UNITED STATES: Protests begin to clarify anti-globalisation debates
WASHINGTON — The militant and youthful protests here, to coincide with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) meeting on April 16-17, dramatised the profound flaws in finance-centred world capitalism. Perhaps most usefully, the week of protest sharpened the sometimes fuzzy discussions surrounding globalisation and popular resistance to it.
Although an "abolitionist" current gained most activists' support, a battle over the movement's strategic direction will continue. Those who argue for reform of the IMF and WB will continue to work in their Washington offices and similar sites far from grassroots reality. Some professionalised non-government organisations (NGOs) — even campaigners against the Third World debt such as the Jubilee 2000 groups in the US and Britain — remain wedded to increasing their access to the IMF and WB, even at the risk of increasing the institutions' power over developing countries.
The protest week began ominously with a drenched, chilled and poorly attended debt-relief rally on April 9 organised by Jubilee 2000 (US), addressed by young neo-liberal economist for the Clinton administration Gene Sperling and Republican Congress member Jim Leach, responsible for the highly conditional character of debt forgiveness to date. Demands by Jubilee South (<http://aidc.org.za>) for debt cancellation and reparations, without neo-liberal strings attached, seem to have made no dent.
Three days later, hundreds of members of the Teamsters Union rallied with right-wing populist, xenophobic presidential candidate Pat Buchanan and then joined 15,000 other workers at a "No Blank Check for China" demonstration at the Capitol building organised by the US trade union federation, the AFL-CIO. The unions oppose Chinese-US free-trade status and China's World Trade Organisation (WTO) membership. Questions remain, however, about whether this focus — in contrast to shutting the WTO — best serves the interests of Chinese or US workers.
In contrast, around 30,000 protesters joined the "Mobilisation for Global Justice" on April 16, with more than 3000 staying for civil disobedience actions on April 17. The mobilisation and direct actions resulted in the highest number arrests — 1300 — at a single US event.
Coalitions and consciousness
Granted, the demonstration failed to obstruct the IMF/WB spring meetings. Washington police spread protest-boundary perimeters wide, paralysing over 90 city blocks in the centre of town — forcing a virtual shutdown of most government work in the vicinity — but also gaining the physical space required to sneak several hundred meeting-goers into the IMF building at 5 am on the two mornings. On April 16, bunches of 100-500 protesters clogged 18 intersections and turned away numerous late-arriving delegates.
But disrupting the meeting was a less important goal than consciousness-raising. To this end, the mobilisation included the launch of the "World Bank bond boycott" campaign on April 10, a handle for grassroots activists to take the work forward at home.
Radicals built a militant platform and slogan — "Break the Bank, De-fund the Fund, Dump the debt!" — which, thanks to skilful manoeuvring, won endorsement from a coalition of forces as strong and diverse as those who gathered in Seattle four months earlier.
Initially nervous, some of Washington's trade union bosses, NGO developmentalists and office-based environmentalists were persuaded by a core of left-leaning local think-tank and NGO staff to miraculously — if temporarily — merge the very different agendas of bureaucrats and grassroots activists.
US trade union/NGO/green officials have historically wobbled when faced with global political economy issues, due to their often debilitating ties to the Democratic Party (and fear of being seen to be allied with Republican Party IMF/WB bashers) and a "professionalism" heightened by dependence upon bourgeois funders. The AFL-CIO even supported the $18 billion recapitalisation of the IMF in 1998, after obscure deal-making with the Clinton administration.
The activists, in contrast, were anxious to conduct a joyous symphony of Seattle-like lock-downs and street parties to blockade the IMF/WB meetings. They introduced a cultural liberation ambience virtually unknown to Washington, utilising radical participatory democracy and affinity-group cell structures facilitated by young talented organisers from the Direct Action Network.
As Z magazine's Michael Albert reported, "The various tactical wings of the movement — whether seeking to get arrested, to militantly protest, to make a public but peaceful statement, or just to learn or teach — worked together marvellously. Diverse tactics did not trump one another. Tension was minimal. Intercommunication was considerable. Coalitions were strengthened rather than dissolving into tactical disputes. There was in-the-street mutual aid, careful planning of venues and events, and pre-demonstration communication of aims."
