FREE RADICAL: History of Free-trade Protests

If there's one point on which everyone in the movement seems to agree, it's that action-hopping is getting old. The big mobilizations, like the April World Bank/IMF protests and this summer's actions at the Republican and Democratic conventions, are wearing people down. Hardball police tactics have made them cost more, while the sneering corporate media has made them matter less. These days, many of the people who worked on the big actions of the past year are reassessing, looking toward more community-based organizing and moving away from big blockade events.

The magic of this moment in time, though, is that the urge to get in power's way has become irrepressible. New people and new groups are clearly feeling inspired to make things happen, often in places that haven't yet seen much action. Check out Protest.Net, and you'll find a formidable - yet only partial - list of major upcoming demonstrations and direct actions, denoted by the abbreviated dates that have become standard movement syntax: S26, O3, O15, O17, N10, N17, A15.

But while the now-seasoned veterans of Seattle, D.C., Windsor, Philly, and L.A. are sorting out their next steps, and newly active organizers are stepping forward, it's worth looking back at the untold history of this movement. For while many people have been giving serious thought to the future of big actions, few know about their past.

The initial spark of the anti-globalization movement came on January 1, 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect. On that day, a hitherto unknown group of revolutionaries, the Zapatista National Liberation Army, rose up in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. The armed skirmishes lasted less than two weeks; unlike other Latin American guerrilla movements of the past, the Zapatistas did not seek a military victory. Instead, they hoped to inspire the downtrodden - both in Chiapas and the world at large - to organize and empower themselves, creating "an intercontinental network of resistance against neoliberalism."

By "neoliberalism" the Zapatistas meant the current global capitalist order, with its agenda of trade liberalization and privatization of public goods. Economic neoliberals (not to be confused with political liberals) seek to maximize profit by removing all barriers to global business: pesky impediments like labor and environmental laws, for instance. Neoliberalism is the philosophical underpinning of corporate globalization, the foundation for trade agreements like NAFTA and for the World Trade Organization.

In 1996 and 1997, the Zapatistas convened two massive encuentros, or gatherings, "For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism." These brought together thousands of people from popular movements around the world, particularly from the Global South: labor unions, indigenous and community groups, peasants' and farmers' associations, human rights and environmental organizations, and more. The gatherings were intended not to create a global organization or produce a unified strategy, but to discuss how different groups were affected by neoliberalism and how movements might coordinate their resistance.

After the second encuentro, in August 1997, some 50 representatives of these varied movements - including indigenous groups from Nigeria and Mexico, and farmers' organizations from India, Brazil, Bolivia, and Indonesia - sat down to plan worldwide protests against the World Trade Organization, the prime symbol and instrument of corporate globalization. To facilitate organizing, they created an ongoing network, which they called Peoples' Global Action Against "Free" Trade and the WTO, or PGA for short.

The first Global Days of Action took place in late May 1998, coinciding with the WTO's Second Ministerial Conference, held in Geneva. There was barely a blip of participation from the United States: The only coordinated events were a radical street party in Berkeley and a small forest-preservation action in Arcata, the heart of California's Redwood region.