Naomi Klein's Passionate Discourse

By Yogesh Chawla and Sachin Pandya, Premiere Generation Ink. Posted March 9, 2004.

Naomi Klein is one of the leading voices in the global justice movement, though she might take issue with that characterization as a matter of principle. She chronicles the issues, demonstrations and grassroots activism which have largely been ignored by the mainstream media in her books No Logo: Taking Aim at Brand Bullies, and Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate.

Although Naomi is a non-fiction writer, she writes with the passion, energy and creativity of a poet. We recently talked with her from the studios of WORT 89.9 FM, Madison's community radio station. We discussed the role of art in direct democracy movements, and the manipulation and reclamation of language, words and ideas.

Yogesh Chawla: Can you give our readers a brief overview of the global justice, anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, anti-globalization movement? And your involvement in it?

Naomi Klein: There are a lot of names for this movement and I think that probably speaks to the fact that there isn't one movement. There has been a kind of convergence of movements in the past five years or so in North America and Europe. A lot of these movements have been active for longer in southern countries. Particularly in Latin America and India, where you have really strong movements against the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and so on.

And I think it's quite accurate to call parts of the movement anti-capitalist because they are. I think particularly from young people who started off maybe questioning why corporations were so involved in every aspect of their lives, took over so much public space, were involved in their education, and so on. And then became active in anti-war activities and then made connections between the two and came to a broader critique of capital and its role in the waging of wars and in pushing down labor standards, environmental standards and so on. And then I think that there are aspects of this convergence of movements that are more anti-globalization. I wouldn't consider myself part of those movements, but there are elements that are much more about returning to local economies. There really isn't any consensus or any one movement.

And I think there's a lot of variety regionally -- in European movements, and Latin American movements and North American movements. But there are some common themes that bring them together. And as far as my involvement is concerned, I guess I'm a writer and an activist. And I guess my main activist tool is writing and research. And I wrote a book a few years ago that came out right when the protests in Seattle were happening, so there was an explosion of conferences and convergences and I just kind of got swept up in it.

Sachin Pandya: It's a fine book, too. Just to add that.

YC: Actually both books, No Logo and Fences and Windows. You were just talking about convergence of movements. And we saw that in the recent anti-war protests in Madison. What we noticed, particularly being more of a literary kind of group -- is that poets and artists had a specific presence at these events. And also in Madison, a lot of the anti-war activities were specifically organized by artists and writers and poets. Did you see the same thing happening nationally and internationally and also, could you describe this energy?

In some ways I feel really unqualified to talk about the anti-war movement in North America, because I just came back from Argentina, where I've been living for close to a year. So I was in Buenos Aires during the war. But that energy you're describing was very present -- is very present -- in Latin American resistance movements against neo-liberal economic policies and also against the war. Which I think is just the fact that creativity is considered once again a political -- not just a political priority as in dressing up the protests -- but at the center of the spirit of how political alternatives will emerge. A shaking off of dogmatism and a sense of "believe this because it's good for you," or "participate in this because it's like homework." A desire to capture that sense of spontaneity and creativity as a political act. I think you see that in movements like the Zapatista movement. Which, if one were to choose one political moment that sort of kick-started this current wave of resistance -- because I don't think that we're talking about anything new -- is when the Zapatistas began their rebellion, their uprising in 1994. The day that NAFTA took effect, on January 1, 1994, they put that resistance squarely within a 500-year tradition of resisting colonialism.

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