The Carnival Against Capital took place on Friday 18 June 1999. It was an international day of protest (also known as J18) timed to coincide with the 25th G8 summit in Cologne, Germany. The carnival was inspired by the 1980s Stop the Cityprotests, Peoples' Global Action and the Global Street Party, which happened at the same time as the 1998 24th G8 Summit in Birmingham. The rallying slogan was Our Resistance is as Transnational as Capital.
In London, a spoof newspaper was produced, alongside other publicity. The day itself featured a Critical Mass and an action by the Campaign Against Arms Trade, before a large march converged in different streams upon the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange
for a street party. Globally there were protests in over 40 cities,
including Barcelona, Montevideo, Port Harcourt and San Francisco. Using
then new technology, the protests were reported on the internet by
independent media activists from London and Sydney, in a step towards
the Indymedia network.
Context
In 1983 and 1984, Stop the City demonstrations in London had attempted to blockade the City of London. In planning to contest the 25th G8 summit in Germany, activists connected through Peoples' Global Action
decided to make a network of global protests. Preparations took many
months and the day became known as simply J18. Groups involved included
labour, environmentalist, feminist, anti-capitalist, animal rights and
anarchist.
In London, the open organising group met every month. The day was also discussed in the open weekly meetings of London Reclaim the Streets. There were between 30 and 100 people at these discussions. The slogan for the event became Our Resistance is as Transnational as Capital. An international email discussion list was set up. Fund-raising was carried out by collecting anonymous donations and running a series of benefit gigs. A contributor to the Days of Dissent
magazine later wrote: "There is only so much that can be learned from
how J18 was organised. J18 and the many other successful anti-capitalist
events in recent history were produced by a free flowing convergence of
events and political currents combined with sheer luck."
RTS flyer for J18
In London, a concerted publicity campaign was carried out, using
colourful stickers and 10,000 posters. Workers were encouraged to phone
in sick. An eighteen-minute promotional video was made and distributed
globally. Squaring up to the Square Mile was a 32-page pamphlet produced by Reclaim the Streets and Corporate Watch which gave details of financial institutions. An A3 map of the City of London (the "Square Mile") showed where they were located. 4,000 copies were produced.
On 29 January 1999 the Daily Mirror
ran a full-page article entitled "Police spy bid to smash the anti-car
protesters." Closer to the day, stories abounded in the media about
possible violent scenarios. All leave was cancelled for City of London Police officers on 18 June. The Corporation of London wrote to companies warning of disruption and suggesting extra security measures.
A spoof version of the Evening Standard daily newspaper called Evading Standards
was produced. 30,000 copies of were printed and distributed to City
workers on 17 and 18 June. The cover resembled the layout of the actual
newspaper and the inner pages contained agitprop
and humorous articles. The newspaper was handed out for free. The
headline read 'Global Market Meltdown', followed by a spoof report of
the collapse of the world's financial markets.
Carnival masks were distributed in four different colours, namely
green, gold, black and red. On the inside of the masks, the following
text was written:
Those in authority fear the mask
for their power partly resides in identifying, stamping and cataloguing:
in knowing who you are. But a Carnival needs masks, thousands of
masks...Masking up releases our commonality, enables us to act
together...During the last years the power of money has presented a new
mask over its criminal face. Disregarding borders, with no importance
given to race or colours, the power of money humiliates dignities,
insults honesties and assassinates hopes. On the signal follow your
colour. Let the Carnival begin...
Five processions set off in different directions (there were four marches planned and another occurred spontaneously). The spontaneous procession erupted in anger at London Wall when a woman was hit by a reversing police van and had her leg broken.
Between two and three o'clock, the marches came together and an estimated 5,000 people converged on the London International Financial Futures Exchange (LIFFE). A fire hydrant was set off, symbolising the freeing of the Walbrook river, and the lower entrance to the LIFFE was bricked up. Banners were hung, reading Global Ecology Not Global Economy, and The Earth Is A Common Treasury For All, the latter a quote from Gerrard Winstanley of the seventeenth century Diggers movement. Graffiti messages were sprayed and CCTV cameras were disabled. Then sound systems set up and drum & bass music and punk bands played.
In the early afternoon a small group of protesters broke into the
Cannon Bridge building, smashed up the reception area and tried to
access the LIFFE trading floor, but were prevented by a security screen.
We'd failed in our under-ambition.
Unprepared, we never imagined we could get so close to occupying a
trading floor in one of the City’s major exchanges. We'd planned the
wall, and built it. We'd planned to free the Walbrook, and done it. But
we’d stopped short of planning a full-scale occupation.
— "Wat Tyler"
The rest of the afternoon became a battle as police using horses and personal incapacitant spray containing CS gas pushed the protesters down Lower Thames Street and out of the City of London. In the aftermath, protesters gathered peacefully in Trafalgar Square.
Global
Writing in Z magazine,
Katherine Ainger described the global protests, which were "as diverse
as the groups taking part". There were street parties in Barcelona and San Francisco. Politician Kim Beazley was custard pied in Melbourne for participating in a conference set up by Shell, whilst in Sydney there was another street party. In Nigeria, 10,000 people took to the streets of Port Harcourt and blockaded the Royal Dutch Shell offices. A street was renamed in honour of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his younger brother Owens addressed the crowd. A march shut down the stock exchange in Montevideo, Uruguay and ended with the burning of a model television set.
