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A movement resurrected-20,000 protest the WEF |
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by Bryan G. Pfeifer
Email: bgp (nospam) uwm.edu (unverified!)
Phone: 414-374-1034 |
13 Feb 2002
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Over 20,000 people from over 20 U.S. states and 100 cities world wide came to NYC Jan. 31-Feb. 4 to protest the anti-people agenda of the World Economic Forum. Despite an armed camp of over 10,000 police the protesters' voices were heard. |
A movement resurrected
20,000 protest World Economic Forum
By Bryan G. Pfeifer
MANHATTAN, NY -- “We are the future and it is the future of resistance.”
The words of Sara Flounders were exactly what the 3,000 plus World Economic Forum attendees paying a $25,000 admission fee didn’t want to hear as they dined over mini crab cakes, curry-carrot dipping sauce and peppered tuna at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City Jan. 31-Feb 4.
But the voice of the International Action Center leader and those of over 20,000 anti-WEF protesters chanting “WEF, shut it down,” “Money for jobs, not for war,” and “People before profits,” refused to be silenced despite the presence of a city wide armed camp of over 10,000 fully militarized police officers over the five day weekend. Over 200 protesters were arrested, mostly for disorderly conduct.
“It is these corporate and banking elites and government officials who are promoting the war against the people of Afghanistan…It is obscene that these modern day corporate robber barons and the government officials who do their bidding will hold their celebrated annual meeting at the Waldorf in New York City while hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers are being forced onto the unemployment lines,” declared an International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop Now and End Racism), statement.
“New York City officials will roll out the red carpet for the rich and powerful while working and poor people go without a guaranteed income, healthcare or a roof over their heads,” concluded ANSWER, a coalition of over 500 individuals and organizations formed immediately after Sept. 11 “to oppose the war in Afghanistan, defend civil liberties and demand money for jobs & human needs and not war.” The coalition sponsored a teach-in and indoor rally Feb. 1 and a mass anti-WEF rally adjacent to the Waldorf Astoria Feb. 2. Its next national action will be an April 27 anti-war, anti-racist demonstration in Washington D.C.
At the same time of the New York City actions, the World Social Forum formed last year in Porto Alegre, Brazil as a counter-summit to the annual WEF meeting took place. Over 60, 000 activists, educators, unions and workers from around the world attended this year to discuss alternatives to the corporate economic model and “free-market” ideology.
In what many termed the resurrection of the anti-corporate globalization movement after Sept. 11, thousands of New York residents and others traveling from over a dozen U.S. states and 100 cities worldwide arrived in the Big Apple to protest the WEF.
Although the anti-corporate globalization movement, like all in the U.S. and worldwide, has been dramatically affected by the Sept. 11 attacks and the aftermath, the anti-WEF protests clearly proved the movement is back on track and working together with the growing anti-war, anti-racist movement formed after Sept. 11. Organizers are already hard at work for a week of anti-war, anti-racist activities scheduled for April 19-27 in Washington D.C.
“This is a provocation. While thousands of New Yorkers are still burying their dead, trying to patch together shattered lives, and desperately trying to see how they can continue to pay insanely high New York City rents after being laid off from their jobs, the richest and most powerful men on earth have decided to come and party on the wreckage - to celebrate, no doubt, the billions of dollars of taxpayer money they've just been handed by their respective governments and explore new opportunities to profiteer from permanent global warfare,” said the Anti-Capitalist Convergence in its statement for the weekend protests.
“Do they think we have no pride? No self-respect? That we're just going to sit back and let this happen? As our heroic firefighters have shown us, the moratorium on direct action in New York is over.”
The New York City protests came on the heels of over a dozen international demonstrations since the November 1999 ‘Battle of Seattle’ opposing a World Trade Organization meeting in that city and similar organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Like in New York City, these meetings have been met with tens of thousands of protesters in recent years.
The WEF-unlike the above international organizations-doesn’t have the power to implement policy and affect economic regulations-but, perhaps more critically, it operates much like a global think tank by setting and guiding the international corporate agenda.
