What Do These People Want?

They've made headlines in Seattle, Quebec, Genoa and Washington. Tree-huggers march alongside steelworkers, making common cause with students, Sixties protest veterans, anarchists, church congregations and assorted others to protest the "secret government" that really rules the globe.

Most of the protesters who flock to world economic summits are white, but they are hardly homogeneous. Different causes boil their blood and bring them out on the streets, but they all agree on one point. Their common foe is plainly visible in the form of a few hundred multinational corporations that have made globalization an excuse for a 21st century--style corporate colonialism, in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, faster and faster.

As protesters see it, the global "secret government," just like any government, has an institutional apparatus. In this case the apparatus consists of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization. Their meetings and those relating to the North American Free Trade Agreement and its expanded counterpart, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, have provoked the mass protests of the recent past.

(continued on page 168) What do these People want? (continued from page 76)

As the protesters see it, the IMF is the world's loan shark, providing aid--loaded with stipulations--to countries in financial crisis. It, then busts kneecaps with debt. So-called "structural adjustment programs" systematically favor corporate profits while protecting sweatshops and allowing, if not encouraging, environmental havoc.

The World Bank is the shark's brother. Its loan agreements carry the same stipulations as IMF loans. The World Bank's ostensible purpose is the alleviation of poverty in developing countries. Over the years, the lenders in the rich countries have generally grown richer while poverty has worsened in much of the developing world.

The WTO functions as a referee in the world of global trade. Tribunals, wherein conflicting claims are sorted out, are, in the scenario of the protester, just gangster-like sit-downs with different accents.

These economic organizations have muscle. The rulings of the WTO, for example, override legislation everywhere in the world. National laws can be determined to be "barriers to free trade" by this institution--which isn't accountable to anyone. Without fear of local political opposition, the WTO protects multinationals that trample environmental and human rights in the relentless pursuit of profit. Pollution, sweatshops and minimal wages become systematic, say the protesters.

The "Unholy Trinity" outrages many different people. The result is the distinctive, if seemingly fragmented, appearance of the movement. Union members in satin warm-up jackets march alongside college students with bongo drums in a mostly young crowd with familiar signs: No more deaths for debt, IMF, world bank. You can't hide! We charge you with genocide. Human need, not corporate greed.

At every summit meeting you'll see stilt figures, giant papier-mâché heads fashioned to look like James Wolfensohn (president of the World Bank) and even people dressed as sea turtles. What do sea turtles have to do with it? In 1989, U.S. environmentalists succeeded in banning shrimp imports unless the shrimp had been caught in nets equipped with relatively cheap turtle excluder devices that allow endangered sea turtles to escape. But in 1996, shrimpers from India, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand appealed to the WTO, saying the U.S. law was a barrier to free trade. A WTO tribunal ruled in their favor and effectively nullified the law. The U.S. was threatened under WTO rules with economic sanctions from these four countries if it maintained its import restrictions, so in 1998 the law was repealed.

Some of the protesters whom I've interviewed believe that the majority of Americans would agree with their politics--if only they would listen. President Bush, like most of the world leaders, has been patronizing at best about the demonstrators. At the same time, many Bush initiatives--especially those regarding the environment--have energized a broad range of Americans, who have taken to the streets. In Genoa, conservative French president Jacques Chirac, mindful of the world-changing events of the Sixties in Paris, seemed to sense a growing global mood when he said, "One hundred thousand people don't get upset unless there is a problem in their hearts and spirits."

ELF Got a Match?

The Earth Liberation Front has had it with signs, puppets and petitions. It considers pollution, deforestation, urban sprawl and genetically modified foods to be sources of threat and danger. Since the first action in 1997, there have been more than two dozen acts of property destruction claimed by ELF, racking up $40 million in damages. • ELF has no network, no list of members and no central organization. It does, however, have a website. The North American Earth Liberation Front press office disseminates communiqués on exploits, which declare them official actions of ELF. It also maintains the ELF website. But it claims to have no direct connection to ELF activists, and extensive probing by the feds has yielded no incriminating information. • But the website contains, among other things, detailed and illustrated instructions on how to set fires with electrical timers. There are diagrams of different kinds of roofs and how best to ignite them. "After constructing your first timer, you'll feel the playing field shift in your favor," the site says. Some protesters have a place in their hearts for ELFers, noting that they haven't hurt anyone. But others have doubts about what ELF's tactics accomplish.

