>From The Ecologist, Vol 31 No 7 September 2001

 

 It's the democracy, stupid

 

 The carnage at the G8 summit in Genoa was a turning point for the growing movement against globalisation, says Paul Kingsnorth.  The direction it takes now will either make it unstoppable or destroy it for a generation.                               

 

   It's easier to be wise when you're still alive. Nevertheless, the death of the 23-year old Italian protester Carlo Giuliani at July's anti-G8 protests in Genoa was a murder waiting to happen.  And happen it did, in the most horrific way. Shot through the head by an armed policeman, then run over by his reversing jeep, Giuliani's body lay on the road for hours, his blood a river in gutters that were made for rain. I was three streets away when it happened, washing tear gas from my eyes with lemon water, and I saw the white faces of those who had been there, flooding past me; escaping. Soon after, I saw the press reports and the angry, shocked reactions of the activists on the streets.  The growing movement against globalisation and the hijacking of democracy had its first martyr.

 

  Or did it? Some of the grassroots movements in the South, who have been fighting these battles for years, might beg to differ. Less than a month before the G8 summit, three students in Papua New Guinea were gunned down by police as they staged a protest against the World Bank. Last year, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, two people were shot dead during mass demonstrations against water privatisation, which forced the government to renationalise the water company that had increased its prices by 200 per cent, forcing local people to drink rainwater rather than die of thirst. Dozens have died in the Zapatista communities of Mexico, which have been fighting the 'death sentence' imposed upon them by the North American Free Trade Agreement for seven years. In India, as the            monsoon raises the water levels behind the Narmada dams, we may soon see hundreds of deaths amongst the Satyagrahi who have vowed to drown in their villages rather than succumb to forced relocation for the sake of industrial growth.

 

 The killing in Genoa was really the first killing amongst the anti-globalisation movement in the West;  the first dead white man, from a `civilised' country. But the tragedy of the shooting is not the most important aspect of what happened at the G8summit; it has merely helped to bring into focus hard questions about both the future of the movement, and the system it is fighting against.

 

  The real story here is about legitimacy and power. The legitimacy of the G8 leaders and the iniquitous global economic system they support, but also the legitimacy of the germinal movement against it, which is growing at stunning speed. The power of those in the governments and corporations who are busy enclosing, privatising and profiting from the world; but also the debate about power which this movement must now have if it is to grow stronger and build a real base of popular support.

 

 

  Stories from the streets

 

 But first, the facts. To be on the streets of Genoa during the summit days was the closest thing to being in a warzone that I ever hope to experience. I was at the anti-World Bank/IMF protests in Prague last September, and what happened in Italy made them look like a tea party.

 

  For months, the new far-right government of medìa-magnate prime minister Silvio Berlusconi had been preparing for this. He had ordered nothing less than a militarisation of the city centre, where the eight leaders slept on their luxury yacht, European Vision, and hobnobbed in the flag-decked Ducal Palace. Between 15,000 and 20,000 soldiers and police were deployed, armed with live ammunition, rubber bullets, tear gas launchers, water cannon and armoured personnel carriers. Christopher Columbus airport, named, with a painful irony, after the founding father of enforced globalisation, was fitted with surface-to air-missile launchers in case of `terrorist attack'. Anti-terrorist scuba divers patrolled the harbour.

 

  The city centre was designated a `red zone', with only residents, journalists and politicos allowed to enter. A l0km long security fence, five metres high, was set up around the perimeter of the zone, behind which the carabinieri gathered, their machine guns on prominent display. The cost of this to the people of Genoa was reckoned by the authorities at 250 billion lire - about $110m.  

 

 It was, simply, a four-day police state. Ask what sort of `democratic' system needs these kind of  measures to protect itself from 200,000 of its own people, and you already have your answer. For weeks, some activists had been denouncing the measures as 'fascism'. I didn't agree; fascism is not a word to be used lightly. By the time it was all over, though, I had used it myself a dozen times.

