The sight of 30,000 people on the streets of Washington opposing the policies of two institutions which have little direct power over the U.S. also did much to eliminate the temptation to frame the movement as "protectionist." That line of argument has been advanced by mainstream neo-liberal publications such as The Economist, which sought to portray the Seattle demonstrations as evidence of contempt for the South‚s need for economic "opportunity," which can, the journal maintains, only come about through "free trade."  Although it is no sin to integrate self-interest into arguments about the shape the world economy should take, it surely did us no harm to demonstrate our commitment to the elimination of structures that provide benefits like low commodity prices to the North, on the grounds that those economic arrangements blatantly exploit the people of the South. 

  As a consequence, the pundits and experts of the mainstream media, unable to label us selfish protectionists, were reduced to calling us naïve.  These commentaries ˆ of which there were many ˆ pointed at us and asked: Don‚t they know that the U.S. economy is booming; that this global system is providing them with lives of relative, if not downright, luxury?  If so, then why are they in the streets complaining?  In order to find something to complain about, they had to target these complicated, obscure institutions, which they can‚t possibly understand!  This might be best summed up as the "spoiled-kids-looking-for-a-rebellion" position.  For anyone who is able to conceive of more complicated motivations for human behavior than economic self-interest, it is not hard to see through.

  It is telling that this was the most substantial argument that could be advanced against us ˆ one almost entirely free of substance. One aspect of the emerging movement for global economic justice that the critique does capture, and distort, is its class profile: many of the most visible activists are from middle class or wealthier families, and most of them are white. The failure of the movement in this country to more accurately reflect the population of the U.S., and particularly the populations here that bear the brunt of corporate globalization, has been a matter of great concern and debate among organizers. It seems wholly logical, if unfortunate, that the movement in its early days ˆ and we do believe we are witnessing the birth of a major social movement with an unprecedented international dimension ˆ would draw disproportionately from those populations that have had the greatest luxury of exploring the issues of the global economy, namely those with college educations, or the time and means to do independent reading. The challenge, which we are beginning to deal with successfully, is to blend that culture with the approaches of activist organizations that have formed in response to the daily lived reality of poverty and political oppression. Making the seemingly mundane challenges of feeding families and finding child care in a post-welfare-"reform" society come alive for middle-class white activists is just as important as making the international dimensions of today‚s economic structures come alive for someone denied food stamps.

  White activists needn‚t apologize for taking initiative, for caring about the direction of the world economy. It is precisely this moral, humanistic impulse that so utterly baffles pundits like Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman in the New York Times, whose columns parade the bankruptcy of mainstream economics, which cannot deal with any factors that don‚t reduce to profit and self-interest. White activists in the U.S. just need to work on integrating the immediate concerns of populations in this country who feel threatened, personally and immediately, by the politics of power and money. They needn‚t shift the focus of their activism from the international to the local, but they do need to lend solidarity and concrete support to the struggles taking place in their own communities. Once that happens routinely, communities of color in the U.S. can be expected to demonstrate solidarity with the struggles of ordinary communities in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America.

Yes, But Is It a MOVEMENT?

  Seattle was a landmark, both for activists for global economic justice and for our opponents. The mere fact that the primary connotation of "Seattle" for many people is no longer a pleasant city in the Pacific Northwest but a shorthand for assertive protests against corporate globalization demonstrates that something significant has happened, that the political landscape has shifted. In April we found ourselves saying to journalists things like "this has the potential to be the biggest [or, in safer mode, "most dynamic"] social movement since the Vietnam War."

  Is that true? First, do we have a movement, something more than the sum of the parts (i.e., the demonstrations in Seattle and Washington)? I think the answer to that question is yes, measured by a few gauges. The mainstream media recurs in its analyses of economic developments to our demonstrations and our arguments about the fundamental inequities in the global system even when we haven‚t been trying to get their attention. People with little or no interest in politics can now tell us some of the basics of our struggle. Requests for information pour into our office from the most indirect of connections, in ways they didn‚t before this year. A presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, is demonstrating that a platform for popular empowerment and against corporate advantage has genuine appeal. New local grassroots organizations and coalitions devoted to progressive activist on the global economy are springing up around the U.S.