In total there were protests worldwide in 40 countries, in cities
including Tel Aviv, Minsk, Madrid, Valencia, Prague, Hamburg, Cologne,
Milan, Rome, Siena, Florence, Ancona, Amsterdam, Glasgow, Edinburgh,
Lancaster, Zurich, Geneva, Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, Washington D.C.,
New York, Los Angeles, Austin (Texas), Boston, and Eugene (Oregon).
Internet coverage
The event was covered by live streaming and internet citizen journalism,
which at the time were both new technologies. In London, the day's
events were transmitted live over the internet. In Australia, a team
worked to create all day coverage, collecting stories, photos and videos
from activists and publishing them in a news feed. The global activist teamwork formed the basis of what would become the Indymedia network.
Aftermath
In the United Kingdom, a total of sixteen people were arrested on the day. The Metropolitan Police
made a website listing 138 photographs of those wanted for further
questioning. Using CCTV footage extensively, they had arrested a further
50 people one year on. A protester pleaded guilty in January 2004 to Section 20 unlawful wounding (grievous bodily harm) and two violent disorder charges, plus an additional charge of skipping bail in 2000. He received a 4+1⁄2-year sentence. In Eugene, Oregon Rob Thaxton was sentenced to 88 months in jail after throwing a rock at a police officer while trying to avoid being arrested.
On 23 June 1999 Undercurrents,
the alternative news organisation, premiered a 30-minute documentary in
Oxford about the day produced from the pooled footage of a dozen video
operators in London. The documentary was shown at festivals and social
centres all over the UK during the following months.
A pamphlet entitled Reflections on June 18 with 18 contributions was published in October 1999.
A comic history of the day was produced by SchNEWS.
Peoples' Global Action demonstrators in Prague in September 2000.
Peoples' Global Action (PGA) was the name of a
worldwide co-ordination of radical social movements, grassroots
campaigns and direct actions in resistance to capitalism and for social and environmental justice. PGA was part of the anti-globalization movement.
The Zapatistas called for a gathering, called an 'encuentro'
(encounter), of international grassroots movements to meet in specially
constructed arenas in the Chiapas jungle to discuss common tactics,
problems and solutions. Six thousand people attended, from over 40
countries, and declared that they would form "a collective network of
all our particular struggles and resistances... an intercontinental
network of resistance against neoliberalism... (and) for humanity".
In August 1997, the European Zapatista support network called for a Second 'Encuentro' in Spain,
which it had planned with the Zapatistas during the 1996 encuentro.
Delegates came again of movements from around the world, such as the BrazilianLandless Workers' Movement (MST) who occupies unused land to create farms, and the other Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha-KRRS (Karnataka State Farmers Association) from India, renowned for their "cremate Monsanto" campaign, which involved burning fields of genetically modified crops. Here some of the primary objectives and organisational principles of the emerging network were drafted.
In February 1998, movements from all continents met again, this time in Geneva, where Peoples' Global Action was launched.
Horizontalist Structure and Organizing Model
The
PGA used a horizontalist form of organizing, influenced by anarchist
political models that saw the means and the ends as aligned. In part its structure and mode of organizing was developed as a critique of ‘vertical’ or authoritarian movements.
Major activities
Peoples'
Global Action had three main types of activities. Global Days of
Action, Intercontinental/International and Regional Conferences, and
Caravans through which activists from one part of the world, would
travel to another part of the world to build solidarity.
Global Days of Action
So
far, PGA's major function has been to serve as a political space for
coordinating decentralised Global Action Days around the world, to
highlight the global resistance of popular movements to capitalist
globalisation. The first Global Action Days, during the 2nd WTO ministerial conference in Geneva in May 1998, involved tens of thousands of people in more than 60 demonstrations and street parties on five continents.
Groups
involved in PGA have also organised global and regional conferences,
workshops and other events in many regions of the world. Since the 1998
event in Geneva, Global PGA conferences have been held before WTO ministerials: in Bangalore, India (1999), and in Cochabamba, Bolivia
(2001).
Regional Conferences have been held in Europe (Athens, Milan, Belgrade,
Barcelona, Dijon, Leiden), Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Brazil,
Bangladesh, New Zealand (Aotearoa) and the United States.
European Conference in 2008
A Peoples' Global Action gathering in Europe took place from August 19 to September 3, in France,
in a decentralised fashion in 2006. The first nine days were
distributed over five sites, each with specific themes, while the last
five days took place in a central location, the autonomous space « Les
Tanneries » in Dijon.
Caravans
In
1999, the PGA organized an Intercontinental Caravan that brought 450
representatives of grassroots movements from the Global South
(particularly India, but also Brazil, Mexico, Bangladesh and Chile) to
visit 12 European countries, meet with grassroots European movements and
conduct joint solidarity actions. The "Totally Crazy Project" was initiated by MD Nanjundaswamy
and European activists.
An interview with an Indian participant from Karnataka Rajya Raitha
Sangha
(KRRS), explained,
"We took part in 63 direct actions and 85 public meetings, and visited
38 farms ending at the G8 summit in Köln, Germany. In France we uprooted
a GM rice trial with René Riesel and José Bové of the radical Confédération Paysanne (French Farmers Union), who were arrested and
sentenced to 6 months imprisonment. In Geneva we marched at the WTO office,
shouting “Kill the WTO”. In Rome we protested at the FAO headquarters, and at the G8
Summit in Germany we engaged in a laughing protest as part of a global day of action."
In 1999, there were two caravans of activists in the leadup to the anti-World Trade Organization (WTO) conference in Seattle One travelled across the U.S., including activists from Chiapas, Mexico, the other across Canada. The later ended at the congress organised by the non-partisan International Forum on Globalisation, described by De Fabel van de illegaal as a right-wing elite think tank.
