In 1999, anti-WTO protests made world news. Now, a DC march goes unnoticed. What happened to the critique of globalisation?
The only clue I had to the International Monetary Fund/World Bank protests taking place in Washington, DC last weekend was the inflatable palm tree floating down the road. On my way to a film festival, I had run smack into a modest, two block-long protest march, heading towards the location for the spring meetings.
And I'm sure I wasn't alone in being uninformed. Outside of a few radio updates (normally, advising drivers to expect delays), the media were largely silent on the protests. Both the Washington Post and the Washington Times ran wire reports from the Associated Press, in lieu of actual on-the-ground reporting in their home city. A search on the Washington City Paper website, a local indie weekly, only provides information on protests that happened in 2002. Even searching online after the fact revealed only scattered support on a few indie and punk-oriented message boards, and event coverage was limited to the most dedicated of outlets. How the mighty have fallen.
Twelve years ago, the nation was captivated by the Battle in Seattle, an anti-globalisation protest so vast that it brought the city to a standstill. The 1999 protests were marked by widespread media coverage, which sparked conversations about the role of the three largest global trade governing bodies ? and illuminated how violence can be leveraged by activists seeking publicity. While the vast majority of the protests were peaceful, one dedicated group started a chain reaction by breaking windows and setting fire to dumpsters, which provided much fuel for the media interest bonfire. In the aftermath, activists had hoped this would be the beginning of wider interest in preventing the environmental and humanitarian damage caused by current global economic policies. Sadly, though, the need to critically examine the operation of the IMF/World Trade Organisation/World Bank triumvirate fell by the wayside after the early 2000s.
Even outside the activist universe, people are puzzled why protests against the IMF/WTO/World Bank meetings aren't more brisk, considering their positions as global powerbrokers hasn't changed a bit. Back in 2010, columnists for the Financial Times and Financial Policy wondered why there weren't more protests at the WTO, particularly during the increasingly bleak-looking Doha round, which was intended to address many of the policies that were protested a decade ago. Gideon Rachman, blogging for the Financial Times, ventured a theory:
I think that one of the main reasons why the WTO is no longer in the line of fire is that the change in the pattern of world trade over the last decade ? combined with a slump in the west and a boom in China and India ? makes the idea that global free trade is a tool of western domination look increasingly absurd. The world has got a lot more complicated than that; and even the anti-globalisation movement has had to acknowledge that complexity, if only tacitly. These days, it is the developing nations that are pressing for completion of the Doha round and the rich countries that are dragging their feet.
Trouble is, the issues with the IMF/WTO/World Bank were complicated from the beginning. Our shifting global reality only further compounded an already tough situation. When I was an idealistic 16 year old, I was dying to join the protests in Seattle ? way before I knew anything about global economic policy. All I knew was that the WTO was bad and the only way to change the system was to take it to the streets; it wasn't until much, much later that I learned enough about economics and trade to actually follow the conversations playing out in the media. But that normally didn't matter to the organisations who wanted to see more bodies on the ground protesting: many people only received a scant overview of some of the major issues, and the quality and quantity of information delivered depended heavily on which organisation one was affiliated with.
Considering the divergent goals and plays to collective rage, as opposed to policy conversation, it's little wonder that the streets of Seattle erupted into a battleground, disrupting the meeting and creating extensive property damage. But that tactic failed to promote lasting engagement with the gorilla that is our current system of international trade. The policies of the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank operate in the context of a complex web of relationships, against a backdrop of historical mandates to other nations, power blocks and alliances, which all exist in an ever-changing political and economic environment. It takes years of serious study to truly understand what is happening, particularly the shifting terms of the divide between developed nations and the global south.
After the protesters left Seattle, did they keep reading the newspapers to see how things progressed? Did they take their fight to a different front? Or did the idea of causing a ruckus drive a lot of the turnout, leaving both peaceful and non-peaceful protesters feeling alienated?
One appeal to activists in spring of 2011 continues to cover the same ground, putting the emphasis on "get[ting] rowdy", instead of exploring the political nitty gritty:
HEY TO ALL Y'ALL ALTERNATIVELY MINDED PUNKS! the a-16 rallies in DC to protest the WTO and IMF need your support! and if you don't care about the global politics of the world trade organisation, their [sic] is another protest going on that same weekend in DC to rally for more environmentally friendly legislation. So please... come out and get rowdy.
Meanwhile, the Doha development round talks are expected to end in another stalemate this week, after years of arguing towards deadlock. The discussion of Doha has been largely confined to financial media ? a far cry from the public conversation once hoped for by those who took to the streets in Seattle, which they hoped would encourage the barons of international trade to put people first in their policies. And the effects of the debate being marginalised are all too evident: as the small procession continued up the street, most people continued about their daily lives, knowing that the protest, like so many in DC, would fail to create any measurable change.
Source: http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/commentisfree/rss/~3/f2FK9fqAFLs/protest-imf
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