 

 

  Rethinking the world

 

 The future of the world was being decided in Genoa that week. But not by the eight suits in the Ducal palace; the real ideas which will shape the future were being discussed by a diverse group of thinkers and doers down in a complex of tents on the seafront. And they gave the lie to claims that this movement is all about opposition, not solutions.

 

    For five days before the G8 summit began,the Genoa Social Forum (GSF), the umbrella group of 500 Italian and European NGOs who organised the demonstrations, had set up a series of workshops, talks and plenary sessions about alternatives to the global economy. Key thinkers and economists like Walden Bello, Susan George and Nicola Bullard laid out their alternative economic models. Activists with real achievements under their belts, from the MST in Brazil, Indian farmers groups, unions and others talked of strategies for change. Every subject was covered; the meaning of democracy, ecological worldviews, building a popular base, reforming the global economy. It was the GSF that week, not the G8, who were pushing the agenda with the tide of history behind it. But they have a long way to go; what came next showed that very clearly.

 

 

  Carnival and crackdown

 

 It all began on Friday 20 July; the day the summit began. As Air Force One roared over our heads towards Dubya's official airport reception, to the cheers of thousands giving it the finger on the ground below, the day began. I joined the determinedly peaceful pink and silver `tactical frivolity' group as it began its march towards the red zone.  Protests like this follow a familiar pattern: different groups, with different tactics, take different routes towards their goal. Sometimes they mix, sometimes they don't. That day, all the groups involved - numbering 20,000, according to organisers - had vowed to penetrate the red zone and demonstrate outside the Ducal Palace.

 

  The pink and silver group made their way up towards the red zone on a route agreed with the authorities. Pink fairies, samba bands, radical cheerleaders, an old man dressed as the Pope, a `peace car' and hundreds of whistling, singing activists danced through the winding streets. They reached the red zone fences, sat down and sang. A man handed flowers to the police, who threw them to the floor without smiling. This was carnival, not war; not even the tooled-up police saw them as a threat. But if any protest highlighted the split - and it is a split - within this movement between the 'spikies' and the `fluffies' it was this one. Down by the Brignole station, you could see why.

 

 

  Black...                        

 

There, the `Black Bloc' were doing their work. Quite who they are is unclear to most people. Even within the Bloc there are divisions about what to damage - just the big banks and similar `symbols     of capitalism'; or everything you can? Only what to damage, though. All of them are out for what they like to think is war.

 

  Dressed all in black, marching what looked like a goosestep to the sound of military drums, the Bloc emerged from the sidestreets in tandem. First they went for the banks. They broke the windows and threw the computers out onto the streets. Then they smashed every window in sight. I nearly ended up in hospital when a masked-up Bloc-er with an iron bar took exception to my camera. When they set fire to the litter bins, filling the air with dioxins and pure black smoke, the police disconsolately fired tear gas at them. Within minutes, it had done its work. When I could see again, I saw what they had done.

 

Every petrol station on their route was trashed. Cars and trucks were set alight. Every shop front was wrecked - not just the big multinationals, but the small shops too; shops owned by the ordinary people of the city. More bins burned, bus shelters and phone boxes fell. Off- licences were broken into and the wine stolen and drunk. No-one was even pretending this was political anymore. And it benefited no-one but the G8, who happily used it as an excuse to tar us all with their Black Brush.

 

   The real shock, though, was the police reaction.  Five hundred vards away, at the Brignole station, around 500 police were marching in circles, slamming their batons on their riot shields like Zulus at Isandhlwana. And what did they do?  Apart from that first round of tear gas, they did precisely nothing. And it all became clear to me at that moment: Berlusconi's show of police and military might wasn't there to defend the lives of the ordinary people of Genoa from the savagery of those proto-fascists in black. It was there to defend the powerful in the Ducal Palace, way behind the fences.                     

 

 

 ...and White

 

Meanwhile, down at the station, the 'Tute Bianche', or White Overalls, marched in from the east, with the sun in their eyes. The Overalls were, for my money, the bravest people in Genoa. Five thousand of them advanced towards the police lines at Brignole. They pushed, and they pushed. But it didn't work the way it should. And then the war started.