Criticism
Right Wing Anti-Globalization
The
first version of the first PGA hallmark called for "A very clear
rejection of the WTO and other trade liberalisation agreements (like
APEC, the EU, NAFTA, etc.) as active promoters of a socially and
environmentally destructive globalisation;)"
This was critiqued for being too broad, and allowing the participation
of right wing/nationalist movements within the PGA. Some criticized the
participation of Mike Dolan, who worked for Ralph Nader's Public Citizen
consumer watchdog group, who raised funds for the PGA Caravan, and who
later spoke in support of the right-wing presidential candidate Pat Buchanan.
Dolan sent around a newspaper article in which Buchanan openly says:
"American workers and people first." When Dolan's actions and viewpoint
were criticised from the grassroots level, Michael Morrill, the
coordinator of the American PGA caravan, took his side. "Let's work
together when we can, work in parallel when we must, but never work
against each other when our goal is the elimination of the WTO and its
corporate benefactors."
As a result, the PGA Hallmarks were edited in order to make
opposition to capitalism, colonialism, racism and patriarchy more
explicit.
Nonetheless, until at least 2004, PGA events continued to attract
right wing anti-globalist activists. The 2004 European PGA conference
in Jajinci, Belgrade agreed that "a fascist
coming as an interested individual, respecting the hallmarks and whose
behaviour during the conference was fine wouldn't be a problem." Although a rider was subsequently added, this controversy was fuelled by the sympathies held by Leonid Savin (the co-ordinator of the Ukraine PGA info-point) with politics of Alexander Dugin. After Savin was shown to be an activist associated with the Eurasia Party, the PGA Ukraine info-point was removed from the PGA website. See also National anarchism.
Racism
The PGA,
like the global justice movement more generally, was criticized for
racism and Eurocentrism. One important intervention argued that people of color were marginalized in the Seattle mobilisation against the World Trade Organization.
In 2001, Raj Patel and Kala Subbuswamy discussed the problem of groups like the PGA in dealing with issues of race:
The principles of decentralisation and autonomy adopted by many
within radical movements can also, unintentionally and remediably, be
exclusionary. Many radical groups have anarchist principles behind them -
non-hierarchical, consensus decision-making, often no formal structure.
One problem with this is that it is often used to dismiss talk of what
'the movement' can do about issues of race and gender, on the grounds
that we're not a movement, we're a collection of individuals and so we
can't make decisions about the 'movement'. But UK EF!, or Peoples' Global Action, for example *are* movements, or at least networks with informal hierarchies and structures
and unwritten rules. Every action involves a decision and a choice and
it is important that these are open. For example, saying that we cannot
exclude fascists from gatherings involves a choice - if people are
allowed to say overtly racist comments, you exclude people of color, or
at least prevent any chance of us feeling comfortable. This why at its
last conference made explicit moves to overtly condemn discrimination
In 2002, Maria Theresa Santana, Chairperson of Moyo wa Taifa (UK) -
Pan-Afrikan Women's Association attended the European PGA Conference in Leiden and expressed her anger at the Eurocentric standpoint of the PGA discussions.
At the PGA regional conference in Panama
(August 2003), further concerns were raised that despite
anti-hierarchical intentions, a leadership was emerging which only
occasionally "got down the informations to their bases", that decisions
were being made by meetings in Europe
"that Europeans were imposing their political reality and way to work",
and that prominent activists were promoting sexist attitudes rooted in
religious fundamentalism.
Participating organizations
The following organizations were amongst those who participated in PGA conferences, caravans or global days of action.
Bolivia -
Coordinadora Defensa del Agua y la Vida,
COCAMTROP (El Comité de Coordinación de las seis Federaciones Campesinas
de los Trópicos), Confederación Latinoamericana de Trabajadoras del
Hogar.(FENATRAHOB)
Colombia - El Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN), SINTRAEMCALI Sindicato de Trabajadores de las Empresas Municipales de Cali (Workers Union of Cali Municipal Enterprises);
Participants base their criticisms on a number of related ideas. What is shared is that participants oppose large, multinational corporations having unregulated political power, exercised through trade agreements
and deregulated financial markets. Specifically, corporations are
accused of seeking to maximize profit at the expense of work safety
conditions and standards, labour hiring and compensation standards,
environmental conservation principles, and the integrity of national
legislative authority, independence and sovereignty. Some commentators
have variously characterized changes in the global economy as
"turbo-capitalism" (Edward Luttwak), "market fundamentalism" (George Soros), "casino capitalism" (Susan Strange), and as "McWorld" (Benjamin Barber).
Supporters believe that by the late 20th century those they
characterized as "ruling elites" sought to harness the expansion of
world markets for their own interests; this combination of the Bretton Woods institutions, states, and multinational corporations has been called "globalization"
or "globalization from above." In reaction, various social movements
emerged to challenge their influence; these movements have been called
"anti-globalization," "alter-globalization" or "globalization from below."
Opposition to international financial institutions and transnational corporations
People opposing globalization believe that international agreements and global financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization,
undermine local decision-making. Corporations that use these
institutions to support their own corporate and financial interests, can
exercise privileges that individuals and small businesses cannot, including the ability to:
The movement aims for an end to the legal status of "corporate personhood" and the dissolution of free market fundamentalism and the radical economic privatization measures of the World Bank, the IMF, and the World Trade Organization.
