Policing Dissent: Social Control and the Anti-Globalization Movement

Chapter 3: The Anti-Globalization Movement

35 Chapter 3 The Anti-Globalization Movement Studying the control of the antiglobalization movement is daunting because the movement seems to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Taking on the characteristics of a multitude, the movement appears throughout the world in surprising locations. Social movement scholars see it in the water wars of Cochabamba, Peru (Shiva 2002), in the Zapatista struggle in Mexico (Hayden 2002), in indigenous resistance to genetically modified agriculture (Kimbrell 2002), in the peasant occupation of lands in Brazil (Wright and Wolford 2003), and even in the protest against gentrification in downtown Tempe, Arizona (Amster 2004). The antiglobalization movement is also located in labor disputes over free-trade agreements (Brecher et al. 2000), in the fight against sweatshop labor (Fung et al. 2001), and in the symbolic manipulation of corporate symbols (Klein 2000). Characteristically, there is little agreement on the origins of the movement. Some feel it sprang from the 1999 World Trade Organization protest in Seattle (Yuen et al. 2001). Others see its roots in the struggles of American gay activists in the 1980s; in “reclaiming the streets” protests in New York and London during the same decade (Shepard and Hayduk 2002); or in the International Monetary Fund riots in Asia, Latin America, and Africa some thirty years ago (Woodroffe 2000). Still others believe that the movement was born five hundred years ago, Chap-03.qxd 12/13/07 4:50 PM Page 35 when the indigenous people of the Americas fought European colonizers (Notes from Nowhere 2003). Clearly, there is a wide variety of opinion on what constitutes the movement and its origins. It is also clear, however, that studying all of these spaces simultaneously is impossible. Restricted by travel expenses, time constraints, language barriers , and basic common sense, I focus in this book only on North America, including Mexico, the United States, and Canada. I consciously (and cautiously) locate the movement as it confronts , through protest, those global and regional institutions whose main task is to promote, develop, or implement corporate globalization through neoliberal free-market policies. These globacracies include the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement (FTAA), as well as lesser known groups such as the Group of Eight (G8) and the World Economic Forum (WEF), where global elites meet to discuss global market policies. I also focus primarily on the street side of the protests. Excluded from this study are the internal and reformist efforts of anti-globalization activists, such as the political maneuvering of nongovernmental agencies as they pressure globacracies. While I recognize that these political efforts are important, when I speak of “the movement” in this book, I speak mainly of the arm that plans and implements direct-action protests at summit and ministerial meetings. In 2002 and 2003 I participated in five large antiglobalization protests, which included several sizable demonstrations at each of the following events: the WEF in New York City (February 2002); the G8 in Calgary and Ottawa, Canada (July 2002); the WB and IMF meeting in Washington, D.C. (September 2002); the WTO ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico (September 2003); and the FTAA meeting in Miami (November 2003). Because of the contentious nature of the P o l i c i n g D i s s e n t 36 Chap-03.qxd 12/13/07 4:50 PM Page 36 movement, these locations were ideal for studying the social control of protests; for during the late 1990s, the movement emerged as one of the most common meeting places of control and resistance. After the window breaking at the Battle of Seattle in 1999 and the killing of a young anarchist in the Genoa G8 protest in 2001, the anti-globalization movement began to receive increasing media attention, which often depicted it as dangerous and violent and a threat to public order.1 Although unrelated, the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center augmented the perceived threat of violence and public disorder. Since that time, anti-globalization protesters across the globe have been more likely to face highly orchestrated police responses to activists’ dedicated use of direct action and social disruption. The years that I spent in the movement coincided with law enforcement’s development and implementation of new techniques of control, which makes the anti-globalization movement empirically relevant to the study of social control...