From pillagers -- to peaceniks

From pillagers -- to peaceniks
Sept. 11 has turned the anti-globalization forces behind the Battle of Seattle into the first peace movement of the 21st century. Andrew Mills reports.

Andrew Mills
The Ottawa Citizen

Saturday, June 22, 2002
The Ottawa Citizen

The 'Battle in Seattle' in 1999 trigger a series of violent protests against corporate globalization around the world. However, following the 9/11 terrorists attacks, Seattle-style protests have become a thing of the past. Activists are now re-branding themselves as peaceniks.

With 100,000 revolutionaries occupying the streets, state troopers and riot police took aim, firing rubber bullets into the crowd, unleashing canister upon canister of tear gas in their struggle to hold back the throngs.

The pressing crowd prevailed, bringing the meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to its knees. With much of his city under siege while squads of violent left-wing radicals roamed the rainy streets, Seattle's mayor imposed an overnight curfew and called in the National Guard.

In the aftermath, amid the broken glass and the lingering tear gas, activist leaders claimed victory in what would soon be dubbed "The Battle of Seattle."

"We are winning," Maude Barlow, chairwoman of the Council of Canadians, told protesters as WTO delegates left Seattle.

It was December 1999, and the clash marked the opening salvo of a worldwide movement against corporate globalization -- a revolution against global capitalism, fought in the streets by a seemingly disparate collection of groups: radical Marxists and confrontational churchgoers, union members against free trade and environmentalists. Over the following two years, the movement gained momentum, as thousands of protesters swarmed summits in Washington, D.C., and Quebec City while European activists besieged similar meetings in Prague, Davos and Genoa.

But when terrorists attacked New York and Washington last September, that momentum came to an abrupt halt. In the fog of patriotism following the attacks, protesters didn't seem to want to march. As that fog begins to lift, and demonstrators are once again willing to take to the streets, the direction of the movement suddenly seems unclear.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, a new brand of dissent has emerged that has begun to overshadow the globalization battle: the movement against the United States' "war on terror." As more and more activists shift their focus to U.S. foreign policy, some predict the anti-capitalism movement has begun to evolve into the first peace movement of the 21st century.

"The interesting thing about this movement is that it's morphing," says Sylvia Ostry, a research fellow at the University of Toronto's Centre for International Studies and a keen watcher of the movement. "What we're seeing is that it's becoming a peace movement that is increasingly anti-American war on terror, anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian."

Observers will be watching closely next week as major protests against the Kananaskis summit of G8 leaders unfold in Ottawa and Calgary, to see whether the spirit of Seattle has been abandoned in favour of this new cause.

"The G8 summit is the first gathering of the global élite (since Sept. 11) where people will feel energized to protest again," says Jeffrey Ayres, a professor of political science at St. Michael's College in Burlington, Vermont, who studies the anti-globalization movement.

This will, then, be a defining moment for the movement that was born in Seattle two years ago.

In the weeks after Sept. 11, it became clear the anti-globalization movement was shifting gears. Not long after the attacks, a new agenda emerged during a weekend of protests that had been expected to mobilize tens of thousands of activists against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington, D.C.

"There was a sense that (continuing with the protests) would appear to be insensitive to those who lost loved ones," says organizer Mark Andersen, a member of the Washington group Positive Force.

The two marches, held Sept. 29 and Sept. 30, turned into peace rallies. In response to U.S. President George Bush's calls for Americans to prepare for "the first war of the 21st century," activists urged the U.S. not to react "in a way that would have more innocent lives lost, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan," says Mr. Andersen. "The cry of grief we felt was not a cry for war ... It was more of a 'God bless the world' than a 'God bless America' agenda."

But the protest groups did not merely call for peace; they cast the terrorist attacks as a consequence of American foreign policy. "There's a term called 'blowback,' which means U.S. foreign policy has consequences and other people are affected by our policies," says Mr. Andersen. "The mere existence of al-Qaeda and the Taliban are (examples of) blowback."

Coming at a time when billboards reading "United We Stand. In God We Trust" lined the interstates and the Stars and Stripes were being displayed on every lapel and bumper sticker across the U.S., the protesters' message was met with disdain, even disgust.

"Suddenly the anti-globalization movement was linked to terrorism," says Mr. Ayres. "The twin towers were symbols of global capitalism, which led some people to claim -- ridiculously -- that al-Qaeda is an anti-globalization group."

Violent protests during 2001, especially in Quebec City and Genoa, paired with the Sept. 11 attacks, gave some commentators -- on both the right and the left -- an opportunity to link anti-globalization with terrorism.

In the Sept. 23 edition of Libération, a left-wing Paris newspaper, a pro-protest writer opined that terrorism had brought the anti-globalization movement to a turning point. "In both cases, imperialism was the enemy. Oppression was the target. In both cases, also, American economic hegemony was targeted. Alas, Sept. 11 has brusquely made us forget (Seattle). Terrorism has won over civil disobedience. A religious war over a lay revolt. The clash of civilizations has erased the new class struggle." He went on to lament that "Marx, who was being born again, more humbly ... has now died a second time."