A major criticism of the WEF and similar organizations like the IMF, World Bank and WTO is that it’s a private member organization of more than 1,000 of the world’s leading business and financial corporations with top political leaders from the U.S and industrial countries among others that scour the globe for profits at the expense of working and poor people-especially in underdeveloped countries-and the environment.
Meeting for the first time in the U.S. since its 1971 inception, the annual WEF meeting was previously held in the Swiss Alps of Davos, Switzerland. In recent years, as the anti-corporate globalization movement gained steam, the WEF was interrupted by protesters in Davos despite millions spent on police for protest prevention.
Because the city of Davos and Switzerland became overwhelmed with the cost of attempting to stifle protests and as WEF founder Klaus Schwab claimed on Nov. 7, “As the world’s financial capital and the site of the recent terrorist attacks, there could be no better place than New York City to confront [post 9/11 issues],” the WEF planned its first-ever U.S. meeting.
Although various individuals and organizations in opposition to the WEF used differing protest tactics and strategies in New York City, their unified message of resistance from the streets was clear.
Organizations including the AFL-CIO, Animal Liberation, Another World is Possible, Blackkat Collective, Coalition for Earth, Konkrete Jungle, Friends of the Earth, Jubilee 2000, Organized Resistance w/AWOL Revolutionary Artists Workshop, Pagan Cluster Block, Public Citizen, Public Eye on Davos, Students for Global Justice, UNITE union, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and other environmental, legal, and social justice groups sponsored or participated in anti-WEF events.
What is the World Economic Forum?
According to The Indypendent, the newspaper of the New York City Independent Media Center, “the WEF is a private member organization comprised of representatives from 1,000 of the world’s largest corporations including Microsoft, Monsanto, Nike, General Motors and, until recently, Enron.” The Center’s Feb. 2001 special WEF edition, contains a “WEF Report” amid related articles.
Originally formed as the European Management Forum when Swiss professor Klaus Schwab organized a small meeting of European corporate heads in 1971, the Swiss-based WEF is the global corporate agenda setter and a leader in corporate globalization accountable only to its members. Membership, costing up to $30,000 annually, includes selected politicians, journalists and academics.
According to its literature, the WEF is “now considered the global summit which defines the political, economic, and business agenda for the year.”
The WEF is made up of primarily European and U.S. corporations. The member breakdown by continent is: Europe, 43 percent; North America, 26 percent; Asia, 13 percent; Central/South America, 7.5 percent; Middle East, 4.5 percent; Africa, 4.3 percent; Australia, 2.2 percent. (See www.geocities.com/pwdyson/wef_orgs.htm for full membership list).
“The institutions, which are run by member nations, have advocated the neo-liberal economic model that has been criticized widely for the inequality it produces both within countries” and between developed and underdeveloped nations, states the Indypendent.
The WEF has mushroomed since its first Informal Gathering of World Economic Leaders took place at Davos in 1982. One year later the inaugural Davos Governors’ Meetings were held.
“In 1986, the organization became known as the World Economic Forum and has since become the foremost annual corporate gathering in the world. Its impact on global economic policy has likewise been profound,” states the Indypendent.
The WEF paved the way for the World Trade Organization. The IMF and World Bank were formed after WWII allegedly to help stabilize the international economy and to provide loans to struggling, mostly underdeveloped, nations.
Critics claim that these international bodies are an extreme threat to the majority of the world’s people because they are powerful, un-elected and unaccountable making decisions that affect culture, education, food, labor, national sovereignty, the media, trade policies and virtually every aspect of modern life on the planet. A major criticism is the privatization model that these global corporate bodies advocate and allegedly force on underdeveloped countries.
Percy Barnevik, WEF Vice President, bolstered critics’ claims recently when he spoke candidly about what he sees as the role of these international organizations.
“I define globalization as the freedom of our corporations to invest where and when we want, to produce what we want, to buy and sell where we want, and to keep all the restrictions through labor law or other political regulations as slight as possible.”
