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Activism Alive and Well in New York City
by Jen Hambleton

March/April 2002
Volume 39, Number 2

The World Economic Forum (WEF), held annually in Davos, Switzerland, has been a natural focus of protest for the movement against corporate-driven globalization for the past few years. At the forum, the heads of one thousand of the largest corporations meet with government leaders to discuss economic policy issues and ski the Alps, giving corporate leaders a broad forum in which to promote their policy agenda. The WEF website (weforum.org) proudly states that it was in Davos that the World Trade Organization was born. When the decision was made to move the meetings to New York this year, purportedly in support of the effort to rebuild the city after September 11, protest organizers were not far behind.

At the same time, in the weeks preceding the planned protests against the World Economic Forum in New York, the mood in New York was on a lot of people's minds. There were concerns about the enormous police presence that was planned. At the National Conference on Organized Resistance, held at American University the weekend before, the subject came up often in workshops and hallway conversations. In the discussions I heard, most felt that while we should make an extra effort to be respectful and cautious in our tactics. Yet it was of critical importance that we not let the events of this past fall keep us from registering our dissent regarding "business as usual" at the WEF.

I made the trek up to New York for the weekend of February 2nd for simple reasons: I do not feel that the CEO's and CFO's of the world's largest corporations should have more intimate access to government leaders than you or I do. Many activists went to speak out about specific issues of social and economic justice and corporate and governmental accountability. At Saturday's permitted march, one group of activists rolled the stump of an old redwood, farmed from a forest in northern California by the family that owns the GAP, through the streets on a cart, urging a boycott of the company. Another group was there to protest the US government's continued one-sided support in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Still others, pots and pans in hand, chanted in support of the people of Argentina.

Estimates of the number of marchers varied wildly. CNN reported 2,000 (no one's sure which march they saw, but it certainly wasn't the one I was at), while numbers as high as 30,000 were reported on the New York Indy Media website. 12-15,000 is an estimate I have heard repeatedly, both from organizers in New York and activists here in Washington. One thing is sure: the crowd was widely varied across ethnic and age spectrums, a good sign for a movement that is so often portrayed as too young and too white.

The mood of the march varied throughout the day and throughout the route. The police presence was, indeed, daunting. Near the beginning of the march, several smaller marches converged to join the main group, as had been planned. The police suddenly pushed their way into the crowd during this process, invoking confusion and fear. Along the march route, the left side of the street was blocked off to allow the police easy movement, and marchers were required to stop for nearly every stoplight along the route. This, combined with cold weather and a lack of communication from one end of the march to the other, left many feeling frustrated.

On the other hand, given the seemingly insurmountable obstacles faced by the organizers, what they were able to pull off was pretty amazing. Unions and NGO's that have traditionally lent their financial support to these events were, for the most part, not present for this one. The police changed the parameters of the march permit, as well as the actual route, right up until the last minute. That the organizers were still able to draw thousands to the march and to workshops and other events held throughout the weekend, and keep all of it relatively peaceful and positive, is a testament to their infallible energy and drive. The activists who took part, as well, were inspiring: Ingenious banners and signs, music and dancing by the local Rhythm Workers and others, and exceptionally creative chants sustained our collective energy throughout the day.

Starhawk, a leading figure in the social justice movement, put it this way: "In a climate in which the police are widely seen as heroes and the very thought of protest is suspect, getting that many people out on the streets has to be seen as a victory. We reclaimed some political space, asserted our right to dissent, and hugely raised the social costs for the World Economic Forum. We forced the incipient police state to reveal itself, and actually changed the tone of the news coverage so in the end, New Yorkers were asking whether the Forum had any business coming to town, and whether it was the kind of thing we want to support, anyway."

Protest works. Massive protests against top-down, corporation-driven globalization throughout the world in the past several years have had an impact on bringing the issues of economic inequality and environmental degradation to the forefront of the discussion on globalization. While in past years, the meetings of the WEF have been explicitly about free trade at all costs, this year the agenda had a decidedly different tone. The title for this year's meeting was "Leadership in Fragile Times: A Vision for a Shared Future." From the WEF website comes this summary of the Forum's goals:
For many years, bridging the divides has been an important focus of World Economic Forum activities. Based in part on Forum task forces and initiatives, the discussions in the Annual Meeting 2002 will examine how to foster public-private partnerships that promote economic development with social equity and how to increase efficiently deployed resources for infrastructure, basic health and education, public institutional capacity and private sector development. These are prerequisites for narrowing gaps that not only are morally unacceptable but also pose an underlying threat to stability.

Topics of discussion included reforming the IMF and World Bank, delivering an AIDS vaccine to Africa, and the impact of global climate change. While it is telling that these issues have made it to the table at meetings of the corporate and governmental elite, we should continue to be wary of so-called "solutions" now being promoted by those who in so many cases have been at the root cause of so many of the problems the world currently faces.

The World Bank and IMF will be meeting here in Washington during the weekend of April 20-21. Protests to coincide with the meetings are already being planned. Events are also being planned for that weekend in protest of Plan Columbia, the School of the Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), and the war on terrorism. New York was one of the movement's first opportunities to prove that protest is possible in this post September-11 world, and a necessary means of asserting our rights in a democracy. The events coming up in April provide us with another important opportunity not to be missed.

For more information on the events happening this spring and how you can get involved, check out www.GlobalizeThis.org, www.soaw.org, www.columbiamobilization.org, www.a20stopthewar.org