Activists and strategists
Leading radical strategists came from organisation such as 50 Years is Enough, Alliance for Global Justice, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Center for Economic Justice, Essential Action, and Jobs with Justice. The campaigners from these groups managed to pull mainstream progressive forces substantially to the left.
From San Francisco, Global Exchange continued its leading ideological role, Ruckus Society did excellent training sessions, the Rainforest Action Network helped with direct action, and the International Forum on Globalisation sponsored a well-attended teach-in. These groups provided trusted movement spokespeople.
The most formidable task was to keep clarity in the Direct Action Network's nightly council meetings. Among the most appreciated activists, surprisingly, were the organised anarchists. Seattle's infamous "Black Bloc" — some of whom split the movement with their tactics of breaking windows in the vicinity of the non-violent civil disobedience actions — reappeared as the Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Network.
Clad in black up to their bandanas, the 1000-strong contingent worked in harmony with other activists. They had the honour of attracting a police helicopter devoted solely to trailing their movements.
It is not surprising that, given the surplus of democracy, police infiltrated the radical mobilisations. One hippie-cop, who accidentally left his cell phone with demonstrators, unwittingly provided activists — and internet surfers — a full set of D.C. police leaders' private numbers. These allowed hundreds of arrested protesters to express their objections to the brutal treatment, blatantly illegal arrests and harassment they received.
Aside from the logistical challenge of outwitting and outnumbering the authorities next time, the most serious challenge for future mobilisations is to diversify so as to welcome oppressed communities within the First World. The Washington, D.C. groups had three months to prepare (Seattle took nine), yet, notwithstanding valiant efforts, failed to bring aboard African-American and Latino communities, except where solidarity demonstrations were held to prevent housing evictions associated with gentrification near the mobilisation's headquarters.
A world without the World Bank
What strategies are being pursued to diminish the financiers' real power? For progressive activists in the Third World, practical alternatives to the IMF and WB must be given more attention.
Only a tiny fraction of basic needs provision in most developing countries requires foreign loans for imports. If the hard currency needed to buy petroleum or other vital inputs can be readily supplied by national export credit agencies (competing against each other, in contrast to centralised financial power and coordination in Washington), the core rationale for the WB falls away.
Instead of relying upon the IMF to maintain a positive balance of payments when fickle international financial inflows dry up or are frightened away, Third World countries that climb out from under the heel of the IMF and WB could realistically impose Malaysian-style exchange controls and tax unnecessary imports.
Thus Walden Bello from Focus on the Global South (Bangkok) confidently advocated "abolishing an institution that has made a big business out of 'ending poverty', and completely devolving the work to local, national and regional institutions better equipped to attack the causes of poverty".
Only when Washington's institutional power fades, can state development officials re-acquire the ability they once enjoyed, a few decades ago, to tame their own financial markets. The end of the IMF and WB would offer space to impose interest rate subsidies, directed credit, prescribed asset requirements on institutional investors, community reinvestment mandates and other means of socialising financial capital currently prohibited by Washington.
Is de-funding feasible? The same question was asked of anti-apartheid financial sanctions advocates, and answered in the affirmative. Denying the IMF new monies is not impossible, if popular pressure is placed on US Congress (where an upcoming vote may be a close call) and all national parliaments to deny it further resources.
Activists inspired by the A16 actions can take advantage of the WB's extreme reliance upon international bond markets. Nearly 80% of bank funds for lending come from bonds, providing a compelling pressure point and local focus for the medium-term struggle. Hence, the potential of the "World Bank bond boycott" campaign initiated by Haitian, South African, Brazilian and many other debt campaigners (see <http://www.worldbankboycott.org/>).
In early April, Berkeley City Council committed its municipal fund managers to not buy WB bonds (it was also the first US municipality to divest from apartheid South Africa). The campaign can pressure investors from pension funds, churches and university endowments to act similarly.
The Rainforest Action Network combined with the boycott campaign to target Citibank for its marketing of WB bonds. A frightened Washington Post lead editorial on April 11 called the boycott "crazy". In coming months, activists may prove establishment concerns entirely justified, as they did with the financial sanctions that helped sink the apartheid regime in Pretoria.
BY PATRICK BOND
[Patrick Bond is a Johannesburg-based activist and economist. His new book, Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa (Pluto Press), contains two chapters on how the World Bank and IMF curtailed meaningful liberation in South Africa.]