Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.
Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.
A Bad Year for Goliath
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
Hank Paulson and His Wall Street Cronies Move to Plan B
Nomi Prins
Democracy and Elections:
The Presidential Debates Are a Scam
David Bollier
DrugReporter:
As the Violence Soars, Mexico Signals It's Had Enough of America's Stupid War on Drugs
Silja J.A. Talvi
Election 2008:
Todd Palin: If You Thought Cheney Was Bad, Watch out for the "First Dude"
Bill Boyarsky
Environment:
Dear Mr. Next President -- Food, Food, Food
Michael Pollan
ForeignPolicy:
The Coming "Sugar Economy" -- Sweet for Multinationals, but a Bitter Pill for Everyone Else
Hope Shand
Health and Wellness:
Cancer at 23: How Health Insurance Failed Me
Carey Purcell
Hurricane Katrina:
From the Bayou to Baghdad: Mission Not Accomplished
Amy Goodman
Immigration:
In Mississippi, Immigration Raid Tests Community's Cross-Racial Bonds
Marcelo Ballvé
Media and Technology:
John McCain Sows the Seeds of Hatred
Rory O'Connor
Movie Mix:
The "Battle in Seattle" and Beyond
Stuart Townsend
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Obama vs. McCain on Equal Pay
Kay Steiger
Rights and Liberties:
Telecoms' Holy Grail of Internet Profits Is the Next Frontier in Corporate Spying
Timothy Karr
Sex and Relationships:
Why Everyone Loves Hot, Smart Older Women
Vanessa Richmond
War on Iraq:
Following Threats, Doctors in Karbala Refuse to Work
Water:
Can the People Who Live in Coastal Towns Ever Be Safe From Hurricanes?
Lizzy Ratner
To say that it was a bad year for Goliath doesn't mean it was exactly a good one for what George Bailey, in annual holiday It's a Wonderful Life reruns, calls "the little people."
U.S. public opinion has almost caught up with the rest of the world in opposing the war, but Iraqis are still being bombed and American soldiers are still dying. I write this from Buenos Aires, which attracts activists from afar for its progressive social movements, but up close is more compelling for its armies of the poor -- such as the cartoñeros who come out after dark to collect recyclables, families pushing huge loads through the summer night toward whatever pittance a pile of old cardboard brings in.
In the same way, you could focus on how Hurricane Katrina damaged the Bush administration's standing, but the suffering of people displaced on roofs, and then in sports stadiums, and now out of view (but in hardly less precarious circumstances around the country) might matter more. The most compelling images of 2005 are those of war, flood, and riot, but perhaps the most summary one wasn't even of human beings.
It was a novelty photograph that appeared in many newspapers in late September of a huge non-native python that choked itself to death trying to swallow an alligator in Florida. It proved a lasting image of overwhelming and unsuccessful greed. All around the world this year, the snake choked and the alligator refused to see itself as lunch -- if you will let "alligator" stand in here for "civil society," for all the groups, organizations, publics, and citizenries who stood up for their rights.
Nobody did this better in 2005 than the extraordinary Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which in March brought one of the biggest prepared food corporations on Earth, Taco Bell's owner, Yum Brands Incorporated, to its knees. Or, you could say, choked it on its own fajitas and forced it to swallow a compellingly better set of working standards for those who pick the tomatoes that get diced up and sprinkled by the kids in starchy blouses atop your -- if you weren't part of the enormously successful Boycott the Bell campaign -- tostada.
The largely immigrant workforce, based in the bleak Florida town of Immokalee, had been organizing for more than a decade, and their campaign to raise the price for picking tomatoes by a penny a pound (a measly sum that nevertheless nearly doubled many workers' salaries) was inspired. Creative in specific tactics like theatrical performances and marches as well as in coalition-building with college students, religious groups, and others, the CIW made undocumented farmworkers powerful again -- and they are taking on McDonald's next.
Speaking of food, just what kind of corn is in your tortilla anyway? A few years ago, microbiologist Ignacio Chapela, then an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote a report demonstrating that bioengineered corn, though banned from being planted in Mexico, was nevertheless springing to Frankensteinian life there, contaminating that country's corn crops.
The preeminent science journal Nature published it with an unprecedented caveat, though the real cause for concern wasn't Chapela's credentials or methodology but the threat his work as a scientist and critic -- of, among other things, Novartis' funding of his department -- posed to multinational corporations. (A subsequent independent study validated his results.) Chapela was then denied tenure at Berkeley by a committee that appeared to have major conflicts of interest.
After a two-year campaign that included demonstrations, teach-ins, and other forms of ruckus, a higher tenure review committee overturned the decision of the highly politicized departmental committee that had rejected him. It was a small victory, but an emblematic one in this year of crumpling Goliaths.
Back in Mexico, Vicente Fox's party, the PAN, attempted to disqualify Mexico City's Mayor Manuel Lopez Obrador from next year's presidential election over a tiny legal technicality. It was a move as bald-facedly overblown in its grounds and biased in its agenda as the impeachment hearings against Bill Clinton (which, this year, had the handy, if belated, effect of making it harder for Republicans to object to special counsels pursuing perjury charges).
About a million people marched in Mexico City to condemn this blatantly corrupt move, a popular opposition that the PAN found, ultimately, irresistible. The charges were withdrawn and Obrador is now favored to win next spring; he will likely become a comparatively uncorrupt and progressive president for a country that has long deserved far more.
The great conundrum of recounting recent history is this: Individual names have to stand in for movements that generally remain not just nameless but often overlooked; the antiwar movement in this country, for instance, became "Cindy" for bereaved mother and outspoken activist Cindy Sheehan.
Rebecca Solnit is the author of 'Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities'.
Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »