Policing Dissent: Social Control and the Anti-Globalization Movement

Chapter 7: Law Enforcement and Control

165 Chapter 7 Law Enforcement and Control In Multitude, Hardt and Negri (2004) argue that modes of repression always follow innovations in resistance , not the other way around. They suggest that dissenters are innovators, creating from necessity new ways to resist and challenge the status quo. The state then follows, implementing new forms of control to mitigate challenges to its power. Affinity groups, clusters, and direct action have formed a new constellation of protest that has seriously challenged the agenda of large globalization institutions such as the WTO and the IMF. In response, the state, working closely with these institutions, has developed new techniques to minimize potential disruption. As I have shown throughout this book, these techniques included a careful mapping and fortification of space as well as the use of legal restraints and public relations campaigns. This spiral dance requires constant change and assessment from social movement activists who challenge the status quo. As Hardt and Negri would predict, they must recognize new forms of policing and respond with creative ways to resist and broadcast their message. Otherwise, movements run the risk of becoming unimportant. Legal, Physical, and Psychological Control Evidence suggests that movements now face increasingly refined techniques of legal control. Through various agencies, Chap-07.qxd 12/13/07 4:52 PM Page 165 the state has employed legal mechanisms to inhibit mobilization. Temporary ordinances, creative use of old laws, and legal permits are now common ways to control protests. Yet while we know that law enforcement may use mass arrests to empty out streets and court cases to drain time and funds from activists organizations (Barkan 2001, 2004), we may overlook other forms of legal activity that operate at multiple levels and at different periods throughout the cycle of a single protest. Examples such as police data gathering before a protest, Miami’s Street and Sidewalks Ordinance, and creative use of city fire codes point to a microlevel of legal regulation that we must study further. Evidence also suggests that physical control of a large antiglobalization protest starts months before the actual event. This implies that we must look at how police plan and prepare for such large gatherings, yet analysis of police preparation goes mostly ignored in both the policing and social movement literatures . When we look at such planning processes, however, we find that police are moving to confront network-based movements that are nimble in the streets. Hence, control of space becomes a central factor. As we have seen, police have used geography to separate protesters from ministers and representatives . In other cases, they have mapped entire sections of cities and assigned undercover agents to monitor crowd movement. The important point is not the specific tactic but the way in which law enforcement has enclosed, zoned off, and militarized space to deal with the diffuse nature of the anti-globalization movement. Finally, police use psychological means to control dissent. Disciplinary mechanisms can induce specific feelings in activists and the public regarding the nature of protest itself. For instance, law enforcement agencies use detailed public relations campaigns to frame the movement as violent and anarchist, their primary goal being to isolate protesters and produce unfavorable media coverage. P o l i c i n g D i s s e n t 166 Chap-07.qxd 12/13/07 4:52 PM Page 166 Thoughts on the Characteristics of the State and Policing Study of the policing of the anti-globalization movement shows that the state can adapt quickly to a changing repertoire of contention. At a broader level, however, my findings suggest that the state plays a more complicated role in globalization than the literature currently describes. One debate in that literature centers around whether or not the state is weakening because of globalization. Scholars argue that, in the late twentieth century, we saw an increasingly faster pace and intensity of global interconnection (Harvey 1989; Bauman 1998; Castells 2000; Hardt and Negri 2000, 2004). Driven primarily by capitalism, this quickening occurred simultaneously with a communication technology explosion that transformed how we work, produce, and consume. Scholars postulate that these changes meant that the state, as conceptualized by early and mid-twentieth-century thinkers, no longer existed (Ohmae 1995, Held and McGrew 2000). Global institutions such as the WTO would soon take over significant territorial and legal powers, and at the very least the nation-state would no longer enjoy...