Looks at the anti-globalization label

...Another effort to harmonize the policies of global institutions is reflected in the Transnational Resource and Action Center's insistence that the UN withdraw from its "Global Compact" with transnational corporations...

...As a result of this pressure, in 1998 and 1999, the subcommission passed resolutions criticizing international trade agreements...

...Her research focuses on globalization and social movements...

...So let's look at some themes in protester discourse that suggest more pro-active alternatives...

...A global marketplace does not produce medicines needed to save poor children, but it does produce pharmaceuticals that appeal to the sexual and cosmetic desires of the rich...

...The task of naming the movement should not be left to those in power...

...A Movement for Comprehensive Globalization A lingering image that I took away from the Quebec City protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas is of photocopies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that activists attached to the chain-link fence separating the public from the official meeting site...

...And yet, governments have managed to create fundamentally undemocratic institutions like the WTO...

...Many were surprised to learn that even their elected legislators could not obtain a copy of the negotiating text for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (only a heavily censored version of the text was released, months after the Quebec summit...

...Trade regimes are negotiated in complete isolation from other important international agreements on human rights and environmental protection...

...The AGM clearly shares the latter view...

...The major agenda of protester rallies and DISSENT / Fall 2001 n I 5 COMMENTS & OPINIONS teach-ins is to demonstrate the different effects of the same global economic policies...

...Free trade advocates justify this priority with the claim that the benefits of trade will automatically "trickle-down" to all sectors of society...

...And one way to begin is to resist the AGM label, consciously and vocally...

...In this sense it is a Comprehensive Globalization Movement...

...As the Russian social theorist Boris Kagarlitsky pointed out to activists attending teach-ins in Prague last fall, "Centrally planned economies COMMENTS & OPINIONS tive to the Davos World Economic Forum— which will be held in Porto Alegre for a second time this coming January...

...THE TERM "anti-globalization movement" (AGM) has come to refer to recent mass protests against global capitalist expansion...

...Much of the public, and even participants in the movement itself, have uncritically accepted the label...

...Global Compact opponents ask, Why shouldn't the UN's "Partners" be required to uphold its legal principles, such as those embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the International Labor Organization treaties...

...if workers organize...

...These agreements have an enormous impact on everyday life in local communities, and so the members of these communities are beginning to demand a say in their negotiation...

...What the CGM is trying to say is that by separating economic policy decisions from other aspects of politics, governments have introduced unacceptable contradictions into international law...

...Movement members devote tremendous amounts of time, money, and energy to learning about the experience of other people across the globe...

...14 n DISSENT / Fall 2001 The AGM label, in short, provides a convenient defense for global capitalist ideologies while it shifts public attention away from the critical message protesters seek to bring to the public agenda...

...Looking across the spectrum of groups involved in the protests to change the way the world's economies are governed, one finds many reasons to call this a movement for justice...

...The United Nations has produced countless resolutions and treaties that aim to reinforce democratic norms...

...A coalition of human rights groups—the International Committee on Human Rights in Trade and Investment—has worked within the United Nations Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities to advance resolutions that highlight incompatibilities between established human rights norms and proposed or newly enacted trade liberalization policies...

...This movement is global in the sense that it is actively working to promote a globally defined vision of justice...

...Pundits such as Thomas Friedman or Paul Krugman can easily convince their readers that the "anti-globalization" movement is an irrational attempt to stop inevitable and unambiguously good economic development...

...This pattern, incidentally, is not unlike that of earlier social movements seeking to democratize the practices of national states...

...The challenge for those organizing around the Social Forum is to find ways to resist the marginalization of this movement in the mass media...

...It has brought activists from the global South to communities in Europe and North America to give witness to the social and environmental impacts of the commodity production that makes high levels of consumption possible in the North...

...The movement, moreover, seeks to expose the global economic system as a direct descendent of the earlier, less subtly exploitative, colonial system, demonstrating how southern economic and political choices are defined by global economic structures...

...The messy and politically difficult issues of distribution and environmental sustainability are then ignored—even formally excluded from consideration by agreements drafted largely by trade bureaucrats and their corporate advisory panels...

...Even trade proponents recognize a need to increase the transparency of these institutions, although their main emphasis is on the need to "educate" the public about trade institutions and their benefits in order to prevent protests by those who don't fully understand what's going on...