  Of course one can argue about the definition of "movement," or that we have yet to achieve the critical momentum such a desig nation requires. But rather than going into semantics, let‚s recognize some of the key ways in which this movement differs from previous ones. First and foremost, this movement is more international than any previous one. When we think of U.S. movements, whether it be gay rights, feminism, opposition to U.S. involvement in Central America, civil rights, or opposition to the Vietnam War, there was no question that the participants, the leadership, the motivations, the goals, were all U.S.-centered, even if many of them had international components. The environmental movement has perhaps been more international than any other up to now, but its struggles usually targeted a specific problem or sector. Today‚s global economic justice movement works from a systemic analysis which does not lend itself to "bite-size" pieces as easily (and integrates many of the demands of global environmentalism). This sometimes makes it more difficult to convey our message simply. But activists who become part of our movement do so because they know, beyond facile rhetoric, that everything truly is connected. When we stalled the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), arguably the first major victory for Internet-based international activist on economic justice issues, the combatants did not simply declare victory and move on to a new, discrete campaign. They knew that the same issues could pop up in any number of other fora, and so educated themselves about the IMF, the WTO, and bilateral investment treaties. The fronts are many, which is why we need a movement ˜ a need, which, fortunately, has found willing, dedicated, and talented activists around the world to take it up.

  But one of the potential weaknesses of this movement, which is not confined to a single country, which deals with many different, albeit related, issues, which includes people who speak many languages (though English eventually unites us, on the Internet ˜ two of the ironic "gifts" of globalization) and come from many backgrounds, is that we do not share a single notion of what the "solution" to the problems we struggle against might be. We do not have a shared ideology. Those who worked for civil rights unite to change laws and oppose acts of violence and hate. Those who oppose U.S. military intervention call for withdrawal of troops and funds. That‚s much more straightforward than the situation we confront. We know what we‚re against, but we don‚t always know what we would replace it with, or we have different visions. And that means we have a harder time explaining our identity and our goals, of convincing those in power of our seriousness. It means the potential for divisions within our movement is great. Indeed, the revitalized confidence of the left in the U.S. since Seattle, has a great deal to do with the demonstration that we can unite despite our differences around common goals. A very conscious organizing principle for both Seattle and Washington was inclusivity. Striking the right balance of inclusivity and resisting compromise may not always be easy, but so far it has been less difficult than many of us imagined.

  Several organizations and thinkers have embarked on efforts to craft a unifying manifesto for this movement. The very thought of such an effort makes many people uneasy. How much longer can we continue in coalition mode, with different analyses, different solutions, different focuses? How much longer can groups like the 50 Years Is Enough Network continue to work on one part of the globalization puzzle without saying what sort of political and economic solution they are committed to?

  We do not think the strategy of pluralism is exhausted. We hope that the manifesto-writers will not push their agendas so aggressively as to promote divisions. Although it may be hard to overturn global capitalism without a fully-delineated alternative, we suspect that the lesson many of us have learned, both from experiences within the movement and in the world at large, is that there is no single answer. That the brutality of structural adjustment resides partly in the determination on the part of the wizards at the IMF that the policies that "work" today in the U.S. (never mind the history or context) will work in every other economy of the world. They do work, of course, for multinational corporations (the same gauge used for determining their success in the U.S.) But corporations have the advantage of being very simple creatures: they exist for one thing only, profit, and so it is easy to determine what solutions they like. But if you don‚t believe that what is good for corporations is good for economies and the people who by right own the economies, then you also confront the fact that cultures, societies, histories, geographies are all very different. We are fighting the tyranny of the single-visioned corporate state; we must (and do) embrace the variegated world of differences.

  While acknowledging this central difficulty, we still have to find a way to answer the questions raised repeatedly by those to whom we make our presentations or by journalists and legislators: what would you do instead? We must come up with convincing pictures of the future that express our values of cooperation, sustainability, and justice. Some are available, such as those that were explored at last year‚s 50 Years Is Enough conference. But not enough. And when we present pictures of communities that do or can work sustainably, we must also have a realistic vision of how a global system that embraces our values can connect such communities.