According to the Indypendent, until the late 1990s the WEF attracted little attention outside corporate circles. But when protesters started demanding more accountability and began climbing the Swiss Alps to confront the WEF, Swiss officials banned protests in 2001. Despite millions spent on impeding protesters access to the posh Davos resort where WEF meetings took place, “hacktivists” decoded the WEF computer server to gain credit card numbers, travel information and private cell phone numbers for over 1,000 attendees including Madeline Albright and Bill Gates.
When the WEF hosted a September 2000 regional meeting in Melbourne, Australia it was met by 10,000 protesters that forced delays and prevented one-third of the delegates from entering the meetings. Protests also took place in Cancun, Mexico, in February 2001 during a meeting between WEF representatives and Mexican government officials.
Despite initiating a massive WEF public relations campaign this year to portray the organization as a liberal by inviting personalities like Bono of U2 and Elton John, it was business as usual say critics.
Schwab, in a CNN interview after the conclusion of the NYC WEF meeting, said the 2003 meeting will return to Davos. He didn’t say whether the protests had any effect on this decision.
Despite police intimidation, protesters persevere
Peaking on Saturday, Feb. 2, the anti-WEF actions were colorful, issue-orientated, loud militant and varied.
ANSWER held a “meet ‘em and greet ‘em” rally beginning at 11 a.m. at 50th and Park Ave-directly adjacent to the Waldorf-Astoria-and the Another World is Possible coalition sponsored a rally at 59th and Fifth Ave. International ANSWER applied four months earlier for permits for its rally. The police, claim ANSWER organizers, sat on the application until just 12 days before the opening of the forum. AWIP obtained a permit days earlier.
At the ANSWER rally despite being herded into a series of closed pens composed of metal fences four feet high, approximately 15 feet across and 150 feet long, between 7,000 and 10,000 protesters arrived and took up six city blocks (over a quarter-mile).
Because of this, many protesters beyond the first couple of pens couldn’t decipher what the speakers were saying but stayed in solidarity chanting, dancing, drumming and waving placards. They read: “Act now to stop war & End Racism,” “End U.S. aid to Israel! Defend Palestine,” “Free Mumia! Repeal the Patriot Act,” “From Buenos Aires to New York, the people will win,” “Let Iraq live!” “Money for schools not for war,” “People before profit,” “Stop the WEF: World Exploitation Forum,” “U.S. out of Afghanistan,” “U.S. out of the Middle East,” and “U.S. troops out of the Philippines.”
Besides the pens, protesters were surrounded by a police “frozen zone” that included police on bicycles, foot, horses, motorcycles, rooftops, and more. Police and undercover agents also were on hand with billy clubs, cars, detention buses, guns, metal and plastic handcuffs, SUVs, tear gas and other vehicles and weapons.
During the day, according to the Feb. 3 New York Times, a “war room” was established at NYPD Headquarters, where agents from 16 city, state and federal agencies monitored live cameras on street corners and in helicopters, looking for protesters.
In his report, “Police show of force confronts peaceful protesters,” Jack A. Smith, an organizer with the Mid-Hudson National People’s Campaign, said “It took several Mid-Hudson residents an hour or more to be admitted to the area. Others had difficulty leaving. Some 20 buses full of demonstrators from various cities were misdirected by police to remote unloading areas. Police established a bus parking area but then told drivers to go elsewhere.”
Throughout the weekend, three-person police squads stood in front of every Starbucks, every Gap, every Old Navy, every United Colors of Benetton, every Banana Republic in mid and lower Manhattan.
Facing off against the police armed with only drums, placards, puppets, songs, and their voices of dissent, the protesters at both the ANSWER and AWIP rallies stood their ground against the police.
Speaking from a flat bed truck flanked by huge loud speakers and sporting the banner: “People before profits: Jobs & Education-Yes! War & Racism-NO!” a block from the Waldorf-Astoria’s front doors, participants at the 11 a.m.-3 p.m. ANSWER rally
blasted out their opposition to corporate globalization, and war and racism
Speakers addressed the Palestinian, Korean, Filipino, Somali, Iraqi, Muslim, Mexican, Puerto Rican and other national liberation movements and activists from civic, peace, justice and religious organizations also spoke connecting their issues to what they said was the anti-people agenda of the WEF and related bodies.