"I Don't have a Moral Problem with Property Destruction. I Think there is Probably a Place for it, but it should be Sporadic. I don't think it is Inherently wrong."--Roam Hurter, 21, an Anarchist

The grim Gloral Statistics

At the end of the 20th century, when the global financial institutions celebrated their 50th anniversaries, there were 475 billionaires in the world. Their wealth was greater than the total income of the poorest half of humanity, who number approximately 3 Billion.

Between 1960 and the Nineties, the gap in per capita income tripled between residents of developing countries and residents of industrial countries.

Developing countries owe more than $2 trillion to lenders in industrial countries, including the governments of those countries, banks, the World Bank and the IMF. The developing world has paid out five times as much capital to the industrialized world as it has received. Meanwhile, big interest payments, like the charges on credit cards, help keep poor countries poor. Typical cases include Uganda, whose government in 1996 (long after Idi Amin, who loved loans, was chased out) still paid $17 on debt repayment for every $3 it spent on health care. In 1996, 25 percent of Mozambique's children died of infectious diseases, while the country spent twice as much on debt payments as it did on health and education.

In 1995, the IMF "helped" Mexico with its peso bailout. Since then, the number of Mexicans living in poverty has increased to more than 50 percent and the minimum wage has decreased 20 percent.

Part of the problem are the structural adjustment programs, which the IMF and World Bank call "economic reforms" and which protesters call an especially destructive aspect of the loan-sharking scenario. In many African countries the "reforms" include user fees that must be paid before a family can send a child to a school or a hospital. According to the IMF and World Bank, the user fees increase efficiency. But when they became law in Ghana, 77 percent of the street children in one city dropped out of school; in Kenya, 65 percent of the women and 40 percent of the men who attended a clinic that tests for and treats STDs stopped going, a setback in the battle against AIDS.

It's a Web-Based Movement

Here are Three Favorite Websites:

Globaleschange.org Founded in 1988, Global Exchange is a nonprofit group founded by lawyers, academics and veteran activists based in San Francisco. It's an excellent source of background and current information on international trade organizations, the free trade agreements and infringements on human rights around the world. Global Exchange launches campaigns to expose injustices committed by corporations and trade organizations, and it provides information on more responsible alternatives. GX offers "Reality Tours" to about a dozen countries where participants can investigate issues facing particular regions. It also provides an online store that sells crafts, coffee and food from local producers in more than 30 countries. Commondreams.org A self-described "newe center providing breaking news and views for the progressive community," Common Dreams drews stories from wire services and progressive magazines and websites. It has a stockpile of articles and links to other news sites, and it offers a long list of authors--including Christopher Hitchens and Barbara Ehrenreich--whose articles are just a click away. Infoshop.org Infoshop is the premiere online connection to the anarchist community. The site features opinion and editorial pieces on political issues and past actions. It also offers basic information on anarchism, as well as anarchist humor, vegan cookbooks and graphics. A page called Anarchists in Trouble lists who's in jail for what, and how you can help them. There's also a link to a page of quotes from Chomsky and Thoreau.

Voices in the Crowd

Mingle with the Demonstrators at a Protest Movement Gathering and you meet a Variety of People with Strong views on Politids, the Media--and Violence

Justin Ruben 28, is a community and labor organizer and a student at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

"I think, to an alarming degree, it's still an insular movement. It's still people talking to people who look and think like them.

"The way the movement will spread is by developing leaders. Not Cesar Chavez-type leaders, but you-and-me-type leaders, people who can help motivate the people in their neighborhood or at their workplace to come together to take action on this stuff.

"If you think back to the civil rights movement, the success of a lot of its actions was a function of the discipline that people brought to those actions. They remained dignified in the face of police dogs and fire hoses, and they were able to create actions that completely communicated everything they stood for and against. That takes, some discipline. In some ways it's a much more powerful image than someone chucking a Molotov cocktail. We have to figure out a way to do that.