The 50 Years Is Enough Network has long wrestled with the question of whether to abolish or reform the IMF and World Bank. We have members whose positions cover the spectrum of possible positions. Our solution has been to call for the profound or fundamental "transformation" of the institutions. Not a bad compromise but the rise of our movement has led to more strident calls for abolition from some of our Southern partners, as well as from some of our members. We suspect there would be little opposition within our Network to a call for abolition of the IMF, but it may not be so easy in the case of the Bank, for many of us are not willing to abandon the idea of a multilateral agency for delivery of public funds to impoverished countries without the parochial agendas of individual donor governments being imposed. Of course the Bank today is far from meeting this description, but so is the United Nations Development Program (though it is closer). But for many members, it would be difficult to call for the abolition of the Bank without an alternative means of delivering those funds to propose.

  So even within our own coalition there is a plurality of approaches and visions, or perhaps more accurately, more questions than answers. The same goes for the movement for economic justice as a whole. But the absence of dogma and certainty that we have all the answers is perhaps our secret strength. Our commitment to humane principles, to flexibility, to popular self-determination, and to solidarity continues to attract new "recruits" to our cause every day. Together ˜ we can see it! ˜ we actually are changing the world.

  One of the main questions that the U.S. movement is asking itself is how to balance the fostering of stronger and larger progressive, or radical, coalitions in communities around the country with the demands of creating large actions in cities keyed to specific events (such as Seattle and Washington). The undeniable value of the media attention and on-the-spot education and inspiration involved in such actions has to be weighed against the prospect of leaving out people who can‚t, won‚t, or as yet have no reason to travel to other cities for large actions. A law of diminishing returns may set in as well, if the media decides the actions are no longer as novel and newsworthy, in which case we would face the prospect of reaching only activists who are already at least a little "clued in" to the failures of the global economy. There is also the question of resources ˆ not just money, which is of course always in short supply, but also energy and creativity, which need to be channeled also into finding ways to reach new or expanded constituencies that won‚t necessarily become active parts of the movement just by hearing about another demonstration.

  The 50 Years Is Enough Network does not have the answer to how to balance these competing demands. Our intense exposure to the ways of the media during the April demonstrations leads us to hope that we will be able to bridge some of these demands with effective work to get our message out in both the alternative and mainstream media. We, of course, will continue to be active in actions that include a strong international component, and supportive of any actions that advance a progressive economic agenda. We are broadly supportive of the efforts to organize effective demonstrations at the Republican Party convention in Philadelphia and the Democratic Party convention in Los Angeles, and many of our member organizations are very active in those efforts.

  Our mandate inclines us to take a more active role in planning events to coincide with the early September gathering of heads of state at the United Nations in New York (with the date for major actions being September 8), and particularly the actions planned for the fall annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Prague at the end of September. I attended a planning meeting in Prague at the end of April, and the Network has stayed actively involved in that process.

  We are preparing both for events in Prague and in the United States. Rather than urging U.S. activists to make the trip to Prague (which we are by no means discouraging, but it isn‚t cheap), or forging another mass demonstration in Washington, we are working with partner organizations to encourage creative actions in Washington at the time of the Prague meetings that don‚t require the kind of capacity we had to develop in April, and well-targeted actions in various other places around the U.S. Toward that end, we will be producing a packet of materials for use by activists who wish to plan solidarity actions as the organizers in Prague take their turn in the spotlight, crusading for global economic justice. Both Witness for Peace and Jobs with Justice have already committed to staging actions in over 20 cities across the U.S.

  In Prague, there will be a series of panels and conferences as well as demonstrations of various types. 50 Years will be bringing both staff and Southern partners for activities between September 19th and 28th. 

For more information on the plans for Prague, visit the websites of the two groups taking the lead in organizing: INPEG (www.inpeg.ecn.cz) and Central & Eastern Europe Bankwatch (www.bankwatch.org).