Next round in anti-globalization struggle
Movement gears up for New York
Tycoons to meet on Feb. 2 amid swirl of protest
By Leslie Feinberg
New York
Transporting more bankers and industrialists to Manhattan is
like hauling coals to Newcastle. But the annual meeting of the
World Economic Forum will draw 1,000 financial, corporate and
media magnates, and a bevy of heads of state to the luxurious
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel here on Jan. 31-Feb. 5.
And a storm of protest is gathering to confront them.
The WEF is a giant annual think tank to discuss, promote and
plan capitalist expansion worldwide. The 1,000 corporations
that fund the forum read like a Who's Who of big business.
"Annual Meeting Partners" include American Airlines,
Deutsche Bank, Lehman Brothers, Mastercard International,
Morgan Stanley, Nestle, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Sara Lee Corporation
and Unilever.
"Strategic Partners" include Audi, The Boeing Corporation,
Cisco Systems, The Coca Cola Company, Compaq Computer
Corporation, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Goldman Sachs, IBM,
Investcorp, Merck, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft Corporation,
PricewaterhouseCoopers, Reuters, Sun Microsystems and
Volkswagen.
For 30 years these WEF tycoons and their political and
academic hangers-on met in Davos, Switzerland--the highest city
in Europe--a posh, picturesque ski resort perched atop the
Swiss Alps. And every year, this elite group tried to hold a
quiet, respectable meeting in which they could discuss the
forward thrust of capitalist globalization.
What better base from which to discuss such an unpopular
subject than Davos, which is a tactical nightmare for those who
oppose capitalism and its twin crimes of wealth and poverty.
One single road leads up to the mountain resort. But annually
dissenters still made their way into the high, thin altitude of
wealth, power and privilege.
Last year, 3,000 police and army troops sealed off the ski
resort tighter than a steel drum. Every access to the mountain
was cut off. Pre-emptive deportations and arrests, suspended
train service, police checkpoints, steel gates, helicopters,
water cannons, bales of barbed wire, tear gas, truncheons,
computer-coded badges--all the weapons of repression were
securely in place.
But all the king's horses and men--and a heavy
snowstorm--couldn't silence the voices of anti-capitalist
activists. Protests erupted in Davos and in Zurich and other
cities in which activists were stranded. Hundreds appeared in
Davos and managed to get within 500 yards of the Congress
Center where the WEF meeting was underway. Many held signs that
read: "Justice, not profits!"
The hundreds of protesters who made their way through all
the obstacles set up to keep them away from the WEF delivered
their message loudly and clearly to the tony crowd in black tie
that nervously sipped Moet-Chandon Champagne at a late-night
soiree in the Congress Center last year.
This year they'd like to avoid the voices and demands of
protesters. And so after 30 years these barons of banking and
industry are making their way down the mountain to meet on the
island of Manhattan.
New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and New York State Gov.
George Pataki welcome the moguls. They've both told the media
this is a show of support and confidence in the city after the
Sept. 11 disaster in the heart of the financial center.
Professor Klaus Schwab, president of the WEF, says they'll
have "Davos in New York." Opponents of capitalism and its
global expansion are working hard to make Schwab's words
prophetic.
Rolling up the welcome mat
Activist calendars are already highlighted for a mass march
and rally to confront the WEF on Park Avenue between 49th and
50th Streets on Feb. 2. International ANSWER has called the
midtown, anti-WEF demonstration.
All across the country people of all ages and nationalities,
sexes and genders, abilities and sexualities are organizing to
catch a ride in a car, hop the train or a bus, or board a plane
to come to Manhattan and raise their voices and their clenched
fists.
From the West Coast, the San Francisco Labor Council,
AFL-CIO, has endorsed the mass march in New York on Feb. 2.
On Feb. 1, a teach-in will focus on U.S. war in the Middle
East, defense of civil liberties, immigrant rights,
corporate-centered globalization, domestic economic policies
and alternative visions from the progressive communities. The
event will take place at the Community Church on 35th Street
between Park and Madison beginning at 9 a.m.
The coalition--Act Now to Stop War and End Racism--was
forged in the heat of impending Pentagon war and racist attacks
following the World Trade Center tragedy on Sept. 11. The newly
formed coalition brought more than 20,000 people from many
nationalities and walks of life to Washington, D.C., on Sept.
29 who agreed that war and racism and attacks on civil
liberties were not the answer to the 9-11 attacks. Today,
ANSWER has the support of more than 500 organizations and
prominent individuals and has scores of organizing centers
across the country.
And while ANSWER is organizing resistance in New York City,
the World Social Forum plans a gathering of tens of thousands
of people from around the world in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to
discuss alternative visions to the WEF agenda.
The WEF will intellectualize and philosophize its
justification for the two fronts of the U.S. war--aggression
against the people of Afghanistan and the Middle East and
racist mass detentions and eradication of civil liberties in
this country. Champagne corks will discretely pop over
corporate tax cuts--welfare for the already well off.
How dare they come to celebrate their victories on the
battlefield or in the workplace in this of all cities,
activists demand to know. They aren't welcome here, march and
rally organizers make clear.
