|
Comment on this article |
View comments |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Miscellaneous |
|
Activists Look For Way Forward After Genoa Violence |
Current rating: 0 |
by Agence France Presse
(No verified email address) |
10 Aug 2001
|
|
This article has some problems (like promoting the idea that the police should "protect" the "peaceful" protesters from the "violent" protesters in the future-what's up with that very problematic idea?), but it is good to see the dominant media taking the IMC movement seriously. |
BERLIN - A new era of anti-globalization protests emerged from the brutal clashes at the Group of Eight summit in Genoa, activists say, and a struggle has begun to keep their movement from being eclipsed by violence.
On the Internet and in meetings around the world, groups that oppose the destructive forces of world capitalism have used the weeks since the summit to plot fresh strategies to make their voices heard and examine what went wrong in Genoa.
The movement that began at the World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle 20 months ago received its first martyr in Genoa with the death of 23-year-old Carlo Giuliani, who was shot by a young Italian officer during chaotic street battles between police and rioters on the first day of the summit.
At a funeral that drew hundreds of people from across Italy and beyond, many of whom never knew Giuliani, his father Giuliano Giuliani embraced mourners and demanded they pledge to reject violence.
Most anti-globalization groups -- some 700 were represented in Genoa -- have been consistently firm in their opposition to the use of violence.
But Genoa was only the most disastrous example of the mayhem seen in the summit cities Gothenburg, Seattle, Washington and Prague, where small minorities of rioters bent on vandalism and battles with the police have undermined peaceful protests.
Pacifist anti-poverty groups such as Drop the Debt, Attac and Rete Lilliput have tried to keep a lid on boiling tempers since Genoa.
Yet accusations of police brutality in Genoa against non-violent demonstrators have threatened to further radicalize some elements of the movement.
\"Many see Genoa as a crossroads for the alternative globalization movement, facing (either) fragmentation from internal differences or increasing influence in challenging global forces of domination,\" the activist journalists\' group Indymedia said on its Web site.
A look at the organization\'s \"New Tactics and New Targets\" Web page, which has been bombarded in the days since Genoa with calls for alternative forms of protest, offers a glimpse at those internal differences.
Activists have proposed boycotts, \"direct action\" against corporations and parallel meetings by demonstrators during summits.
\"I think social forums are a good idea, but they should be protected from the riotous vandals,\" said a visitor to the Web site calling himself Lex Talionis, Latin for the Biblical law of \"an eye for an eye\".
Indeed, London-based Drop the Debt, which has led a campaign to erase the debts of the world\'s poorest nations, moved its protest during the Genoa summit out of town due to safety concerns.
\"Such violence simply gives the G8 an excuse to do nothing about the urgent crisis of debt and poverty,\" the group said on its Web site.
\"Now peaceful campaigners must reflect on how to make sure their concerns are addressed without the risk of hijack by violent extremists.\"
Attac, however, insists it will maintain a presence at such gatherings and has said it is the job of police not only to keep violent militants far from political officials, but also from peaceful protesters.
It has outlined an ambitious program of action for the autumn including rallies at the September Ecofin meeting of EU economy and finance ministers in Liege, Belgium and two demonstrations against international tax havens in October in Luxembourg and Berlin.
\"The opposition to globalization did not end with Genoa by a long shot,\" said Sven Giegold of Attac Germany.
\"We will continue these demonstrations until we get a serious reaction\" from policymakers.
The group plans to mobilize some of its 50,000 members worldwide to attend November\'s WTO meeting in the Gulf state of Qatar and push Attac\'s plans to bring about a more equitable division of wealth.
Giegold said it was no accident that the event is to be staged in an Arab emirate far from the cities of Europe and the United States.
In fact, the move is part of a general retreat of the world\'s most powerful from Western metropolises for such gatherings and to what seems to many protesters like the ends of the earth.
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien has told G8 leaders that the next summit would take to the hills, to the remote hideaway of Kananaskis nestled in the Rocky Mountains.
Many activists view this approach as a provocation as well, by keeping leaders shielded from the message the movement aims to get across.
The British operations of Indymedia have already put out an \"activist white paper\" on the Canadian G8 with plans for direct action.
\"The terrain is ideal for hippies, crappy for cops,\" the group wrote.
\"Can you imagine riot troops in full body armor plodding through dense forests? What were they thinking? Don\'t they remember Vietnam?\"
Copyright © 2001 AFP |
See also:
http://www.afp.com
|
|
Canadian G8 DIST plan |
by Clinton Popetz
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
10 Aug 2001
|
> The British operations of Indymedia have already put out
> an "activist white paper" on the Canadian G8 with plans
> for direct action.
>
> "The terrain is ideal for hippies, crappy for cops," the
> group wrote.
>
> "Can you imagine riot troops in full body armor plodding
> through dense forests? What were they thinking? Don't they
> remember Vietnam?"
The quoted paper is a hilarious read:
http://uk.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=8812 |