“The people meeting at the World Economic Forum are the leaders of world capitalism. They’re the new slavers, attempting to enslave the Third World. They have expanded and sophisticated the concept of slavery and have exported it around the world. It’s our responsibility to haunt them and defeat everything they stand for,” said Rev. Lucius Walker of IFCO/Pastors for Peace.
At approximately 1 p.m. the AWIP march attempted to join the ANSWER rally but were illegally prevented from doing so and threatened with mass arrests if they attempted according to Mara Verheyden-Hillard, a Partnership for Civil Justice attorney monitoring the actions.
Verheyden-Hillard, a civil rights attorney, claimed that the police diverted thousands of protesters who sought access to the demonstration area by establishing barricades, pens and illegal checkpoints, closed surrounding streets and prevented protesters’ freedom of movement. She connected these police actions with the recent USA Patriot Act.
“The USA Patriot Act is a vicious assault on civil rights and civil liberties. It’s an attempt to shut down political dissent—and we’re not going to let them do it. Racial profiling is nothing new. Demonstrate at the jails where the detained are being held. Tell them these rights are our rights and they can’t take them away. People died for better working conditions, a better life. The Confederacy-loving Atty. Gen. Ashcroft thinks he can sweep away these decades of struggle.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, the PCJ, the National Lawyers Guild, other legal agencies and individual attorneys are discussing possible legal action against the city of Manhattan and other entities based on what they claim are multiple violations of protesters’ constitutional rights during the five day protests.
After the rally, despite being denied a march permit, ANSWER organizers called for a post-rally march to a local theatre to protest what they said was the racist, pro-war film “Black Hawk Down.” They also urged, that despite police obstruction, protesters should try to meet up with the AWIP permitted march which numbered approximately 10,000 at its height. No arrests took place at the ANSWER rally but about 40 were arrested at the AWIP march towards its conclusion.
As the police hovered over the AWIP march, participants sung (to the tune of the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine”) “We’re all living in a military state, a military state, a military state…
On Sunday, Feb. 3 about 100 people were arrested for disorderly conduct at an afternoon march on the Lower East side. Throughout the weekend approximately 200 protesters were arrested. Some, including Madison peace activist Jay Dalessio, claim police used excessive force in their arrests.
Protesters refuse to be intimidated-challenge corporate coverage
Despite what protest organizers called media violence-baiting, distortion and division tactics, they chalked up the anti-WEF protests as a huge success.
A sampling of the pre-WEF New York print media headlines bolster their claims:
“City Girds for Protests at Economic Summit Meeting,” (NY Times), “Policing the Protesters” (NY Times), “Blue Security Blanket” (Daily News), and “Law of the Fist” (Village Voice).
According to the Indypendent, a Jan. 13 New York Daily News editorial, “Confab Welcome, Crazies Not,” refers to protesters as “legions of agitators,” “parasites,” “assorted kooks,” and “wackos.” The News argued that protesters deserved any violence inflicted on them by police or “ordinary” New Yorkers. “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more. Try to disrupt this town and you’ll get your anti-globalization buts kicked. Capish?”
Columnist Steve Dunleavy of The New York Post, sanctioned “justified” police violence on protesters and called them “punks,” “numbskulls,” and “nasty little twits.” Without any evidence he identified protesters as potential killers. “Private big shots have hired [former Philadelphia Police Commissioner John] Timoney…to make sure that [the police] …don’t wear toe tags in the morgue.”
New York Times columnist Clyde Haberman labeled protesters “anti-Starbucks wackos,” and claimed they were “known less for their deep thinking than for their demonstrated willingness to trash cities that play host to these gatherings.”
This was followed up by broadcast news media repeatedly airing video clips and sound bites of police practicing military and other exercises at Shea Stadium.
Organizers repeatedly challenged the media to produce evidence of protester violence and instead argued that it was the police that were often responsible for the majority of violence at anti-corporate globalization demonstrations and progressive actions generally.
