It's always good to know what is being said about us, we who are "no friends of the poor". The redundancy of their use of the term "anarchist" make me feel that I'm reading yellow journalist reports like those of a hundred years ago covering the Haymarket riots, another instance where "anarchist" violence although started by the cops, resulted in the blame and subsequent public execution of "anarchists". Years later the press found Sacco and Vanzetti, now Carlo Guiliani and the list goes on.
errorThe New York Times
JUL 20, 2001
Evolutionaries By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Throughout history, successful social protest movements have had one thing in common — a clear, simple message and objective. Whether it was the women's rights movement or the anti-Vietnam-War movement, the mere uttering of the name immediately conjured up who the protesters were and what their objective was.
The striking thing about the protesters at gatherings from the Seattle W.T.O. meeting in 1999 to this week's Genoa G-8 summit is that they tend to be called just "the protesters" or "the anti-globalization protesters," which in neither case conjures up much of anything. To be against globalization is to be against so many things — from cell phones to trade to Big Macs — that it connotes nothing. Which is why the anti-globalization protests have produced noise but nothing that has improved anyone's life.
What is intriguing about the Genoa summit, though, is that many of the serious activist groups that have participated in past protests have come to recognize that breaking McDonald's windows or just saying "no" does not a protest movement make.
They have come to recognize that if they have any hope of harvesting the attention they have drawn to the problems of globalization they have to decide exactly what they are protesting against, because the protesters actually fall into two broad categories: those who think the issue is whether we globalize and want to stop globalization in its tracks, and those who understand, as I would argue, that globalization is largely driven by technology — from the Internet to satellites to cell phones to PC's — which is shrinking the world from a size medium to a size small, whether we like it or not, and therefore the issue is how we globalize.
Up to now, these two groups have been mixed together: Anarchists and leftover Marxists who are simply looking for ways to undermine capitalism in a new guise and protectionist unions exploiting well-meaning college students to stop free trade are thrown together in the streets with environmentalists who believe trade, growth and green can go together; anti-poverty groups that understand that globalization, properly managed, can be the poor's best ladder out of misery; and serious social welfare groups that have useful ideas about debt relief and labor standards in a globalizing world.
Because the whether we globalize groups tend to be more noisy and violent, they have increasingly drowned out the how we globalize groups. In doing so they have created the misimpression that "the people" believe that globalization is all bad and can never work for the poor, when, in fact, it has both empowering and enriching features and disempowering and impoverishing features, and it all depends on how you manage it. If you think globalization is all good or all bad, you don't get it.
Fortunately, many of the serious how we globalize groups and government leaders are no longer willing to cede the moral high ground to the most idiotic whether we globalize groups, and what you've seen around Genoa is, for the first time, a split between the two.
Some serious groups, such as Friends of the Earth, Christian Aid, Jubilee 2000 and Oxfam, have been distancing themselves from violent protests and insisting on codes of conduct. "The political space around big international meetings has been hijacked by those who want to commit violence," Justin Forsyth, policy director of Oxfam, told The Financial Times. "It is counterproductive. They are taking the spotlight off those who want positive change." Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said people had been "far too apologetic" toward the violent protesters: "If the public knew their views, they'd disagree with them." And President Bush rightly declared: "Those who protest free trade seek to deny [the poor] their best hope for escaping poverty."
This split between the whether we globalize forces and the how we globalize forces is an important strategic moment that should be nurtured — not for its own sake but to actually make some progress. The serious protesters have made their point that it matters how we globalize, but they can make a difference only if they design solutions in partnership with big businesses and governments. The moment is ripe for a world leader who can bring them together.
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
Violence snatches summit spotlight Those trying to shut down talks 'don't represent the poor,' Bush says
By Laurence McQuillan USA TODAY
GENOA, Italy -- The eight democratically elected officials at an economic summit here grumbled among themselves this weekend about what was happening in the streets, where protesters clashing with police stole attention from their agenda.
The leaders of the world's seven largest industrial powers and Russia had trouble finding unity, however, on issues such as global warming.
The talks began Friday and ended Sunday. By the summit's close, one protester was dead and hundreds injured. The world leaders were appalled by the violence but said it was unfair that protesters claiming to represent the people were overshadowing the officials elected by the people.
Some members of the official delegations spoke off the record, but President Bush put the thoughts out publicly. He said he was upset that the violence happened. He thanked the ''men and women who have been trying to protect democratically elected leaders and our necessary right to be able to discuss our common problems.''
''Those protesters who try to shut down our talks on trade and aid don't represent the poor,'' Bush said.
The tear gas that filled the streets during the protests seemed to carry as much weight as the issues discussed by leaders, at least in terms of the message that emerged from Genoa. The fact that the leaders agreed to set up a $1.2 billion trust fund to help poor nations fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis might not be remembered as readily as the fact that they did it from behind military barricades that forced thousands of this port city's residents to leave and businesses to shut down.
The summit concluded without an agreement on controlling greenhouse gas emissions or reviving the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, although the group issued a statement agreeing that emissions must be curtailed. French President Jacques Chirac unsuccessfully lobbied Bush behind the scenes to support the Kyoto agreement.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who disagrees with Bush on the Kyoto agreement, downplayed the fact that Bush would not alter his stance. ''We know perfectly well that there is a disagreement over how we deal with the problem of climate change,'' Blair said. The group could ''at least agree (on) the objectives of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.''
Italian authorities tried to limit the protests Sunday by staging an early morning raid on protesters' headquarters. They seized iron bars, bricks and baseball bats. Protest leaders, however, had planned the major demonstrations for Friday and Saturday, not the last day of the summit.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush respected the rights of peaceful protesters. They ''couldn't have a better friend than George W. Bush and the United States,'' Fleischer said. ''For the anarchists and those who are committed to violence, I don't think anything will appease them.''