Activists are especially opposed to the various abuses which they
think are perpetuated by globalization and the international
institutions that, they say, promote neoliberalism without regard to ethical standards or environmental protection. Common targets include the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) and free trade treaties like the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the Trans Pacific Trade Agreement (TPPA), the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the World Economic Forum
(WEF). In light of the economic gap between rich and poor countries,
adherents of the movement claim that free trade without measures to
protect the environment and the health and wellbeing of workers will
merely increase the power of industrialized nations (often termed the
"North" in opposition to the developing world's "South"). Proponents of
this line of thought refer to the process as polarization and argue that
current neo-liberal economic policies have given wealthier states an
advantage over developing nations, enabling their exploitation and
leading to a widening of the global wealth gap.
A report by Jean Ziegler, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food,
notes that "millions of farmers are losing their livelihoods in the
developing countries, but small farmers in the northern countries are
also suffering" and concludes that "the current inequities of the global
trading system are being perpetuated rather than resolved under the
WTO, given the unequal balance of power between member countries."
Activists point to the unequal footing and power between developed and
developing nations within the WTO and with respect to global trade,
most specifically in relation to the protectionist policies towards
agriculture enacted in many developed countries. These activists also
point out that heavy subsidization of developed nations' agriculture and
the aggressive use of export subsidies by some developed nations to
make their agricultural products more attractive on the international
market are major causes of declines in the agricultural sectors of many
developing nations.
Through the Internet, a movement began to develop in opposition to the doctrines of neoliberalism which were widely manifested in the 1990s when the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) proposed liberalization of cross-border investment and trade restrictions through its Multilateral Agreement on Investment
(MAI). This treaty was prematurely exposed to public scrutiny and
subsequently abandoned in November 1998 in the face of strenuous protest
and criticism by national and international civil society representatives.
The neoliberal position argued that free trade
and reduction of public-sector regulation would bring benefits to poor
countries and to disadvantaged people in rich countries.
Anti-globalization advocates urge that preservation of the natural
environment, human rights (especially workplace rights and conditions)
and democratic institutions are likely to be placed at undue risk by
globalization unless mandatory standards are attached to liberalization.
Noam Chomsky stated in 2002 that:
The term "globalization" has been
appropriated by the powerful to refer to a specific form of
international economic integration, one based on investor rights, with
the interests of people incidental. That is why the business press, in
its more honest moments, refers to the "free trade agreements" as "free
investment agreements" (Wall St. Journal). Accordingly, advocates of
other forms of globalization are described as "anti-globalization"; and
some, unfortunately, even accept this term, though it is a term of propaganda
that should be dismissed with ridicule. No sane person is opposed to
globalization, that is, international integration. Surely not the left
and the workers movements, which were founded on the principle of
international solidarity—that is, globalization in a form that attends
to the rights of people, not private power systems.
By 2002, many parts of the movement showed wide opposition to the impending invasion of Iraq.
Many participants were among those 11 million or more protesters that
on the weekend of February 15, 2003, participated in global protests against the imminent Iraq war. Other anti-war demonstrations were organized
by the antiglobalization movement: see for example the large
demonstration, organized against the impending war in Iraq, which closed
the first European Social Forum in November 2002 in Florence, Italy.
Anti-globalization militants worried for a proper functioning of
democratic institutions as the leaders of many democratic countries (Spain, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom) were acting against the wishes of the majorities of their populations in supporting the war. Chomsky asserted that these leaders "showed their contempt for democracy". Critics of this type of argument have tended to point out that this is just a standard criticism of representative democracy
— a democratically elected government will not always act in the
direction of greatest current public support — and that, therefore,
there is no inconsistency in the leaders' positions given that these
countries are parliamentary democracies.
The economic and military issues are closely linked in the eyes of many within the movement.
Appropriateness of the term
The
movement has no singular name, chiefly because it has no singular
leader or consensus to give it one. It has been called a variety of
names based on its general advocation for social change, justice, and
radical activism, and its general opposition to capitalism, neoliberalism,
and corporate globalization. Activists also resisted using a name
conferred by corporate media to smear the intention of their protests.
Some activists were also not necessarily against globalization.
Many participants (see Noam Chomsky's quotes above) consider the term "anti-globalization" to be a misnomer. The term suggests that its followers support protectionism and/or nationalism,
which is not always the case – in fact, some supporters of
anti-globalization are strong opponents of both nationalism and
protectionism: for example, the No Border network
argues for unrestricted migration and the abolition of all national
border controls. S. A. Hamed Hosseini (an Australian sociologist and
expert in global social movement studies), argues that the term
anti-globalization can be ideal-typically used only to refer to only one
ideological vision he detects alongside three other visions (the anti-globalist, the alter-globalist and the alter-globalization). He argues that the three latter ideal-typical visions can be categorized under the title of global justice movement.
According to him, while the first two visions (the alter-globalism and
the anti-globalism) represent the reconstructed forms of old and new
left ideologies, respectively, in the context of current globalization,
only the third one has shown the capacity to respond more effectively to
the intellectual requirements of today's global complexities. Underlying this vision is a new conception of justice, coined accommodative justice by Hosseini, a new approach towards cosmopolitanism (transversal cosmopolitanism), a new mode of activist knowledge (accommodative consciousness), and a new format of solidarity, interactive solidarity.
Some activists, notably David Graeber, see the movement as opposed instead to neoliberalism or "corporate globalization".