Writing in the National Post, University of Toronto political scientist Clifford Orwin said: "Overnight, the anti-globalization movement is toast ... For these young activists, just as the mullahs of Iran, America was the Great Satan. So, it's only to be expected that now, responding to President Bush's stern charge that he who is not with America in the fight against global terrorism is against it, they haven't hesitated to proclaim themselves against it. Terror is one commodity the globalization of which suits them. They think that it entitles them to say, 'We told you so.' "

That is exactly what some critics of capitalism were arguing. In his bestselling pamphlet 9-11, left-wing luminary Noam Chomsky wrote that, while the attacks were "horrifying atrocities, ... we can think of the United States as an innocent victim only if we adopt the convenient path of ignoring the record of its actions and those of its allies." He looked to American interventions in Central America, sanctions on Iraq, support for Gen. Suharto in Indonesia, and the U.S. backing of "Israeli atrocities" in the occupied territories, concluding that the United States is "a leading terrorist state."

Naomi Klein, whose bestselling critique of international capitalism, No Logo, was often touted as the bible of the anti-globalization movement, became an overnight expert on U.S. foreign policy. In her Sept. 14 column in the Globe and Mail she wrote: "The era of the video-game war in which the U.S. is at the controls has produced a blinding rage in many parts of the world, a rage at the persistent asymmetry of suffering. This is the context in which twisted revenge-seekers make no other demand than that U.S. citizens share their pain."

In their indictments of American foreign policy, some anti-globalization activists even adopted seemingly pro-terrorism rhetoric.

On activist Web site urban75.com "Buddy Bradley" posted this message shortly after the attacks: "Can we draw one tiny element of goodness from this, in that it will maybe make America think again about its apparent invincibility in the modern age, or will this only serve to make them worse?" On the same site, "twisted nerve" wrote, "Maybe this is what was needed to make a change for the better??? It was only a matter of time."

A posting to a U.S.-based student e-mail listserv called "Activist Response to Crisis" urged readers to "remember that 'War on terrorism' is also a war on us, given that the Bush administration this summer declared the globalization movement the 'greatest terrorist threat to American national security today' (boy, I'll bet he's eating those words)."

The North American public was in no mood for this kind of dissent, which many saw as unpatriotic, and by November, nearly two years after Seattle, the movement had hit the wall. Only 3,000 to 4,000 demonstrators showed up in Ottawa to protest the G20 financial summit in November. In February, protesters in New York were outnumbered by police as they attempted to rise up against the World Economic Forum. These demonstrations resulted in only a handful of rain-soaked arrests, in marked contrast to last year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where protesters, banned from demonstrating in Davos, ran riot in Zurich, hurling paving stones at police, smashing shop windows and setting cars on fire.

With the anti-globalization movement in disarray, their old opponents seem to have gained some ground.

In recent weeks, Mr. Bush managed to squeeze the "fast track" bill through the Senate. It eliminates Congress' ability to alter international trade agreements negotiated by the president, allowing it only to accept or reject, but not to revise trade agreements.

When then-president Bill Clinton attempted to pass this bill in 1999, signs against it were unfurled at the Seattle protests, and the anti-globalization movement helped defeat it. This time, the movement did not seem as interested in speaking out.

"We found when we were working against 'fast track,' that people's attention is elsewhere," Sally Soriano of Seattle-based People for Fair Trade told the Associated Press. "Plus, the whole patriotism thing was used very heavily" by bill proponents.

A meeting of the World Trade Organization, which activists shut down at Seattle in 1999, went ahead unfettered in protester-free Doha, Qatar in November.

In early April, during Israel's fierce re-occupation of the West Bank, José Bové, an icon of the anti-globalization movement, illegally led 60 American and European anti-globalizers into Yasser Arafat's besieged Ramallah headquarters. Waving white flags and marching past flummoxed Israeli soldiers, they were not there to protest trade issues, but to demonstrate for peace.

"I'm a farmer, and these (Palestinian) people are farmers, too. So, I am fighting with them to help them protect their land," explained Mr. Bové, who rose to activist fame after using his tractor to trash a McDonald's in France to protest U.S. trade restrictions on French-produced Roquefort cheese. "We need people and governments everywhere to understand that there must be international protection for the Palestinian people. What is happening to them is a crime," he said.

Only a few thousand showed up in mid-April to protest meetings of the World Bank and IMF in Washington D.C., -- a far cry from the 40,000 who showed up two years ago. Those who did turn out this year only briefly paid homage to their cause before joining an estimated 50,000 who marched past a meeting of the lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), at the Washington Hilton and on to the National Mall, where they rallied against Israel and the American war on terrorism.

While those in the movement praised it as the largest pro-Palestinian demonstration in U.S. history, many others saw the kaffiyeh-wearing crowds, equipped with Israeli flags splattered in blood-red paint and cardboard signs emblazoned with swastikas, chanting "Free, Free Palestine! Israel out of Palestine! Israel out of Washington," as downright anti-semitic.

Seattle-style protests against corporate globalization and capitalism had become a thing of the past. Suddenly activists all over the world were re-branding themselves as peaceniks.

Tenuous arguments were made to link these new causes to globalization and capitalism.

In her Globe and Mail column, Ms. Klein suddenly moved to fill a new niche by becoming "a critic both of the Israeli occupation and of corporate-dictated globalization." She argued that the anti-war cause is congruent with the anti-globalization causes fought for in Seattle. Those protests, she wrote, were about "the right of people everywhere to decide how best to organize their societies and economies, whether that means introducing land reform in Brazil, or producing generic AIDS drugs in India, or, indeed, resisting an occupying force in Palestine."

But others don't see this as such a broad fight. "Where she gets the idea that the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel movement is focused on other policy issues apart from the Middle East, I don't know," says Ms. Ostry. "I don't believe that at all."

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