“They tried to divide us against each other, that there was good protesters and bad protesters. And we preserved and said: We may have diverse tactics, we may carry out different forms of struggle, but the protesters are not the problem. We’re not the violent ones. It’s the police where they’re armed and have tear gas, they’re the problem,” said Teresa Gutierrez of International ANSWER at its Feb. 1 anti-WEF evening rally at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Numerous civil rights attorneys and organizations and protesters echo Gutierrez’ grievances regarding the police and media. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed against police departments or cities where anti-corporate globalization and similar protests have taken place since the ‘Battle of Seattle.’
Thousands of protesters have been injured, some permanently, by police riots and violence at anti-corporate globalization protests. One, Carlo Gilano, was shot dead by Italian riot police and carabinieri in Genoa, Italy while protesting at the July 20-22, 2001 Group of Eight or G8 Summit.
In protests that became known as “The Bloody G8,” police infiltrated organizations, posed as journalists, instigated chaos and provoked violence according to the Independent Media Center. A midnight raid on the offices of the Italian Independent Media Center and Genoa Social Forum (the umbrella group of the participating organizations) seriously injured more than 60 people while police confiscated video and photos documenting police brutality. On the streets, more than 600 were injured, 280 arrested.
Police have acted similarly at U.S. protests, most notably in Seattle, Washington D.C. and at the 2000 Democratic and Republican conventions in Los Angeles and Philadelphia. At these actions, hundreds of protesters were illegally detained, arrested and emotionally, physically and verbally abused by police according to legal observers, protesters and other witnesses.
Protesters and civil rights attorneys alike assert that tossing a few bricks through Starbucks or Gap windows is insignificant compared to the global pattern of the aforementioned institutional police and state violence sanctioned by world bodies like the WEF and the U.S. government.
“Nationwide, the government seeks to demonize people who demonstrate against corporate globalization, accusing them of violence and declaring a need to instigate a form of marshal law. In fact, there have been very few convictions for crimes at these protests, while literally thousands of demonstrators have been arrested, exposed to pepper spray and tear gas, or beaten with clubs,” said Zachary Wolfe, National Lawyers Guild National Vice President and a Partnership for Civil Justice attorney in an August 2001 press release regarding the anti-IMF, and anti-war, anti-racist Sept. 29, 2001 D.C. protests.
Organizers and protest participants in New York City also tried, often in vain, to put the violence of the U.S. and its motives in perspective for the corporate media.
Many referenced former CIA agent William Blum and his book “Killing Hope” and similar material. Blum, through years of research, documented that the U.S. has bombed over 20 countries and invaded over 50 since WWII. Blum proves in his book that, despite humanitarian claims, all U.S. actions were, and are, for the nation state to assert its capitalist economic or geopolitical global dominance over other countries and working and poor people residing in the U.S. The IMF, the U.N., WEF, World Bank, WTO and other international bodies controlled by the U.S. and its junior partners like Britain, work closely together to achieve corporate super profits, claims Blum.
According to Mr. John J. Maresca, vice-president of Unocal Corporation, Blum is correct-at least when it comes to Afghanistan.
In 1998 Maresca gave a briefing to a House Subcommittee on Industrial Relations where he made plain U.S. corporate interests in the Afghanistan region according to columnist Mumia Abu-Jamal in his January 2002 perspective “War is big business.”
“One obvious potential route south would be across Iran. However, this option is foreclosed for American companies because of U.S. sanctions legislation. The only other possible route option is across Afghanistan, which has its own unique challenges,” said Maresca.
He continued, “The country has been involved in bitter warfare for almost two decades. The territory across which the pipeline would extend is controlled by most other nations. From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of our proposed pipeline cannot begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders and our company.” (“A New Silk Road: Proposed Petroleum Pipeline in Afghanistan,” Monthly Review, Dec. 2001, pp. 32-3)
Abu-Jamal and others, based on Maresca’s testimony and related evidence, assert then that Bush, Cheney and their hawkish corporate-connected cabinet are using the Sept. 11 attacks as an excuse to engage in the “war on terrorism” to achieve the profit motives and geo-political dominance of U.S. corporations like Unocal.