The summit did not deal with the president's bid to develop and employ a missile-defense system that would require changing or scrapping the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Bush, however, had private talks individually with many of the leaders who expressed their concerns that the missile shield would risk a resumption of the arms race.
White House officials said the three days of talks had been highly productive for Bush, who was attending his first economic summit. Next year's summit will be June 26-28 in Canada. The location -- Kananaskis, Alberta, 50 miles from Calgary -- is far more remote than the traditional big-city sites where such summits are held. This should make it easier to secure and more difficult for protesters to reach.
Motives, tactics divide protesters
Peaceful majority, some anarchists push broad agenda
By Jeff Israely, Globe Correspondent, 7/23/2001
GENOA, Italy - It's just before 9 a.m., and the first waves of tear gas are still hours away.
Antonino Maggiani is rubbing his eyes anyway, having just crawled out of his tent to get ready to join this weekend's massive demonstrations against the Group of Eight meeting.
While the Milan native knew exactly why he came to Genoa - to protest poverty and the unprecedented buildup of Italian security forces protecting world leaders - he was less sure about what to do.
''I don't know, but we have to try to get past the police lines,'' Maggiani, 24, said as he waited to use a portable toilet in a city park teeming with tents. ''And you can't do it with flowers.''
Maggiani, like the vast majority of the some 150,000 who came to this port city to protest the ill effects of globalization, didn't use rocks or bottles either.
Still, a relatively small band of protesters violently clashed with police at the largest and most destructive antiglobalization gathering ever.
The more than 500 injuries and the first death since the makeshift movement began in Seattle two years ago have sharpened questions about the tactics of both protesters and police in a confrontation that features a combustible - and sometimes hard to decipher - mix of pacifist and radical expressions of dissent.
Matteo Jade, a native of Genoa who helped lead the White Overalls group that tried pushing past police blockades shielding summit participants, said the passive-resistance tactics of protest leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. are a thing of the past.
''We have the right to move freely in the city,'' Jade said. ''What we do is civil disobedience.
''The state has changed their tactics, and we have been forced to do the same,'' he said.
Adding weight to demonstrators' assertions that police were provoking confrontations, 66 people were injured when police who said they were searching for weapons launched a surprise blitz in the early hours yesterday at a school used to house protest organizers.
When reporters were later allowed at the scene, the school rooms had been ransacked and the remains of personal belongings and computers were strewn about, with bloodstains on the floor and walls.
Interior Minister Claudio Scajola of Italy defended the raid, which led to 92 arrests, saying violent factions had been given cover by protest organizers.
While leaders of the government and protest groups traded accusations about who was instigating the violence, the experience of Genoa revealed that much has changed since the US antiwar and civil rights movements of the 1960s were so clearly divided between ardent pacifists and armed revolutionaries.
In Genoa a small but explosive faction of self-styled anarchists roamed among throngs of a peaceful majority, breaking windows, setting cars on fire, and hurling stones and bottles.
But despite sporadic confrontations among protesters, most of the demonstrators held the police responsible for the tension.
''I can understand people getting angry - they've walled in the city, they've tear-gassed totally peaceful demonstrations,'' said Chelsea Mozen, an Atlanta native who came from Prague for the protests.
''Some people will say it's because we're getting stronger and they want to divide us.''
Still, the divisions already existed, with a continuum of approaches on display in Genoa ranging from bongo playing to massive thrusts into police lines to rampant rock throwing and looting through the city streets.
Two young men from Stuttgart, Germany, were in the midst of one such clash Friday, two hours before police shot to death Carlo Giuliani as he was set to throw a fire extinguisher at them.
The two Germans, 20 and 23 years old, dressed in black and protecting their anonymity, were still catching their breath when they stopped to explain why they attack banks and police.
Banks ''are a symbol of the capitalist system,'' said the younger of the pair, who goes by the moniker Knut. ''Police are the most symbolic - it's the machine protecting the system.''
His friend, a biology student, added, ''I wouldn't kill a policeman, I think. But anyway they are so well-protected.'' There was even dissent within the ''Black Block'' of anarchist groups blamed for much of the damage in Genoa, which included 24 burned vehicles and 34 damaged banks.
''You shouldn't just throw stones to feel OK, there needs to be a tactical reason,'' concluded Knut, part of a group called the Anti-Fascist Revolutionaries.
Like Seattle, Prague, Quebec, and other cities that hosted summits of world leaders, Genoa was left in shatters yesterday, as residents began returning to the streets to find broken glass, burned vehicles, and damaged storefronts.
Genoa attracted crowds vastly larger than the 45,000 people at the 1999 World Trade Organization protest in Seattle and the 30,000 at April's Summit of the Americas in Quebec.
Still the extreme violence exceeded the worst fears of officials, who had employed an unprecedented corps of 20,000 police personnel and a no-tolerance approach with troublesome demonstrators.
Phil Skaller, an 18-year-old resident of Great Barrington, Mass., who was at the Quebec protest before coming to Genoa, said he was appalled by both the level of police power and random protester violence this weekend.
But Skaller, despite his soft voice and shy smile, is no quiet pacifist.
''I think it's great that 2,000 nuns are holding a vigil, but it's also good that people are smashing windows at McDonald's,'' said Skaller, who mixes with the rock throwers but says he has never gone past heaving insults at police. ''The damage caused here pales in comparison to what the World Bank and US arms business does. There needs to be a broader definition of violence that includes things like starvation and lack of medical supplies.''
But Skaller concedes that violence at protests may also hurt the cause. ''The danger is the group will be divided just as it's starting to grow,'' he said.