He argues that the term "anti-globalization" is a term coined by the
media, and that radical activists are actually more in favor of
globalization, in the sense of "effacement of borders and the free
movement of people, possessions and ideas" than are the IMF or WTO. He
also notes that activists use the terms "globalization movement" and
"anti-globalization movement" interchangeably, indicating the confusion
of the terminology. The term "alter-globalization" has been used to make
this distinction clear.
While the term "anti-globalization" arose from the movement's opposition to free-trade agreements (which have often been considered part of something called "globalization"),
various participants contend they are opposed to only certain aspects
of globalization and instead describe themselves, at least in
French-speaking organizations, as "anti-capitalist", "anti-plutocracy," or "anti-corporate." Le Monde Diplomatique's editor, Ignacio Ramonet's, expression of "the one-way thought" (pensée unique) became slang against neoliberal policies and the Washington consensus.
Nationalist opposition against globalization
The term "anti-globalization" does not distinguish the international leftist anti-globalization position from a strictly nationalist anti-globalization position. Many nationalist movements, such as the FrenchNational Front, Austrian Freedom Party, the Italian Lega Nord, the GreekGolden Dawn or the National Democratic Party of Germany are opposed to globalization, but argue that the alternative to globalization is the protection of the nation-state. Other groups, influenced by the Third Position, are also classifiable as anti-globalization. However, their overall world view is rejected by groups such as Peoples Global Action and anti-fascist movements such as antifa. In response, the nationalist movements against globalization argue that the leftist anti-globalization position is actually support for alter-globalization.
Influences
Arundhati RoyAnti-WEF graffiti in Lausanne. The writing reads: La croissance est une folie ("Growth is madness").
Several influential critical works have inspired the anti-globalization movement. No Logo, the book by the Canadian journalist Naomi Klein who criticized the production practices of multinational corporations and the omnipresence of brand-driven marketing in popular culture, has become "manifesto"
of the movement, presenting in a simple way themes more accurately
developed in other works. In India some intellectual references of the
movement can be found in the works of Vandana Shiva, an ecologist and feminist, who in her book Biopiracy documents the way that the natural capital of indigenous peoples and ecoregions is converted into forms of intellectual capital, which are then recognized as exclusive commercial property without sharing the private utility thus derived. The writer Arundhati Roy is famous for her anti-nuclear position and her activism against India's massive hydroelectric dam project, sponsored by the World Bank. In France the well-known monthly paper Le Monde Diplomatique has advocated the antiglobalization cause and an editorial of its director Ignacio Ramonet brought about the foundation of the association ATTAC. Susan George of the Transnational Institute
has also been a long-term influence on the movement, as the writer of
books since 1986 on hunger, debt, international financial institutions
and capitalism. The works of Jean Ziegler, Christopher Chase-Dunn, and Immanuel Wallerstein
have detailed underdevelopment and dependence in a world ruled by the
capitalist system. Pacifist and anti-imperialist traditions have
strongly influenced the movement. Critics of United States foreign policy such as Noam Chomsky, Susan Sontag, and anti-globalist pranksters The Yes Men are widely accepted inside the movement.
Although they may not recognize themselves as antiglobalists and
are pro-capitalism, some economists who don't share the neoliberal
approach of international economic institutions have strongly influenced
the movement. Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom (Nobel Prize in Economics,
1999), argues that third world development must be understood as the
expansion of human capability, not simply the increase in national
income per capita, and thus requires policies attuned to health and
education, not simply GDP. James Tobin's (winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics) proposal for a tax on financial transactions (called, after him, the Tobin tax) has become part of the agenda of the movement. Also, George Soros, Joseph E. Stiglitz (another Economic Sciences Nobel prize winner, formerly of the World Bank, author of Globalization and Its Discontents) and David Korten have made arguments for drastically improving transparency, for debt relief, land reform, and restructuring corporate accountability systems. Korten and Stiglitz's contribution to the movement include involvement in direct actions and street protest.
In some Roman Catholic countries such as Italy there have been religious influences, especially from missionaries who have spent a long time in the Third World (the most famous being Alex Zanotelli).
Internet sources and free-information websites, such as Indymedia, are a means of diffusion of the movement's ideas. The vast array of material on spiritual movements, anarchism, libertarian socialism and the Green Movement that is now available on the Internet has been perhaps more influential than any printed book.
Although over the past years more emphasis has been given to the
construction of grassroots alternatives to (capitalist) globalization,
the movement's largest and most visible mode of organizing remains mass
decentralized campaigns of direct action and civil disobedience. This
mode of organizing, sometimes under the banner of the Peoples' Global Action
network, tries to tie the many disparate causes together into one
global struggle.
In many ways the process of organizing matters overall can be more
important to activists than the avowed goals or achievements of any
component of the movement.
At corporate summits, the stated goal of most demonstrations is
to stop the proceedings. Although the demonstrations rarely succeed in
more than delaying or inconveniencing the actual summits, this motivates
the mobilizations and gives them a visible, short-term purpose. This
form of publicity is expensive in police time and the public purse.
Rioting has occurred at some protests, for instance in Genoa, Seattle
and London – and extensive damage was done to the area, especially
targeting corporations, including McDonald's and Starbucks restaurants.