 

  Protesters rushed the police. Tear gas canisters shot through the air. They pushed the police lines back and blockaded the road with barricades of wood and rubbish bins. The police drove their vans through them at top speed; everyone scattered. It was a wonder no-one died then. Out came the stun grenades. The tear gas was so thick I could hardly see. The police retreated. Protesters captured a stalled police van and set it alight. The police regrouped and rushed them. When the gas cleared, I saw an unconscious Carabinieri carried back towards me and laid on the pavement, his face pale, his eyes closed.

 

  And then, the shooting. At first, the police tried to claim that Giuliani had been killed by a stone thrown by protesters.  But when the pictures came out, they couldn't pretend any longer.  They'd been batoning journalists all day in an attempt to prevent footage of what  they were doing. But it didn't work.

 

 

  Freedom of the press

 

 It was hard to believe it could get worse, but it did. The next day, the international solidarity march through the city was broken up by police charges and helicopters firing tear gas from the skies. Then came what, in my view was the worst of it all.

 

  Up on a hill, two miles from the red zone, in a building agreed with the authorities, the GSF had its  headquarters. Also in the building was the alternative media centre, where reports from the streets were filed during the summit. Across the road was a school where activists slept and planned peaceful actions.

 

  At midnight on Saturday 21 July, 200 police sealed off the road and invaded the buildings. They batoned journalists, smashed the computers, beat up the GSF lawyers and raided the building, taking  away disks, films, computers and even the knives and forks used to prepare the GSF's pasta lunches. In the school, meanwhile, a literal bloodbath was taking place. People were batoned as they slept. Blood smeared the walls and the floors. There was no provocation; it was sheer, bloody, police brutality. A British journalist was held down in the road outsíde whíle two police clubbed him unconscious. They left him in a pool of blood. Bodies were carried out of the school in black bags and on stretchers. Over 30 people ended up in hospital, one critically injured. Amnesty International declared that it would investigate. The authorities tried to defend themselves by saying that `violent actions' had been planned in the buildings. I was in them every day for a week, and like hundreds of others - including the police themselves - I know that this was a lie.

 

  Meanwhile, across the city, in the car park where they had been camping and planning their riots, the Black Bloc were left to sleep in peace.

 

 

  Words, words, words

 

 The G8's reaction to this stunning level of official repression said more about the moral bankruptcy of its leaders than all the slogans of the protesters. Berlusconi defended the midnight raid, and shored up the police lies with more of his own. George Bush managed to call the shooting 'regrettable'. Tony Blair blamed the protesters for hijacking `democracy', and not being 'interested in dialogue'. Quite what the leaders of the G8 have to teach us about democracy is anyone's guess. Blair was elected by just 25 per cent of his people, while Bush wasn't elected at all. Chirac and Berlusconi are under investigation for corruption, while Putin's presidency was handed to him casually by his drunken predecessor without consulting the electorate. This is what democracy looks like? 

 

  And what did the G8 decide behind those lines? Well, they decided on an inadequate fund aimed at eliminating AIDS in Africa without threatening the multinational pharmaceutical firms which profit from it. They decided that global warming was a problem but that, realistically, there wasn't much they could do about it. Oh, and they agreed to launch a new trade round - the thing that most of the activists feared most, and which the GSF speakers had been denouncing all week. The thing that will strengthen this movement more than anything else, as a further wave of corporate power-grabbing forces millions more off the land, into the dole queues of the West and the burning shanties of the South.

 

  'The most effective poverty recluction strategy,' read the official, end-of-summit communique, `is to maintain a strong, dynamic, open and growing global economy. We pledge to do that.' It is these words, issued Canute-like from behind those lines of steel and lead, which make it clear why this movement is needed; now more than ever.

 

 

  What now?

 

 Genoa seems to have initiated a sea-change in attitudes to summits of this sort; perhaps even to global governance and economics in general. Even the mainstream media in Britain - even some politicians - are now openly questioning the legitimacy not only of the G8 as an institution, but of all such opaque, global forums.

