BY SEAN HEALY
Let's face it, there can be few things worse than being compared to the epitome of bland, consumer capitalism. So when someone within the movement, especially someone as prominent as Naomi Klein, compares it to everyone's favourite hate target, McDonald's, you sit up and take notice.
The problem is, though, that the analogy, and Klein's argument, is entirely misplaced: our movement is not an endlessly repeating chain of blah.
Sure, many of our protests are starting to look "pretty much like every other mass protest these days" — but that's because many of them have the same scenario, by necessity.
In Quebec City, in Seattle, in Prague, in Melbourne, there was a conference of them, the corporate globalisers, protected by a thick blue line of Robocops and an even thicker line of shrill tabloid journalism, then surrounded by tens of thousands of us, the anti-corporate protesters. Mix them together and you get the predictable result.
Even when the scenario was slightly different, as on May Day, when there was no conference of corporate globalisers, the rest of the ingredients were there, and therefore, the result was similar to previous anti-corporate protest actions.
But is this really our fault, rather than the fault of the police forces which are devising common, worldwide anti-protester tactics?
Should we not surround such conferences with seas of protesters in future, or let the World Trade Organisation meet in peace, in order to make our protests look different?
Should we not in fact be happy that we carried out our promise, made straight after we stopped the World Trade Organisation's last attempt at a new trade round, to, paraphrasing Che, "create one, two, many Seattles"?
In any case, the sameness is but in the appearance: a lot about these protests has changed since Seattle. The Quebec City protest against the Free Trade Area of Americas looked much like the Seattle one against the WTO — but it wasn't.
It was the product of a movement 18 months older, wiser, bigger, more rooted in public opinion, and, frankly, more radical, with more of the movement becoming clearer and more explicit in their anti-capitalism.
As for the May Day protests, they were a quantum leap from those which happened a year ago: in global spread, in size, in pretty much everything. Even the police and media were different: if anything, they were fiercer.
Klein is quite right in one thing: "the most powerful resistance movements are always deeply rooted in community". Her model, the Zapatistas, is indeed an apt proof of that.
But their success has in large part come by punctuating "all that invisible, daily work", when ground is taken slowly, bit by bit, with the grand initiatives, the "flashy displays", when much ground is taken quickly.
They worked for years building a base among indigenous peasants in Chiapas, then took a great leap forward by seizing the town of San Cristobal on January 1, 1994; they spent years building alliances throughout Mexico, then took the audacious initiative of marching on the capital.
There are other examples that prove much the same: they slowly build up their strength, then launch an offensive. The Vietnamese national liberation movement interspersed slow, steady work in the villages and cities with grand moments — the August 1945 uprising in Hanoi, the 1954 seizure of Dien Bien Phu, the 1968 Tet Offensive.
But, is this not what our movement already looks like, albeit on a smaller scale and in a wildly different context?
The protests at Seattle, at Quebec City, on May Day were the result of months of work in the communities, of countless smaller demonstrations, teach-ins, late-night poster runs, Saturday mornings at supermarkets handing out flyers, conversations with family members, work mates, class mates.
Was this not "daily, invisible work"? Were these not "moments to build the connections that make demonstration something more than theatre"?
It's true that our movement is still too "rootless" — and that's not just the result of the evisceration of community, but also of the decades-long isolation of the activists from the mass.
That, however, is ending. Our rootlessness is passing, and not just as a result of "daily, invisible work" but also, even more so, as a result of the grand moments, the May Days, the Seattles, which have built morale, displayed strength, attracted media attention.
These united mass actions have sent ripples into far-off corners of our communities which we haven't previously been able to reach, forced the elite to defend capitalism for once, and inspired hundreds, thousands to join our movement.
Each time we have one of these actions, we become more rooted in our communities, in the working class, than before, not less.
If, in the next 12 months, we have countless replicas of Seattle and Quebec City happening around the globe, if next May Day runs to form, then good, more power to us.
[Sean Healy was the media spokesperson for the May 1 stock exchange blockade in Sydney.]