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a16: the world bank v the world by Nick Mamatas (laddertrick@gvny.com) - May 29, 2001 |
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| It was supposed to be the sequel the Battle In Seattle, but the mass demonstration against the World Bank's semi-annual meeting in Washington DC was not nearly as successful as the 1999 disruption of the World Trade Organization's Millennium Round. The World Bank, which launders money for large corporations by offering loans to poor countries in exchange for reduced trade barriers, lower environmental standards, aggressive anti-labor laws and the elimination of subsidies, is a key player in economic globalization. Once all the barriers are down, the client states have no choice but to accept heavy investment from multinational corporations, which extract natural resources and labor power, but offer little in exchange. Not one country has successfully developed thanks to the World Bank's system, and those few Third World countries that have become industrial or trade powers (South Korea, Taiwan, the OPEC states) have done so by doing the exact opposite of what the World Bank prescribes. A16 had a massive list of sponsoring organizations which ran the gamut from revolutionary socialist groups to mainstream environmental and labor organizations. However, organized labor was not out in force the way it was in Seattle (the most heavily organized city in the United States, and home to one of the last remaining fighting unions in the country, the International Longshore & Warehouse Union). A16 protestors tended to be younger, less physically intimidating, less experienced, and worst of all, so committed to non-violence that DC police, old hands at crowd control, were able to play them for chumps. They began attacking the protestors early on, raiding the offices of a16.org, one of the facilitators of the protests. People were arrested on trumped-up charges: the police claimed that flammable paint and propane tanks were going to be used to make "molotov cocktails." Propane, incidentally, is entirely unsuited to make molotovs, an attempt to set a slow-burning flame on a propane tank would kill the protestor holding the bomb. The paint, of course, was for signs, and the PVC pipes and chickenwire were not bought to make lock boxes (handcuffs designed to stall arrest) but to make giant puppets. During the protests, the police freely attacked demonstrators, then claimed that the protestors would not obey orders to disperse. More often than not, no such orders were given, unless they happened to be written on the side of a billy club. Also, while much of the city's traffic was shut down, few workplaces were - again unlike Seattle - where the "city of trade" all but stopped trading during last year's unrest. DC's massive black population wasn't networked with, community leaders and church groups weren't contacted and many of the protestors ignored the fact that DC itself is a colony of the United States, one viciously underfunded. Not surprisingly, possibly sympathetic people in the neighborhoods were turned off to the protests, and even called the cops on a group of protestors who holed up in an abandoned rowhouse to escape the massive public beatings on the streets. The police also had the media well in hand, claiming to be respectful of the First Amendment even while wiping their bloody boots with it. The press ate that up too, while press contacts for the demonstrators wondered allowed about the "anti-tampon movement." Hundreds of protestors were kept in stir for days, and more than a few were beaten. But what can only be called a tactical defeat may still be part of a broader victory. Class struggle politics (though not socialist or revolutionary ones) are back. Even conservatives like George W. Bush can't gloat at the poor anymore, they have to pretend to care, to be "compassionate." And more and more people are beginning to really care, every day. And we're becoming less compassionate towards the police every every day as well. Next stop, Prague. I wonder if Disinfo.com will pay for my airfare? The views expressed above represent the writer and not necessarily those of The Disinformation Company Ltd. |
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Mobilization For Global Justice ACT-UP's Civil Disobedience Index Celeste Takes It to the Man Global Debt and Third World Development CounterSpin IRN's Lesotho Campaign Global Arcade: The Virtual Empowerment Center Fifty Years Is Enough Beyond Street Tactics: The Anti-Corporate Globalization Movement After Washington Did the Protesters Have a Point? Africa 2000 In the New Global Context: A Commentary An Open Letter to the Pagan Community Disinformation Dossier On The Battle In Seattle Disinformation Dossier On The World Trade Organization |
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