Again Maresca: “Although Unocal has not negotiated with any one group, we have had contacts with and briefings for all of them. We know that the different factions in Afghanistan understand the importance of the pipeline project for their country, and have expressed their support of it.” (p.33)
Abu-Jamal puts it another way.
“In the halls of government, and in the meeting places of big business, powerful people carve up the world according to their own interests. Wars are declared, and thousands are slain, for the enrichment and the well being of a few. War is no more than the instrument of big business; it is big business.”
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman agrees.
“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist-McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell-Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps,” wrote Friedman in a March 1999 New York Times Magazine perspective supporting the U.S./NATO invasion of Yugoslavia.
Throughout the five day weekend protesters also repeatedly challenged the corporate media on what they claimed was its hypocritical portrayal of violence and its patriotic war fervor that rarely, if ever, gives time or space to voices of dissent that want to talk about claims like that of Abu-Jamal’s and Blum’s.
Using the above examples of U.S. global aggression, protesters gave hundreds of examples of the results of U.S. policy on the world’s people that they claimed the corporate media ignored.
Many referenced the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when speaking of U.S. actions domestically and internationally. In his 1967 ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech, Dr. King said that “the greatest purveyor of violence on earth is my own government.”
Examples given by protesters included U.S.-led Iraq sanctions that have killed over 1.5 million-one-third children, over 4,000 dead-mostly civilians-as a result of U.S. bombing in Afghanistan, the U.S. prison-industrial complex which includes the death penalty, and the detention of over 1,200 Arab, Muslim and South Asian men since Sept. 11 under the guise of fighting terrorism.
Another depiction that protesters confronted was the corporate media’s tactic of glibly portraying a few hand-picked individuals as movement leaders and youths as idealist hippies among other tactics instead of the reality of a world wide burgeoning anti-corporate globalization movement composed of millions of diverse voices. Considering the resources and global reach of the corporate media, many complained about media entities like CNN that didn’t report a sampling of protesters’ views despite ready access.
Peta Lindsay, a 17-year-old School Without Walls high school student from Washington D.C., stressed the importance of surmounting this and other institutional barriers.
“Organizing young people to take action and make change is not an easy job. The youth recognize the issues but in order for them to even form their own opinion they have to break through a mountain of barriers systematically set up to stop them from thinking,”
Five days of resistance
Street protests began Jan. 31, the opening day of the WEF when 4,000 to 5,000 workers demonstrated at the Gap store on Fifth Avenue, a few blocks from the Waldorf-Astoria reported free lance journalist G. Dunkel.
The Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, with some help from the New York City Central Labor Council, called the demonstration to protest what they said were WEF policies that result in greater profits for transnational corporations at the expense of working people and the poor world wide.
One placard message read “Gap execs earn millions, Gap workers pennies.”
Sofia Sazo, a textile worker from Guatemala, spoke about the four years she had worked in the Shin Won clothing factory, making garments labeled “Gap.” There were 3,000 workers, forced to do unpaid overtime to meet their production quotas, in dirty, crowded shops with bad water.
“We suffer,” she said, “because they don’t treat us like human beings.”
Besides the speeches in Spanish and English, two were given in Chinese.
UNITE kicked off the anti-WEF events with its Jan. 30 forum: “WEF, War, Layoffs and Budget Cuts: Fighting Corporate Globalization after 9/11.”
On Jan. 31 Public Eye on Davos began its four-day series of events with the forum “The Social and Environmental Impacts of Corporate Globalization.” Throughout the weekend this organization held discussions and forums on topics ranging from credit agencies and the environment to “an economic critique of free trade theory.”
The Students for Global Justice began its three-day event schedule with the plenary address “Globalization, Militarism, the Neoliberal Agenda and its Discontents” at St. John’s the Divine Cathedral. This group, the Anti-Capitalist Convergence and others make up the Another World is Possible Coalition.
International ANSWER, besides its Saturday protest, sponsored a teach-in Friday morning and an indoor rally, “Merging the struggle between war, racism and corporate globalization,” at an overflowing FIT Auditorium of over 1,000.
