Check out Protest.Net, and you'll find a
formidable -- yet only partial -- list of major upcoming demonstrations
and direct actions, denoted by the abbreviated dates that have become
standard movement syntax: S26, O3, O15, O17, N10, N17, A15.
But while the now-seasoned veterans of Seattle, D.C., Windsor, Philly,
and L.A. are sorting out their next steps, and newly active organizers
are stepping forward, it's worth looking back at the untold history of
this movement. For while many people have been giving serious thought to
the future of big actions, few know about their past.
The initial spark of the anti-globalization movement came on January 1,
1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into
effect. On that day, a hitherto unknown group of revolutionaries, the
Zapatista National Liberation Army, rose up in the southern Mexican
state of Chiapas. The armed skirmishes lasted less than two weeks;
unlike other Latin American guerrilla movements of the past, the
Zapatistas did not seek a military victory. Instead, they hoped to
inspire the downtrodden -- both in Chiapas and the world at large -- to
organize and empower themselves, creating "an intercontinental network
of resistance against neoliberalism."
By "neoliberalism" the Zapatistas meant the current global capitalist
order, with its agenda of trade liberalization and privatization of
public goods. Economic neoliberals (not to be confused with political
liberals in the American definition) seek to maximize profit by removing
all barriers to global business: pesky impediments like labor and
environmental laws, for instance. Neoliberalism is the philosophical
underpinning of corporate globalization, the foundation for trade
agreements like NAFTA and for the World Trade Organization.
In 1996 and 1997, the Zapatistas convened two massive encuentros, or
gatherings, "For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism." These brought
together thousands of people from popular movements around the world,
particularly from the Global South: labor unions, indigenous and
community groups, peasants' and farmers' associations, human rights and
environmental organizations, and more. The gatherings were intended not
to create a global organization or produce a unified strategy, but to
discuss how different groups were affected by neoliberalism and how
movements might coordinate their resistance.
After the second encuentro, in August 1997, some 50 representatives of
these varied movements -- including indigenous groups from Nigeria and
Mexico, and farmers' organizations from India, Brazil, Bolivia, and
Indonesia -- sat down to plan worldwide protests against the World Trade
Organization, the prime symbol and instrument of corporate
globalization. To facilitate organizing, they created an ongoing
network, which they called Peoples' Global Action Against "Free" Trade
and the WTO, or PGA for short.
The first Global Days of Action took place in late May 1998, coinciding
with the WTO's Second Ministerial Conference, held in Geneva. There was
barely a blip of participation from the United States: The only
coordinated events were a radical street party in Berkeley and a small
forest-preservation action in Arcata, the heart of California's Redwood
region.
But in 28 other countries, it was a different story entirely. Five
hundred thousand people took to the streets of Hyderabad in India, with
the rallying cry, "We, the people of India, hereby declare that we
consider the WTO our brutal enemy." In Brazil, an anti-WTO march drew
some 50,000 people, including members of the country's Movement of
Landless People, who were simultaneously looting supermarkets and
government food stores as a protest against hunger. Some 20 cities held
Global Street Parties, raucous and celebratory takeovers of public
space, inspired by Reclaim the Streets (RTS), a movement that began in
England during the early 1990s from a convergence of Earth First!
campaigners against road construction and ravers fighting
criminalization of their underground party scene.
Meanwhile, in Geneva, on the first day of the WTO meeting, 10,000
protested vigorously outside, while some of the more militant youth
vandalized some banks and a McDonald's; the police attacked
demonstrators with clubs and tear gas, but actions continued for three
more days, including traffic blockades and a march by 1000 bound and
gagged people, symbolizing the silencing of civil society by corporate
rule.
Just over a year later, on June 18, 1999, PGA coordinated a "Global Day
of Action Against Financial Centers," also called a "Carnival Against
Capital," to coincide with the G8 Summit meeting of the major industrial
powers. If the 1998 actions were impressively large and widespread, J18
(when this sort of abbreviation was first used) was staggering. There
were events in well over 100 cities and more than 40 countries: from
Australia to Zimbabwe, Sweden to South Korea, Chile to the Czech
Republic. Famously, J18 in London escalated into anti-capitalist mayhem,
with millions of dollars of property damage to corporate and financial
institutions, in a protest that partly inspired the Black Bloc in
Seattle.
In the U.S., activists in eight cities -- including Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Eugene, Boston, New York, and D.C. -- organized actions for
J18, mainly under the auspices of Reclaim the Streets, which had crossed
the Atlantic over the previous year; the largest of them had several
hundred participants. The American movement was still flying below
radar, reaching a fairly small number of people in the know, but that
was changing quickly.
Peoples' Global Action gathered again in August 1999 in the Indian city
of Bangalore, hosted by a local radical farmers association known for
torching genetically modified crops and burning down a KFC fast-food
outlet. The agenda? To coordinate N30, the next global day of action,
which was to coincide with the meeting of the World Trade Organization
in Seattle.