Despite, or perhaps because of, the lack of formal coordinating
bodies, the movement manages to successfully organize large protests on a
global basis, using information technology to spread information and organize. Protesters organize themselves into "affinity groups,"
typically non-hierarchical groups of people who live close together and
share a common political goal. Affinity groups will then send
representatives to planning meetings. However, because these groups can
be infiltrated 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 during the anti-IMF and World Bank protests in September 2000
demonstrators split into three distinct groups, approaching the
conference center from three directions: one engaging in various forms
of civil disobedience (the Yellow march), one (the Pink/Silver march)
advancing through "tactical frivolity"
(costume, dance, theatre, music, and artwork), and one (the Blue march)
engaging in violent conflicts with the baton-armed police, with the
protesters throwing 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. In the US, some organizations like the National Lawyer's Guild and, to a lesser extent, the American Civil Liberties Union,
provide legal witnesses in case of law enforcement confrontation.
Protesters often claim that major media outlets do not properly report
on them; therefore, some of them created the Independent Media Center, a collective of protesters reporting on the actions as they happen.
The Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, that took place in West Berlin in 1988, saw strong protests that can be categorized as a precursor of the anti-globalization movement. One of the main and failed objectives (as it was to be so many times in the future) was to derail the meetings.
Paris89
A
counter summit against G7 was organized in Paris in July 1989. The event
was called "ça suffit comme ça" ("that is enough") and principally
aimed at cancelling the debt contracted by southern countries. A
demonstration gathered 10,000 people and an important concert was held
in la Bastille square with 200,000 people. It was the first anti-G7
event, fourteen years before that of Washington. The main political
consequence was that France took position to favor debt cancellation.
Madrid94
The 50th anniversary of the IMF and the World Bank, which was celebrated in Madrid in October 1994, was the scene of a protest by an ad hoc coalition of what would later be called anti-globalization movements.
Starting from the mid-1990s, Annual Meetings of the IMF and the World
Bank Group have become center points for anti-globalization movement
protests. They tried to drown the bankers' parties in noise from outside
and held other public forms of protest under the motto "50 Years is
Enough". While Spanish King Juan Carlos was addressing the participants in a huge exhibition hall, two Greenpeace activists climbed to the top and showered the attendants with fake dollar bills carrying the slogan "No $s for Ozone Layer Destruction". A number of the demonstrators were sent to the notorious Carabanchel prison.
J18
One of the
first international anti-globalization protests was organized in dozens
of cities around the world on June 18, 1999, with those in London and Eugene, Oregon most often noted. The drive was called the Carnival Against Capital, or J18 for short. The day coincided with the 25th G8 Summit in Cologne, Germany. The protest in Eugene turned into a riot where local anarchists drove police out of a small park. One anarchist, Robert Thaxton, was arrested and convicted of throwing a rock at a police officer.
The second major mobilization of the movement, known as N30, occurred
on November 30, 1999, when protesters blocked delegates' entrance to
WTO meetings in Seattle, Washington, 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 other unauthorized marches by assorted affinity groups who converged around the Convention Center. The protesters and Seattle riot police clashed in the streets after police fired tear gas at demonstrators who blocked the streets and refused to disperse. Over 600 protesters were arrested and thousands were injured. Three policemen were injured by friendly fire,
and one by a thrown rock. Some protesters destroyed the windows of
storefronts of businesses owned or franchised 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 of 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.
In April 2000, around 10,000 to 15,000 protesters demonstrated at the IMF, and World Bank meeting (official numbers are not tallied). International Forum on Globalization (IFG) held training at Foundry United Methodist Church.
Police raided the Convergence Center, which was the staging warehouse
and activists' meeting hall on Florida Avenue on April 15.
The day before the larger protest scheduled on April 16, a smaller
group of protesters demonstration against the Prison-Industrial Complex
in the District of Columbia. Mass arrests were conducted; 678 people
were arrested on April 15. Three-time Pulitzer Prize winning, The Washington Post photographer Carol Guzy was detained by police and arrested on April 15, and two journalists for the Associated Press also reported being struck by police with batons.
On April 16 and 17 the demonstrations and street actions around the IMF
that followed, the number of those arrested grew to 1,300 people. A class action lawsuit was filed for false arrest. In June 2010, the class action suit for the April 15 events called 'Becker, et al. v. District of Columbia, et al.' were settled, with $13.7 million damages awarded.
Washington, D.C., 2002
In
September 2002, estimated number of 1,500 to 2,000 people gathered to
demonstrate against the Annual Meetings of IMF and World Bank in the
streets of Washington, D.C. Protesting groups included the Anti-Capitalist Convergence, the Mobilization for Global Justice.
649 people were reported arrested, five were charged with destruction
of property, while the others were charged with parading without a
permit, or failing to obey police orders to disperse.At least 17 reporters were in the round-up. Protestors sued in Federal Court about the arrests. The D.C. Attorney General had outside counsel investigate apparent destruction of evidence, and forensic investigations continue, and the testimony of the Chief of Police. In 2009, the city agreed to pay $8.25 million to almost 400 protesters and bystanders to end a class-action lawsuit over kettling and mass arrests in Pershing Park during 2002 World Bank protests
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
preparations for the use of force to remove protesters.
At the site of some of the protests, police have used tear gas,
pepper spray, concussion grenades, rubber and wooden bullets, night
sticks, water cannons, dogs, and horses to repel the protesters. After the November 2000 G20 protest in Montreal,
at which many protesters were beaten, trampled, and arrested in what
was intended to be a festive protest, the tactic of dividing protests
into "green" (permitted), "yellow" (not officially permitted but with
little confrontation and low risk of arrest), and "red" (involving
direct confrontation) zones was introduced.
In Quebec City, municipal officials built a 3-metre (10 ft) high wall around the portion of the city where the Summit of the Americas was being held, which only residents, delegates to the summit, and certain accredited journalists were allowed to pass through.