The week concluded Feb. 4 with a commemoration for Amadou Diallo on the third anniversary of his killing by four plain-clothes members of the New York City Police Street Crimes Unit. Over 1,000 parents, students, activists, and politicians came to 1857 Wheeler Avenue in the Bronx, Mr. Diallo’s home and the site where he was killed.
In asking the crowd to attend his son’s commemoration at the ANSWER FIT rally Feb. 1, Mr. Saikou Diallo, father of Amadou Diallo, said, “I invite you to commemorate the anniversary of my son’s death. Continue to stand together for peace and justice--together we can make it work.”
Porto Alegre, Brazil
As an alternative to the WEF’s version of corporate globalization, over 60, 000 activists, educators, unions and workers from around the world joined together in Porto Alegre, Brazil Jan. 31-Feb 4 to convene the 2nd annual World Social Forum.
Last year over 10,000 traveled to Brazil for the opening of the WSF. This forum, in direct opposition to the WEF, was an opportunity to discuss alternatives to corporate globalization, specifically the “free market” model, said organizers and participants.
This year’s agenda focused on four main themes:
*The production of wealth and social reproduction;
*Access to wealth and sustainability;
*Civil society and the public arena;
*Political power and ethics: the new society.
These themes were discussed in dozens of conferences, keynote addresses, seminars, and workshops. Currently, discussions range from reforming the international organizations that promote a corporate economic (“free market”) model to socialism. Throughout the next year regional meetings will take place to network the ideas proposed at this year’s WSF. Reports and other WSF information are available on the WSF website.
A major focus of the WSF was to instill in participants the urgency of connecting their local issues to global ones, specifically in the area of corporate globalization while working simultaneously with others who have a people-centered global outlook.
In Milwaukee and Wisconsin generally, some have suggested a step in this direction might be to analyze and learn from a non-protectionist viewpoint, the affect the loss of 100,000 living-wage jobs, many union, in the past decade has had on working people and families.
Another goal proposed by many is for organized labor, and progressive community, religious and student organizations to seriously meet and discuss alternatives to corporate globalization on the local level. And for organized labor to take a serious anti-war, anti-racist stand.
Social justice movement matures, gains momentum
In a powerful display of connecting the WEF to current events like the Enron debacle, the recession and its after effects including massive layoffs and homelessness, and George W. Bush’s Jan. 29 militaristic speech where he asked for the biggest defense budget increase in two decades and billions for “homeland defense” while cutting social programs, protesters responded to those who said it was the wrong time to protest in New York City after Sept. 11.
A main focus was Bush’s “axis of evil” comments regarding Iran, Iraq, and the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea where he singled out these nation states as “terrorist regimes.”
Many, calling Bush an illegitimate president, called him a terrorist for executing 152 people, mostly Black and Latino, while governor of Texas, rolling back numerous workers’ rights since being in office, attacking civil liberties protections and his Afghanistan bombing campaign among other actions. Others focused on the aforementioned U.S. history and current actions at home and abroad.
“The wounds of slavery were never given the surgical stitches of reparations or the painkiller of justice. Uncle Sam used his brother, Willie Lynch, and his cousins Jim Crow and COINTEL PRO, in the unyielding terror of racism in America. So don’t tell us that we must drop bombs on Afghanistan or Iran to stop terrorism. The first terror attack to reach this shore came around 1492,” said Rev. Curtis Gatewood, president of the Durham, N.C., NAACP at ANSWER’s FIT rally.
Merging the anti-corporate globalization movement with the anti-war, anti-racist movement appears to be one of the weekend’s greatest victories.
For those first becoming aware of this world wide movement and those building for the April 19-27 Washington D.C. anti-war, anti-racist events, the words of Ron Daniels, an attorney at the New-York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights and anti-WEF protest participant, reminded them there’s lot’s of work to do.
“There are now more people who understand what the IMF, WTO and World Bank are because of this movement. One of the most important tasks we face is to broaden this movement to demand change.”
© 2002 Bryan G. Pfeifer
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See also:
www.internationalanswer.org
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