The Independent (London) | by Paul Vallely | January 30, 2002
To judge from the names of the groups who will be protesting on the streets of Manhattan over the next few days, the opposition to global capitalism is impressively wide-ranging.
Among those setting out to trouble the New York police department will be bodies as disparate as Love and Resistance, Political Action for Animals, Rally for the Planet, the Save the Redwoods Campaign and the all-encompassing Anti-Capitalist Convergence.
The real opposition, however, will be elsewhere. As representatives of the 1,000 most powerful corporations on the planet meet in New York under the Davos umbrella for the World Economic Forum, some 50,000 of the not-so-rich and influential will gather in the city of Porto Alegre in southern Brazil. Under the parallel name of the World Social Forum they are meeting to try to build an alternative to the untrammelled "turbo-capitalism" with which, they insist, multinational corporations are undermining democracy and despoiling the environment.
The "anti-globalisation" movement has always been a ragbag alliance. A motley collection of crusties, anarchists, revolutionary socialists and lovers of recreational violence has routinely made the headlines with its hatred for the culture of modern capitalism.
But the vast majority of protesters were environmentalists, human rights activists, trade unionists and aid agency campaigners who were not so much against globalisation as demanding globalisation of a different kind.
It is this much bigger group who are meeting in Porto Alegre under the banner "Another World is Possible". They intend to hold their parallel gathering every time their Davos counterparts meet.
Globalisation may be an inevitability, the people in Porto Alegre accept, but it needs to be regulated and managed. And it must respect universal human rights, protect the environment, support democracy and work for social justice.
The luminaries of Davos - shaken by the scale of the opposition in recent years - have begun to talk in similar language. The rich and powerful, who this year have abandoned their Alpine fastness in Davos for the "unique club atmosphere" of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, say they will be talking about ways to "reverse the global economic downturn, eradicate poverty, promote security and enhance cultural understanding". The Porto Alegre activists read this as "looking to rescue failing corporate giants, exploit working people, clamp down on dissent, and puree the diverse communities of our world into a single, American-style consumer culture".
Globalisation, Davos-style, they say - with a dogmatic neo-liberalism that promotes privatisation, market and capital deregulation, and cuts taxes for the rich and social services for the poor - has increased inequalities, social exclusion and poverty.
In Brazil they will be talking about a different agenda - cancelling Third World debt, taxing international flows of capital, democratising the decision-making processes of multilateral trade agencies and including labour and social conditions in trade pacts.
The two sides are worlds apart. But at least they have begun to talk to one another. Which is probably more than will happen on the streets of New York.The Independent (London):
