Interesting that the over-the-top presence of the over-the-top NYPD has caused many organizations to back out of anti-WEF protests and rallies.
In a climate where dissent has been called un-American, and the Patriot Act has granted the government new powers to eavesdrop, arrest, and detain, many of the global justice movement's more mainstream players have decided to lie low. The Sierra Club has completely bowed out, while at the fair trade outfit Global Exchange, says cofounder Kevin Danaher, "we are still dusting ourselves off" from the blow of 9-11. The group will conduct only teach-ins. The AFL-CIO had hoped to march, but was denied a permit. So the anarchists and direct action types like Warcry have been left to lead the charge. Not only have they assembled the samba bands, but also, for the first time, the anti-capitalists even negotiated a permit for a march, the only legal one this week. To a great extent, what happens at the WEF showdown—the size and energy and confrontational tone—depends on them...
The reformist perspective is likely to retreat further with groups like the Sierra Club absent from WEF week and the AFL-CIO presence reduced from a march to a rally. Danaher says Global Exchange will focus instead on the alternative World Social Forum in Brazil. Shooting more from the hip, Public Citizen staffer Mike Dolan, an architect of Seattle, says his group has not yet endorsed the one permitted march because the sponsor, Another World Is Possible, "can't guarantee that the event will be nonviolent, and that the movement won't be marred by vandalism." At press time, Drop the Debt, Earth First!, Rainforest Action Network, and the Ruckus Society had all not signed onto the march, either.
With these significant players sitting it out—or penned in by overzealous police—who's left to distribute schedules, run listservs, host spokescouncils, paint banners, and coordinate legal and medical support, food, and housing? The anarchists are making do.
More here. |