"Puppets and other kinds of props add an element of grace to what we're doing. It's that contrast between lines of riot cops dressed like Darth Vader and people holding puppets. Which side do you want to be on?

"The Boston Tea Party was a great example of well-warranted property destruction. What was the greater evil? It was the subjugation of the colonies. It wasn't the destruction of some tea. I'm not that worried about McDonald's windows. I don't think property destruction is getting us anywhere right now. It makes it easier for us to be portrayed in a way that people can't possibly identify with. That said, I don't believe in enforcing discipline on the group.

"We need to make sure that, as things get worse, those who are feeling the brunt of the system are in this movement, are working with us and not flocking to Pat Buchanan and Jörg Haider."

Felicia Hilton 31, lives in Denver and works for Jobs With Justice, an organization dedicated to the promotion of workers' rights. "You can't have a free market without free people. The freer the market and the more oppressed the people, the more the market corrupts itself. If the people in this country would only unplug from the matrix, they'd see that being able to buy what you want to buy isn't freedom. Buying everything you want just oppresses other people in the world. Like buying Nike shoes for 150 bucks when they're being made by someone who's paid 29 cents a day. If we could get people in this country to stop assuming that buying things is freedom, I would consider it a victory."

Roam Eidinger 28, from Pittsburgh, worked on Capitol Hill while he attended American University. He runs his own public relations firm in Washington and has helped devise some of the most dramatic political theater seen in the (continued on page 172) Voices (continued from page 78) demonstrations, from giant stilt figures with cash dripping from their pockets to a wrestling ring filled with mud on an 18-wheel flatbed truck.

"In Washington, the police are making an industry for themselves out of these protests. There are officers in DC who made $200,000 last year in overtime. They're getting rich. The police and the association of police chiefs see us as a gang. They're mistaking us for a gang.

"My attitude is the police are somewhat justified in trying to arrest people who engage in property destruction, because it is against the law and the police are supposed to enforce the law. But the police often preempt stuff before it happens. Once, they arrested 600 people the day before a protest in a lawful march.

"I believe in voting. I think it's a fundamental experience and it dominates the national political scene. If you don't vote, you're not part of that. Why can't anarchists get involved in mainstream politics? You can have an anarchist ballot and they can nominate the most ridiculous things. They could vote for anything. After a while they might get a lot more votes.

"Anarchists smash stuff. They want to smash the state, and I often agree with them. Though I'm not an anarchist, I'm close.

"It's good that anarchists get the bulk of the attention at these demonstrations, because it exposes the militancy to the whole world, that you can be militant and take part. I think that's why the Black Bloc is growing. They keep showing up at demonstrations, though they are very loosely organized. High school kids are saying, 'I'm going to join the Black Bloc because that's where the badasses go.'

"Politicians should look at these demonstrations and realize there's a growing number of people who care about this. Each protester represents hundreds of people who share the same political belief."

Terra Lawson-Remer

Terra Lawson-Remer, 23, from San Diego, has worked with the United Farm Workers Union as well as other labor organizations. On the eve of the Seattle protest in November 1999, Lawson-Remer helped found the Student Alliance to Reform Corporations. Starc's founding conference brought together 350 students from 130 universities in 40 states to draw up a declaration demanding corporate accountability and global justice.

"The fact is, I don't think many people were much more politically motivated in the Sixties. They just didn't want to get sent to Vietnam. So what would it take to create a mass movement on the scale that you saw in the Sixties? It would take people thinking they're going to get killed.

"People talk a lot about the Sixties, but I think the fair trade movement is much deeper. The critique is much deeper and the world vision for change is so much more comprehensive.

"In Seattle, there was no provocation. We were so peaceful, sitting there on the grass, and they pepper-sprayed us. They told us to move. Of course we didn't move. You have people in black uniforms with batons and shields and masks coming at you, and you feel so vulnerable. You could hear batons hitting people, hear the thud. It's like a moment of truth. How important is this to you? How important is justice? Are you going to get your ass kicked because you believe in something? So you sit and you get your ass kicked.

"I was wearing a bandanna around my face and a pair of goggles. The police officer didn't hit me. She pulled off my goggles, pulled open my eyes with her hands and sprayed pepper spray into my eyes. Then she pulled off my bandanna and sprayed right into my nose and my mouth. At this point, I was screaming in pain. I'd never felt anything so painful.