 

  For the movement, this is good news. But it brings with it hard questions. What was achieved? Where do we go from here? And, most of all - what are we for?

 

  History is shifting around us at dizzying speed. On every continent, increasing numbers of people are reacting against  the destruction of the natural world, the privatisation of resources, and power-grabbing corporations. Increasingly, they see themselves as part of a global struggle against the corporate-driven economic system which needs these things for its very survival.  Five years ago, this movement barely existed. The moment is rapidly approaching for it to shift up a gear, to make real changes. If it fails, the chance will be lost for another generation. The question is: how? And Genoa has thrown that question into sharp relief by highlighting both the strengths and weaknesses of the movement.

 

 

  Talkin` bout a revolution

 

 The first question concerns violence. It is a hard fact, uncomfortable for fluffy white liberals, that no real, radical social and economic change has ever been achieved without some level of violence. The Labour movement, the franchise movement, the womens' movement, the anti- apartheid movement, even Gandhi's Indian liberation movement - were all born through some level of blood and fire. It is a hard fact, too, that the serious debates about globalisation we now see in even the dimmest newspapers, and which politicians and corporations are beginning to fear, would not have come about through any number of polite plenary sessions, negotiations or respectable press releases from blue-chip NGOs. It is the turmoil on the streets of Seattle, Prague, and now, Genoa, which have thrown them into sharp focus.

 

  Nevertheless, much of the violence in Genoa was both self-defeating and disempowering. There is a big difference between tearing down symbolic fences and hurling rocks at policemen; between destroying a bank and destroying a small greengrocers; the same moral difference as that between destroying GM crops and sending letter bombs to vivisectionists.  The real problem in Genoa was that the vast majority of people - happy to haul down the fences around the red zone and peacefully, symbolically, loudly and crazily occupy the halls of power - were hemmed in on both sides by the fascist tactics of both the police and the Black Bloc and their allies.

 

   And this is what brings us to the real issue - not violence, but power. 

 

 

  Power struggles

 

 What Genoa highlighted most of all was the division between the old and new in this movement - a division which can only grow and which will soon split the movement in two. And so it should. For only that way can we begin to gain the popular base we need to justify the change we demand.

 

  The old left was out in force in Genoa  - communists, the Socialist Workers Party, and plenty of others. Still calling each other 'comrades', still talking about the 'proletariat', and still demanding a revolution for which they have no popular support. They talked of power as if it was something concentrated at the top of society - something to be seized by them, and used in the interests of 'the people.' As if this had ever worked before. As if this wouldn't inevitably lead to the oppressed becoming the oppressors. Along with some of the hard nuts and Black Bloc-ers on the streets, this 'old'  movement is part of the problem, not the solution - the past, not the future.

 

  The future, in Genoa, and in the movement as a whole, is to be seen in the growing voice which demands that power be looked at in a totally different way: not as something to be used by an elite on behalf of everyone else; not as something to be concentrated, but as something to be dispersed. Fuelled by movements in the South where this has worked for centuries - tribal people, villagers, farming communities and others - it looks to a future where power is dissolved and localised. A future, in other words, of genuine democracy. This is the new movement. As yet, it has no manifesto and no leaders. Maybe it doesn't need them.

 

  What it does need to do is distinguish itself from the old left, the Statists, the car-burners and the petrol-bombers who claim to be part of the same struggle.  They are not. You believe in the people, or you believe that the people need to be controlled - either by armed police, fences and corporate power, or by 'Peoples' States', militaristic violence and revolutionary dogma. That is what separates the movement of the future from the remnants of those of the past. That is what this movement must now, unashamedly, become. If it fails, we will all have faíled, and our children will be left to pick up the pieces.

 

 Paul Kingsnorth is currently writing a book about the new glohal resistance movement, to be published by Simon and Schuster in spring 2003.            

 

    --  Chris Keene, Coordinator, Anti-Globalisation Network 90 The Parkway, Canvey Island, Essex SS8 0AE, England Tel 01268 682820   Fax 01268 514164

    --- Coordinación europea - European Coordination - Coordination européenne.v