...Along with many government officials (particularly those from rich countries), they frequently claim, We know what the movement is against, but what is it for...

...It resists attempts to govern economic decisions solely at the global level...

...The movement must foster real public debate about how to organize society so as to put people and the environment ahead of money...

...The CGM calls for a holistic definition of globalization, where social and political integration is negotiated alongside economic integration...

...As governments seek to coordinate policies at the global level, they have systematically excluded ever greater numbers of people from decision-mak 16 n DISSENT / Fall 2001 ing...

...Local control is also required, most activists would argue, if economic decisions are to be sensitive to environmental constraints and to the needs of everyone affected...

...Against this exclusion, activists call for greater access to information about the free trade agreements that governments are negotiating...

...It seeks to dramatize connections between production and consumption, revealing the human and environmental costs that companies prefer to keep hidden deep within complex production chains...

...If resistance to government efforts to COMMENTS & OPINIONS enact less restrictive rules about the flow of goods and services across borders is "anti-global," then governments' own efforts to restrict internationally established democratic norms must also qualify as "anti-global...

...Different groups within the movement differ in the relative weight they attach to each of these "pillars" of globalization, but everyone agrees that the prevailing policy discourse gives priority to economic integration (read unrestricted markets...

...The coalition of groups organizing those pro tests called itself the Mobilization for Global Justice, a label that many local groups have also adopted...

...Clearly the structures of global financial institutions are inconsistent with the values of democracy that give legitimacy to modern governments...

...But the naming of something gives power to those bestowing names, and the proponents of the anti-globalization misnomer use it to deflect challenges to corporate-capitalist ideology...

...TRAC's report, "Tangled up in Blue," denounces as "blue-washing" the efforts by some of the most flagrant violators of fundamental human rights, such as Nike and Rio Tinto, to enhance their corporate images by enlisting as "Partners" with the UN...

...These institutional contradictions must be addressed...

...see www.corpwatch.org) A Movement for Global Justice The first major mobilization following Seattle was the April 16, 2000 protests at the annual spring meeting of the World Bank and IMF...

...Their counterparts from Latin America (the "beneficiaries" of Canadian job losses) then described their degraded working conditions, low wages, and the persistent company threats to relocate (again...

...Anti-globalization" protesters were, in fact, appealing to global norms to demonstrate the arguably anti-global tendencies of their opponents...

...In Quebec City, for instance, Canadian workers spoke of the effects on their communities of the job losses caused by companies' decisions to relocate to areas with lower wages and labor standards...

...The key question is whether globalization refers only to rules governing economic exchange or whether it also encompasses rules of social and political engagement...

...JACKIE SMITH teaches sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook...

...The AGM is "anti-global" in one sense only...

...The stories of workers' woes help generate a shared sense of injustice and make explicit how this diverse movement defines justice...

...For many of them, the problems we face are caused not by faulty economic reasoning, but by the muddled policies that result when non-experts are allowed to influence economic planning and introduce environmental and social regulations...

...People's Global Action, an important network in this movement, has organized a number of cross-continental caravans to promote greater understanding of globalization's effects...

...A Movement for Global Democracy If one had to identify a common thread among the demands of activists in this movement, it would be a demand for democracy...

...It must think se riously about what kinds of institutions could effectively promote this goal...

...By looking at some actual efforts of groups within this movement, one can see that the movement is better seen as a positive attempt to resolve the institutional contradictions of globalization policy rather than as a knee-jerk opposition to globalization...

...the goal of reducing restrictions on international trade must not trump other social goals...

...The Global Compact allows corporate donors to be associated with the UN without any monitoring of corporate compliance with basic UN principles...

...Such exchanges generate a sense of solidarity as they help clarify the identity of global economic institutions as a common enemy...

...For instance, groups like Food First International have ar gued that the structural adjustment programs implemented as part of World Bank and International Monetary Fund loan packages must not violate existing international agreements on human rights and social welfare...

...So this movement opposes an economy that is organized and run globally...

...it is part of the struggle itself...

...A globally oriented economy responds to those with the most dollars (or other exchangeable currency), not to cashstarved farmers who produce food for export economies and don't earn enough to buy food for their own families...