Gothenburg
Attack of police during the riots in Gothenburg, June 15, 2001
On June 15 and 16, 2001, a strong demonstration took place in Göteborg during the meeting of the European Council in the Swedish city, coinciding with protests against the simultaneous visit by George W Bush. Clashes between police and protestors were punctuated by vandalism by the extreme fringes of the demonstrators, the so-called black-blocs. Images of destruction bounced through the mass media, casting a shadow on the movement in the eyes of the public.
The Genoa Group of Eight Summit protest
from July 18 to 22, 2001, was one of the bloodiest protests in Western
Europe's recent history, as evidenced by the wounding of hundreds of
policemen and civilians forced to lock themselves inside of their homes
and the death of a young Genoese anarchist named Carlo Giuliani—who
was shot while trying to throw a fire extinguisher on a
policeman—during two days of violence and rioting by groups supported by
the nonchalance of more consistent and peaceful masses of protesters,
and the hospitalization of several of those peaceful demonstrators just
mentioned. Police have subsequently been accused of brutality, torture
and interference with the non-violent protests as a collateral damage
provoked by the clash between the law enforcement ranks themselves and
the more violent and brutal fringes of protesters, who repeatedly hid
themselves amongst peaceful protesters of all ages and backgrounds.
Several hundred peaceful demonstrators, rioters, and police were injured
and hundreds were arrested during the days surrounding the G8 meeting;
most of those arrested have been charged with some form of "criminal
association" under Italy's anti-mafia and anti-terrorist laws.
The first World Social Forum (WSF) in 2001 was an initiative of Oded Grajew [pt], Chico Whitaker, and Bernard Cassen. It was supported by the city of Porto Alegre (where it took place) and the Brazilian Worker's Party. The motivation was to constitute a counter-event to the World Economic Forum held in Davos at the same time. The slogan of the WSF is "Another World Is Possible". An International Council
(IC) was set up to discuss and decide major issues regarding the WSF,
while the local organizing committee in the host city is responsible for
the practical preparations of the event.In June 2001, the IC adopted the World Social Forum Charter of
Principles, which provides a framework for international, national, and
local Social Forums worldwide.
The WSF became a periodic meeting: in 2002 and 2003 it was held
again in Porto Alegre and became a rallying point for worldwide protest
against the American invasion of Iraq. In 2004 it was moved to Mumbai, India),
to make it more accessible to the populations of Asia and Africa. This
Forum had 75,000 delegates. In 2006 it was held in three cities: Caracas, Venezuela, Bamako, Mali, and Karachi, Pakistan. In 2007, the Forum was hosted in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2009 it was in Belém, Brazil, and in 2011 it was in Dakar, Senegal. In 2012, the WSF returned to Porto Alegre.
The idea of creating a meeting place for organizations and individuals opposed to Neoliberalism was soon replicated elsewhere. The first European Social Forum (ESF) was held in November 2002 in Florence.
The slogan was "Against the war, against racism and against
neo-liberalism". It saw the participation of 60,000 delegates and ended
with a huge demonstration against the war (1,000,000 people according to
the organizers). The following ESFs took place in Paris (2003), London (2004), Athens (2006), Malmö (2008), and the latest ESF in Istanbul (2010).
In many countries Social Forums of national and local scope were also held.
Recently there has been some discussion behind the movement about
the role of the social forums. Some see them as a "popular university",
an occasion to make many people aware of the problems of globalization.
Others would prefer that delegates concentrate their efforts on the
coordination and organization of the movement and on the planning of new
campaigns. However it has often been argued that in the dominated
countries (most of the world) the WSF is little more than an 'NGO fair'
driven by Northern NGOs and donors most of which are hostile to popular
movements of the poor.
North Korea
After
the Second World War, North Korea followed a policy of
anti-globalization. However, in recent decades have shown a distinctive
rise in globalization movements in North Korea, introducing a number of
reforms in areas such as technology and trade.
The reform that had the most significance to North Korea was trade; a
change in trading partnerships resulted in the country not only traded
with themselves but also with South Korea and China. North Korea
introduced these reforms because it was lacking in areas of technology
and trade and realized that it could not maintain itself as a society
without help from other nations, but even with these new reforms North
Korea still remains the most isolated society in the world.
Impact
The
global justice movement has been quite successful in achieving some of
its key aims, according to academic and global justice movement activist
David Graeber. For example, many countries no longer rely on IMF loans and so, by the mid-2000s, IMF lending was at its lowest share of world GDP since the 1970s.
Criticisms
Lack of evidence
Critics
assert that the empirical evidence does not support the views of the
anti-globalization movement. These critics point to statistical trends
which are interpreted to be results of globalization, capitalism, and
the economic growth they encourage:
There has been an absolute decrease in the percentage of people
in developing countries living below $1 per day in east Asia (adjusted
for inflation and purchasing power). Sub Saharan Africa, as an area that
felt the consequences of poor governance and was less responsive to
globalization, has seen an increase in poverty while all other areas of
the world have seen no change in rates.
The world income per head has increased by more over period 2002–2007 than during any other period on the record.
The increase in universal suffrage, from no nations in 1900 to 62.5% of all nations in 2000.
There are similar trends for electric power, cars, radios, and
telephones per capita as well as the percentage of the population with
access to clean water; however, 2.6 billion of the world's population in 2008 lacked access to proper sanitation, and billions of people ("around 1 in 4 people") still live without clean drinking water as of 2020.
