The Fall Protest Season

 
The fall protest season is upon us in the United States and throughout the hemisphere. The FTAA continues to be a prime target, but it has been joined by the Plan Puebla-Panamá, the militarization of the Colombian conflict and other issues. FTAA building blocks, such as the Central American Free Trade Agreement, are also under the gun. The US opposition to free trade may have a higher hurdle to overcome now that Trade Promotion Authority has been passed by Congress, but opposition to free trade is growing throughout the region. This year brings some new actors along with the old. The World Social Forum has engendered a group of national and regional "clones" that are busy unifying social organizations in countries such as Argentina and Mexico. Other movements are working toward public expressions of rejection of the FTAA.

The protest season began in earnest on August 22, in the form of a march outside the World Social Forum regional meeting in Buenos Aires. Several US representatives observed, among them the assistant international affairs director of the AFL-CIO, Stan Gacek, and the director of the Development Gap, Steve Hellinger, both of whose organizations are part of the Alliance for Responsible Trade. The march emphasized the South American financial crisis, but a special program on the FTAA was organized by the Hemispheric Social Alliance and its many Argentine and Southern Cone affiliates. The World Social Forum network in Ecuador is charged with organizing the parallel meeting of anti-FTAA organizations to coincide with the VII Trade Ministerial and Americas Business Forum in Quito at the end of October. (NB: The worldwide WSF will convene again in Porto Alegre, Brazil in January 2003).

It will soon be time for the "traditional" Washington protests against the meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The tradition took root in April 1999 after the successful protests in Seattle. This year, the call to action states: "September 25th-29th in Washington, DC. STOP Infectious Corporate Greed! CONFRONT Corporate Evil-doers at their CEO Summit! QUARANTINE the World Bank and IMF on Saturday, September 28th." The official meetings are described as attempts "to continue the destructive path of corporate globalization." The protest program includes trainings and teach-ins; a Power for the People/Clean Energy rally; an interfaith vigil; Anti-Capitalist Convergence Action; a Mobilization for Global Justice rally and march; and quarantine actions. In a telling link between events, the rallying cry of the Latin American Solidarity Conference concludes, "From Washington to Quito - Join us for Corporate Fall." (For more information see www.globalizethis.org).

Even before the Washington protests, Brazil will hold its national plebiscite against the FTAA on September 1-7. The campaign is being organized in all states of Brazil and counts on the commitment of thousands of militants and grass-roots organizations. The results are likely to give a strong push to similar efforts and other expressions of opposition throughout the hemisphere. And immediately following these September dates, October 12-Columbus Day, or Día de la Raza-will serve as a point of convergence for many types of protests in the region, in addition to the ones held every year by indigenous rights movements. Activities planned by the Latin America Solidarity Committee and other US organizations focus on Plan Puebla-Panamá and the FTAA. The date will also mark the culmination of the hemisphere-wide Grito de los Excluidos (Cry of the Excluded) campaign. The many different types of protests on October 12 shows that the globalization of resistance is a reality in our region, with many issues converging under a militant umbrella.

This is just a sampling of the large number of mobilizations being planned for this fall. But one requires special mention: the Cuban Anti-Globalization Conference, on November 25 - 28. The event will take on new significance this year after becoming part of the Hemispheric Social Alliance's official network. It brings anti-FTAA activities back full circle to the 1997 Belo Horizonte Labor Forum and even the 1998 Santiago People's Summit, where the Cuban presence was actually feared as a divisive element in the nascent alliances between social and labor forces. The inclusion of Cuba is an indication of the expanding and more strident nature of protest in the Americas.