The poor of this and so many other cities in the United
States have been driven out of their jobs and homes, and off
the bare subsistence of welfare, by the relentless drive for
corporate and banking profits. As the rich roll into town in
their stretch limos and BMW's, some of their economic victims
may be watching the spectacle from the sidewalks they are
forced to live on.
"Since Sept. 11, hundreds of thousands of workers from the
airline industry have lost their jobs," the ANSWER call reads
in part. "Unemployment and mass layoffs are now sweeping
through all sectors of the U.S. economy. The corporate and
banking elites that dominate the U.S. government have crafted
legislation and emergency aid to bail out corporate investors
and insurance companies, while providing little assistance to
working people who have lost their income and are now facing
evictions, foreclosures and deepening poverty."
The International ANSWER coalition is calling for jobs,
health care and education. And the coalition call stresses,
"Immigrants and those who are struggling against the corporate
agenda are in for a double whammy as Attorney General Ashcroft
curtails basic civil liberties and constitutional rights. Today
the attacks are against immigrants--incarceration without
charges and racial profiling. Tomorrow the target will be U.S.
citizens, as Ashcroft pushes to legalize surveillance of
religious and political groups."
And very prominently, this anti-WEF mobilization calls for
an end to the U.S. wars against the people of Afghanistan and
the Middle East.
Globalization needs an army
What does the anti-globalization movement and anti-war
forces have in common? Imperialism. U.S. imperialism to be more
precise.
From the emergence of the anti-globalization movement out of
the clouds of tear gas in Seattle in 1999, militant youth
activists fighting against the worst corporate crimes against
the workers of the world and the environment have found
themselves shoulder-to-shoulder with thousands of union workers
demanding the same kind of economic and social justice. And
these many anti-capitalist frontline battles--from D.C. to
Davos to Austria to Genoa--took place during a period in which
the U.S. economy was still on an upswing, riding high on
profits extracted like blood from the world's laboring
class.
But today's battles take place in a new political climate
shaped by deepening world capitalist recession. The just battle
against the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the
World Trade Organization is inextricably bound to the fight
against U.S. military aggression around the world and
repression at home.
The cry of "free trade!" is in reality a demand by U.S.
finance capital for untrammeled access to the land, labor and
resources of the world. The aim of globalization is to break
down any barriers that stand in the way of that goal.
The IMF, World Bank and WTO are the vehicles. U.S. capital
is behind the wheel. And the Pentagon rides shotgun.
Thomas Friedman, a leading mouthpiece for U.S. imperial
power, described that symbiotic relationship very eloquently in
his March 28 New York Times column just four days after the
start of the 1999 NATO bombing war against Yugoslavia.
"For globalization to work," he wrote, "America can't be
afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is. The
hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden
fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the
designer of the F-15, and the hidden fist that keeps the world
safe for Silicon Valley's technology is called the United
States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps."
That's why the movement resisting U.S. economic domination
of the planet must also resist its wars of aggression and
intervention. The anti-Pentagon demands of the movement cannot
be viewed as tacked on, as side issues.
Pentagon terrorism in Afghanistan,
Middle East
The ANSWER call puts opposition to the U.S. war drive front
and center. "Internationally, the Bush administration wages war
in Afghanistan and encourages expanded war in Palestinian
territories," the Feb. 2 leaflet emphasizes. "Now Bush is
preparing the public for prolonged war in Iraq and perhaps
other nations. The deaths of thousands of civilians in the
Middle East, both from direct military action and the resulting
refugee crisis, is nothing short of state-sponsored
terrorism."
As the U.S. war to win hegemony over a sea of oil in Central
Asia appears to wind down, it becomes clearer to many in the
movement that the U.S. "proxy" war against the Palestinians is
becoming bloodier every day. There are no sidelines in this
battle. Those who oppose predatory U.S. globalization must
stand up against the war that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon is waging against the Palestine liberation struggle with
the political, military and economic support of the White
House, Wall Street and the Pentagon.
Arab and Muslim peoples see that the bombs that blow up
Palestinians and their villages are made in the U.S.A. The
illegal economic sanctions against Iraq that have taken the
lives of hundreds of thousands are led by the United States.
Pentagon generals take center stage in news briefings to name
Somalia, Sudan, North Korea, the Philippines or Colombia as
possible next targets in this "endless" war.
The forces against the economic and social crimes of
capitalism must meld with those who oppose its military might
to achieve those ends.
The inequities of the world trade system grow out of
inequalities in the ownership of the mighty tools of
production, transportation and communication. The answer is not
going back to laissez-faire capitalism. That's about as
possible as rolling back the clock from old age to teenage.
Globalization has merely expanded the network of socialized
labor. If the vast web of working people who built and operate
the levers of the economy take them over, they can use them to
produce what people need, not to enrich the good old boys who
today call the shots at the WEF, WTO, IMF and World Bank.
Ultimately, really fair trade depends on eradicating unfair
private ownership of all that has been produced with collective
sweat and labor.
Globalization of a planned, socialized economy that meets
the needs, wants and desires of the many who do the work of the
world every day is the answer. And Feb. 2 will be a powerful
effort in the struggle to birth that better world.
To endorse or help build the Feb. 2 mass march call: New
York (212) 633-6646,
Washington, D.C. (202) 543-2777;
San Francisco (415) 821-6545;
or Chicago (773) 583-7728.
Reprinted from the Dec. 27, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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