curt_b
01-14-2010, 06:04 AM
A guy I work with a lot wrote this for the anti-capitalist Spanish magazine Viento Sur. It's a really ambitious attempt to analyze US radical political movements and tendencies from Seattle to Obama for Spanish speakers. His translation to English is here (much more at link):
http://www.cincinnatibeacon.com/index.php?/contents/comments/from_the_battle_of_seattle_to_the_crisis_of_2008_and_obama/
From the Battle of Seattle to the Crisis of 2008 and Obama
Guest article by Dan La Botz
In September 2008, some 8,000 people — from social movements and churches, and from labor and the left — marched through Pittsburgh to protest the meeting of the finance ministers of the G-20. The march came on the tenth anniversary of the famous Battle of Seattle where labor unions and environmentalists had united with a broad array of social movement activists to attempt to challenge the World Trade Organization. That Battle had been a stunning success, representing a new stage of cooperation among diverse movements, a new level of militancy, and suggesting that the movement was ascending. Yet just two years later the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center the Pentagon, and a would-be attack on the Capitol stopped the global justice movement in its tracks and activism declined rapidly.
Those environmental activists, labor unionists, and church members who participated in the street battles in Seattle returned to their local communities prepared to challenge corporations and the government. The Battle of Seattle of 1999 represented a sudden upsurge in the struggle against corporate globalization, leading to new hope in the possibility of progressive social change.
Ten years later George W. Bush, after plunging the country into the Iraq War, demonstrating a criminal negligence in dealing with hurricane Katrina, and overseeing government policies which would contribute to a “Great Recession,” had brought not hope, but despair. In the face of that sense of despair, Barack Obama called for hope and for change, but unlike the anti-corporate sentiment of Seattle, Obama’s vision of change is entirely corporate, governmental, and imperial.
How did the United States progress from that inspiring anti-corporate and for some anti-capitalist moment in Seattle to the election of a new corporate liberal president in 2008? What accounts for that is the peculiarly uneven, erratic and episodic character of the labor and social movements in the United States in the period from 1990 to 2009. In contrast, for example, to the period from 1956 to 1979 — when social movements in the U.S. expanded exponentially from year to year until they reached a crescendo around 1968 and then subsided — between 1990 and 2009, movements arose, flourished and died, often within a year or two. Seldom did the movements spread from one sector to another, and almost never did their actions coincide. The Battle of Seattle, tying together various strands of labor and radical activism, was the great exception of the period, perhaps the beginning of a new period, had that not been interrupted and terminated by the terrorist attacks of 2001, that lead to war, repressive police policies, and political reaction.
http://www.cincinnatibeacon.com/index.php?/contents/comments/from_the_battle_of_seattle_to_the_crisis_of_2008_and_obama/
From the Battle of Seattle to the Crisis of 2008 and Obama
Guest article by Dan La Botz
In September 2008, some 8,000 people — from social movements and churches, and from labor and the left — marched through Pittsburgh to protest the meeting of the finance ministers of the G-20. The march came on the tenth anniversary of the famous Battle of Seattle where labor unions and environmentalists had united with a broad array of social movement activists to attempt to challenge the World Trade Organization. That Battle had been a stunning success, representing a new stage of cooperation among diverse movements, a new level of militancy, and suggesting that the movement was ascending. Yet just two years later the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center the Pentagon, and a would-be attack on the Capitol stopped the global justice movement in its tracks and activism declined rapidly.
Those environmental activists, labor unionists, and church members who participated in the street battles in Seattle returned to their local communities prepared to challenge corporations and the government. The Battle of Seattle of 1999 represented a sudden upsurge in the struggle against corporate globalization, leading to new hope in the possibility of progressive social change.
Ten years later George W. Bush, after plunging the country into the Iraq War, demonstrating a criminal negligence in dealing with hurricane Katrina, and overseeing government policies which would contribute to a “Great Recession,” had brought not hope, but despair. In the face of that sense of despair, Barack Obama called for hope and for change, but unlike the anti-corporate sentiment of Seattle, Obama’s vision of change is entirely corporate, governmental, and imperial.
How did the United States progress from that inspiring anti-corporate and for some anti-capitalist moment in Seattle to the election of a new corporate liberal president in 2008? What accounts for that is the peculiarly uneven, erratic and episodic character of the labor and social movements in the United States in the period from 1990 to 2009. In contrast, for example, to the period from 1956 to 1979 — when social movements in the U.S. expanded exponentially from year to year until they reached a crescendo around 1968 and then subsided — between 1990 and 2009, movements arose, flourished and died, often within a year or two. Seldom did the movements spread from one sector to another, and almost never did their actions coincide. The Battle of Seattle, tying together various strands of labor and radical activism, was the great exception of the period, perhaps the beginning of a new period, had that not been interrupted and terminated by the terrorist attacks of 2001, that lead to war, repressive police policies, and political reaction.