Anti-Corporate Protests in Bush's Backyard

Since last August's sweaty battles with the LAPD at the Democratic convention, anti-corporate protesters here in the United States have been relatively quiet, despite huge actions in Quebec, Prague, Gotesburg and most recently Genoa. But this quiet will end dramatically in late September when tens of thousands of activists will descend on Washington, D.C. to confront representatives of the IMF and World Bank who are holding a summit there.

Since the last protest in D.C. -- the half-successful attempt to shut down a World Bank meeting last April -- much has changed in the "globalization from below" movement. The organizing for this upcoming "Global Justice Week," which begins on September 24, is more mature, diverse, clear about goals and media savvy. Also, the labor movement, which came out strongly for the Seattle WTO protest but didn't participate much in subsequent actions, has made a firm committment to come heavy to D.C. (now that we have an anti-union president, labor is free to flex its political muscle without fear of jeapordizing its relationship to the White House). And highly visible demonstrations around the globe have created a renewed and powerful wave of momentum; as Robert Collier writes in the San Francisco Chronicle, the "G-8 summit [last month in Genoa] was yet more proof that the anti-globalization movement has become the biggest left-of-center force for social protest in decades."

Combine all this with the simmering anger about the 2000 election -- Fox News recently reported that 58 percent of the public is still mad about how Bush was elected -- and organizers are confident that big crowds will head to D.C.

If so, they will be building on a series of notable victories. As Sarah Ferguson of the Village Voice points out, "Demonstrators have managed to shift the terms of discussion for economic liberalization. In the U.S. Congress, there's far more consensus, particularly among Democrats, that new trade agreements must have stricter labor and environmental standards than were included in NAFTA." Adds Collier, "the anti-gloabalization movement's influence is apparent on Capitol Hill, where Republicans are fighting an uphill battle to renew fast track authority, which would enable Bush to negotiate international trade pacts and force Congress to vote on them without amendments."

In addition, the credibility of the World Bank and IMF is on the brink. Pressured by environmentalists, the Bank recently announced it would consider no longer funding oil, gas and mining projects.

Nevertheless, it is a very dangerous and precarious moment for the global justice movement. There seem to be two powerful, competing forces that may be doomed to clash. On the one hand, the movement has made concrete progress toward a consensus about how to push governments and undemocratic global institutions toward reform. The overall protest message seems to resound with a large majority of the population: a recent survey by the University of Maryland says many Americans think U.S. trade policy favors multinational corporations over U.S. workers, while 74 percent agree that the U.S. has a moral obligation to ensure that foreign laborers don't have to work in harsh and unsafe conditions.

However, any political progress is tempered by the overwhelming displays of police force in virtually every demonstration and the simultaneous violent escalation of certain protesters. The police reaction was most extreme in Genoa, and resulted in the first "prime time" globalization martyr -- Carlo Giuliani, the son of an Italian labor organizer, who was shot in the head by a 24-year-old rookie carbinieri. Conservative Italian President Carlo Chambi had brought in 20,000 police, which in large part contributed to 400 injured and an estimated $45 million in property damage.