Members of the anti-globalization movement argue that positive data
from countries which largely ignored neoliberal prescriptions, notably
China, discredits the evidence that pro-globalists present. Concerning
the parameter of per capita income growth, development economist Ha-Joon Chang argues that considering the record of the last two decades the argument for continuing neoliberal
policy prescriptions are "simply untenable", and commented: "It depends
on the data we use, but roughly speaking, per capita income in
developing countries grew at 3% per year between 1960 and 1980, but has
grown only at about 1.5% between 1980 and 2000. And even this 1.5% will
be reduced to 1%, if we take out India and China, which have not pursued
liberal trade and industrial policies recommended by the developed
countries." Economist and political scientist Mark Pennington and NYU professor of economics William Easterly have individually accused Chang of employing strawman arguments, ignoring counter-data, and failing to employ basic scientific controls to his claims.
Economist Jagdish Bhagwati
argues that reforms that opened up the economies of China and India
contributed to their higher growth in 1980s and 1990s. From 1980 to 2000
their GDP grew at average rate of 10 and 6 percent respectively. This
was accompanied by reduction of poverty from 28 percent in 1978 to 9
percent in 1998 in China, and from 51 percent in 1978 to 26 percent in
2000 in India. Speaking not only on China but East Asia in general, economist Joseph Stiglitz
commented: "The countries that have managed globalization on their own,
such as those in East Asia, have, by and large, ensured that they
reaped huge benefits and that those benefits were equitably shared; they
were able substantially to control the terms on which they engaged with
the global economy. By contrast, the countries that have, by and large,
had globalization managed for them by the International Monetary Fund
and other international economic institutions have not done so well." According to The Heritage Foundation, development in China was anticipated by Milton Friedman, who predicted that even a small progress towards economic liberalization would produce dramatic and positive effects. China's economy had grown together with its economic freedom.
Critics of corporate-led globalization have expressed concern about the
methodology used in arriving at the World Bank's statistics and argue
that more detailed variables measuring poverty should be studied. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research,
the period from 1980 to 2005 has seen diminished progress in terms of
economic growth, life expectancy, infant and child mortality, and to a
lesser extent education.
Disorganization
One
of the most common criticisms of the movement, which does not
necessarily come from its opponents, is simply that the
anti-globalization movement lacks coherent goals, and that the views of
different protesters are often in opposition to each other.
Many members of the movement are also aware of this, and argue that, as
long as they have a common opponent, they should march together – even
if they don't share exactly the same political vision. Writers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have together in their books (Empire and Multitude) expanded on this idea of a disunified multitude: humans coming together for shared causes, but lacking the complete sameness of the notion of "the people".
Lack of effectiveness
One argument often made by the opponents of the anti-globalization movement (especially by The Economist)
is that one of the major causes of poverty amongst third-world farmers
are the trade barriers put up by rich nations and poor nations alike.
The WTO
is an organization set up to work towards removing those trade
barriers. Therefore, it is argued, people really concerned about the
plight of the third world should actually be encouraging free trade,
rather than attempting to fight it. Specifically, commodities such as
sugar are heavily distorted by subsidies on behalf of powerful economies
(the United States, Europe, and Japan), which have a disproportionate
influence in the WTO. As a result, producers in these countries often
receive two to three times the world market price. As Amani Elobeid and
John Beghin note, the world price might decline by as much as 48% (by
2011–2012 baselines) were these distortions to be removed.
Many supporters of globalization think that policies different
from those of today should be pursued, although not necessarily those
advocated by the anti-globalization movement. For example, some see the
World Bank and the IMF as corrupt bureaucracies which have given
repeated loans to dictators who never do any reforms. Some, like Hernando De Soto,
argue that much of the poverty in the Third World countries is caused
by the lack of Western systems of laws and well-defined and universally
recognized property rights.
De Soto argues that because of the legal barriers, poor people in those
countries can not utilize their assets to produce more wealth.
Lack of widespread support in developing countries
Critics have asserted that people from poor and developing countries
have been relatively accepting and supportive of globalization while
the strongest opposition to globalization has come from activists,
unions, and NGOs in wealthier developed countries.
Alan Shipman, author of "The Globalization Myth" accuses the
anti-globalization movement of "defusing the Western class war by
shifting alienation and exploitation to developing-country sweatshops."
He later goes on to claim that the anti-globalization movement has
failed to attract widespread support from poor and working people from
the developing nations, and that its "strongest and most uncomprehending
critics had always been the workers whose liberation from employment
they were trying to secure."
These critics assert that people from the Third World see the
anti-globalization movement as a threat to their jobs, wages, consuming
options and livelihoods, and that a cessation or reversal of
globalization would result in many people in poor countries being left
in greater poverty. Jesús F. Reyes Heroles
the former Mexican Ambassador to the US, stated that "in a poor country
like ours, the alternative to low-paid jobs isn't well-paid ones, it's
no jobs at all."
Egypt's Ambassador to the UN has also stated "The question is why all of a sudden, when third world
labor has proved to be competitive, why do industrial countries start
feeling concerned about our workers? When all of a sudden there is a
concern about the welfare of our workers, it is suspicious."
On the other hand, there have been notable protests against
certain globalization policies by workers in developing nations as in
the cause of Indian farmers protesting against patenting seeds.
In the last few years, many developing countries (esp. in Latin
America and Caribbean) created alter-globalization organizations as
economic blocs Mercosur and Unasur, political community CELAC or Bank of the South which are supporting development of low income countries without involvement from IMF or World Bank.