"I couldn't open my eyes for almost two hours. The rest of the day, I was messed up, everything hurt. Everything burned for days and days. I couldn't take showers because it burned so badly. My whole body was bright red for days.

"There's something intrinsically important about the shared resources we have on this planet. They're not ours to squander. They're ours to borrow. It's like taking a book out of a library. We have a responsibility--not just to the planet but to ourselves as the human race--to make sure that book gets back to the library, and right now, we're not. It's like one person is ripping all the pages out of the book because he wants it for himself. Everyone else gets screwed.

"A lot of people who make the rules are benefiting from them. The rules might be bad for most of the world, but the people who are making them are the winners."

Erik Eisenberg

Erik Eisenberg, 33, grew up in Chicago and abandoned mainstream American life right after high school. For the past 14 years, he has devoted his energies to helping underdogs, whether they be striking workers, political prisoners or the homeless. He has been arrested dozens of times, most recently for protesting and resisting forest-clearing projects in the Northwest.

"I was 19 in the late Eighties, living outside as a hippie, going to Grateful Dead shows and rainbow gatherings. Police and other authority figures were harassing me, trying to stifle my way of life. I realized that people who live outside are discriminated against, and I started to think about why.

"In the early Nineties, I started squatting, and I started to think about the earth and property and how property is dispersed and who controls it and what rights people have. I felt like if a building was sitting there empty, and then we worked on it and made it into a better place, a living place, community space I really felt like it was ours.

"A large percentage of people in the movement are from a white, middle-class American background. Coming from that background myself, I feel it's doubly important for me to challenge where I come from. Don't do this in my name. The system gives me privileges and benefits because it oppresses and causes suffering for other people.

"To boil down the message of the movement, I would say this planet is being mistreated, abused. It's up to us, especially those who benefit the most from the present system, to activate ourselves and to create positive solutions and stand up against negative policies. Nobody can do everything, but we all can do something.

"If more people realized the connection between their lifestyles and livelihoods and other peoples' suffering and not having enough, they would work more actively to stop it. I don't think most people want other people to suffer because they benefit.

"The people who are destroying our planet have been organizing for a long time in relative obscurity. I am excited that that is no longer the case--they're even having a hard time finding places to have their meetings. They should be held accountable. People should not be allowed to meet and discuss the fate of the earth and how they're going to divvy it up without a challenge.

"I am not involved in destroying things. But at the same time, I totally understand and feel solidarity with people who feel that calling.

"The real crimes being committed don't involve breaking windows or burning a research laboratory. The real crimes are being committed by multinational corporations. These are crimes against all of humanity and the earth herself. The real crimes are the destruction of the earth and people trying to monopolize the food system and modify it and take ownership of our genetic makeup. I want to support anybody who is trying to deal with those issues, and I think it's important to respect a diversity of tactics.

"But the majority of the people of the world are really suffering under this system--you know, in the billions.

"My vision is nothing short of the abolition of the U.S. government as an entity. The United States was built on genocide and slavery. That's the reality. If the roots of a tree are rotten, the tree is only going to bear rotten fruit. Some good things have come out of this whole experiment they call the United States. But I think it's far too big, and it needs to be, you know, disbanded. Communities have to empower themselves to come up with ways of working things out.

"Every empire falls. It's just a matter of when. I don't pretend to know when. People can't imagine a world in which the U.S. doesn't exist. But, you know, it's just another thing that's going to rise and fall, and I hope it doesn't take us all with it."

Adam Hurter

Adam Hurter, 21, an anarchist, left Wesleyan College after two years to become a full-time activist.

"Seattle changed my life. It really opened me up. It excited me and gave me a deep hope that is hard to put into words. I felt like I could hug any of the 50,000 people who were there with me. It completely rejuvenated me and gave me energy.

"I can speak for not liking the media, but still we have to use it. Don't hate the media, become the media.

"There's a lot of internal fighting in the movement. As soon as there's no internal fighting, man, that's when it will happen! We've got it made. We're going to steamroll to success."

Amanda Le Duke

Amanda Le Duke, 25, works with Kentucky Jobs With Justice in Louisville.

"It's a different movement than the civil rights movement. The differences are what make it OK to not have an outspoken single leader. It's going to be interesting as to whether it's sustainable or not. Social movements over time have had strong leaders. Inherent in this movement is a nonhierarchical structure and wanting to be sure that we control power. It's all about breaking down power and spreading power. A lot of sweatshop groups, for example, are hesitant to name a leader. You have to respect that because it forces people to look at different models of the way things have to operate.

"Something about the secrecy behind the FTAA negotiations really energized people. A lot of people can oppose that. If they are unsure how they feel about the trade issue, they are pretty skeptical about meetings behind closed, locked doors.

"I can't see how we can ever get the real elite, the upper class, to go along, because they're the ones benefiting from this. But having said that, that's a small number of people.

"The have-nots in this country are coming together under one banner."

Margie Klein

Margie Klein, 22, an environmental organizer for Green Corps, traveled to India to protest a World Bank-funded (and ecologically disastrous) dam project.

"Because George Bush is in office, a whole lot of people who were content to stay out of politics are now realizing that if they do that, things could happen in a way they see to be detrimental.

"It almost seems like the only way we can get attention is by destroying something or doing something that's completely counter to what we want to be doing.

"My generation has a sense that globalization is happening, and it's not happening in a responsible way. People are aware that when globalization takes its course, it doesn't protect the environment unless someone makes it. It doesn't protect workers' rights unless someone makes it.

"The decisions that these organizations--the World Bank, IMF, WTO--are making are not defensible in large part. They're profit driven. Once those organizations become accountable to the public, they're going to have to change. If that could happen, I would feel like we've won."

John Cavanagh

John Cavanagh, 46, is a director of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington and has been involved in protest movements (when he was not working for the United Nations) since he joined demonstrations against nuclear power plants and the war in Vietnam in the Seventies.

"I have met many committed young people who believe that property destruction is a viable tactic. I disagree with them, because I think it is limiting our ability to turn this into a mass movement and to appeal to the majority of the world, which, I think agrees with us on the issues. I understand what's driven them to this--and it presents us with a fascinating dilemma at this moment in the movement.

"I hold it against the police for whom it would have been easy to sweep in and arrest those people [the Black Bloc demonstrators in Seattle]. That they allowed the property destruction to go forward was, in fact, a tactic to try to discredit this broader movement. But be that as it may, having the anarchists on the cover of Newsweek, on the front page of newspapers around the world, gave impetus to those who believe that using property destruction is a viable tactic.

"There will not be one glorious day when the current order comes crashing down and we have new rules that favor workers, the environment, the poor. Rather, what we will see is a period of stalemate, punctuated by concrete victories on our side--such as a defeat of the pharmaceutical industry--that provide real gains for ordinary people who've been hurt by the system."

Choose the World not the Bank

Celebrities such as Muhammad Ali, Ewan McGregor, Bono and Thom Yorke have championed the cause of debt relief for several years. But for all the positive attention Bono and others have brought to the movement, the media have covered violence more than they have investigated the economic issues behind the protests. Most people in the movement, especially after Genoa, remain nonviolent, inclusionary and nonhierarchical. That means that the Black Bloc, the young, masked men and women clad in black, are as welcome in marches as anyone else. Protesters may deplore the property destruction Black Bloc and assorted anarchists have perpetrated, but to condemn them is to violate a movement taboo. After Carlo Giuliani was killed, Italian police raided two buildings, including a schoolhouse, where some organizers and journalists were housed. The police wrecked computers and beat the activists. Violent police and a violent minority of demonstrators could lead to more blood in the future.

A Letter From The Sixties

Jack Newfield, who chronicled the protests of 40 years ago in "A Prophetic Minority," offers today's demonstrators some hard-won wisdom:

You are the seeds of the future. You are the carrier of the DNA gene for direct action. You have the audacity, fearlessness and intransigence to end 30 years of apathy.

So, please, don't blow it. Don't repeat the mistakes we made at the close of the Sixties.

Don't surrender to violence. Don't see the liberal ethic of reason, tolerance, diversity and civility as the enemy. Don't hate America. Believe in democracy and voting rights. Listen to ordinary Americans. Be clear about your goals, agendas and priorities--about what you want.

During the Sixties there were only a few older radicals who were willing to tell us the things we did not want to hear, who didn't patronize us or pander to us. Norman Mailer, I.F. Stone and Allen Ginsberg respected u enough to join us when we were right, and disagree when we were wrong. I hope you take my reflections in the spirit of these wise old owls, who tutored us on the road to Selma and the path to the Pentagon.

First, some of the things that I admire about your movement.

It's young and activist. You do, you don't theorize. You are absolutely right in your focus on secretive, unaccountable international institutions--the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, You are ripping off their fig leafs of respectability, and their myths of genteel, do-good objectivity. You are right about debt relief, and preserving the air, water and soil. You are right to focus on corporate power as the subverter of democracy and as the reason the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, all over the world. You are wise to talk about sweatshops, and to seek a living wage for every worker on the planet.

cont'd next page

I like your ambition, your utopianism, your inclusiveness, your internationalism.

But on the deficit side, I see, that your movement is almost all white. I don't hear a practical, coherent program that can take us to the frontier of the possible. I see the violent fringe breaking windows, fighting police and alienating the middle class. No American movement will become a truly mass movement, a majoritarian movement, if the middle class is opposed to it. You know TV will always emphasize the vandalism and violence, at the expense of your message.

The country, the Congress and the Supreme Court are evenly divided. One Senate election, five House seats can determine fate and history. Elect some of your own to Congress. The Supreme Court selected Bush as president because he had 537 more certified votes in Florida, out of 6 million cast in that state and over 100 million cast nationally. If last year proved anything, it is that every vote counts. And 100 million nonvoters were wrong.

Let me give you my take on what happened in the Sixties. We were admass-movement for a while. About 250,000 people assembled in Washington on August 28,1963, in a march for "jobs and freedom." Martin Luther King, the unquestioned leader of that mass movement, gave his epic "I Have a Dream" speech that afternoon. His warm-up acts were Bob Dylan, Mahalia Jackson, Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary. Populist protest and insurgent popular culture came together that day. The crowd was white and black, and nobody got arrested. The march had the feel of a spiritual celebration. That's what made the middle class comfortable converts to the cause of racial justice.

You need to understand that Dr. King was the central figure of the Sixties, the one great leader who comes along once in a century. I don't expect your movement to produce another King anytime soon, but you do need identifiable leaders who can make decisions, and articulate what you want, on television. King believed in nonviolence, democracy, integration and economic equality. He was the main reason legal segregation ended in the South, the Voting Rights Act was enacted and millions of blacks were empowered. King was America's Gandhi. He was also a patriot who embraced America's founding creed, and its refinements by Lincoln and FDR. When King spoke, he seemed to be channeling both Jefferson and scripture. I urge you to study his speeches.

We had a pure, contagious idealism from 1960 till 1967, when the frustrations of the Vietnam War and a misreading of the ghetto riots diverted our movement in the direction of violence, nihilism and an invincibly stupid anti-Americanism. At the moment the middle class was finally turning against the Vietnam War, the New Left turned against the middle class. By the end of the Sixties, the New Left had descended into a fever of madness.

Polls showed that most Americans identified with the police, not the demonstrators, after the chaos at the 1968 Chicago convention. Richard Nixon was elected president. And all the while, the Weathermen and other dying embers of the movement thought they were a "revolutionary vanguard."

Frustration over our failure to stop the Vietnam War, and the politics of tantrum, led to an infatuation with violence. And the violence bred a backlash that nourished Nixon and George Wallace.

I hope you develop the patience for the long march through the existing institutions. I hope you become immune to the virus of fanaticism, because fanaticism kills reason, flexibility and the capacity for complexity in thinking.

I hope you become more disciplined in rejecting violence. Real violence is not some benign form of street theater. Violence is sickening. I was on the bloody march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. I was a few feet away from Robert Kennedy when he was assassinated. I was tearhgassed by the police in Chicago. Don't play with violence. It will devour hope and dehumanize you.

You have already shattered the silence. Enjoy participatory democracy! Forge coalitions, reach out to blacks and Latinos, register voters and change the world.

Jack Newfield