World Bank/IMF protests in DC
Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Mon, 04/18/2005 - 02:25
Globophobe activists protested the annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington DC this weekend, tho BBC reports that they numbered in the hundreds rather than the thousands--a testament to how dissent has been sidetracked and marginalized in the post-9-11 world. Photos and accounts of the protests are provided by our friends at the Global Justice Ecology Project.
(The last major globophobe mobilization, at the November 2003 Miami FTAA summit, met with harsh paramilitary-style police repression--see WW4 REPORT #93.)
"globophobe" is a rather unfortunate coinage
The word "globophobe" makes it sound like people who protest the globalization of exploitation hate the world. It sounds like something Thomas Friedman would coin, with the attitude that protesters are xenophobic isolationists who "hate global trade"--and by extension, contact between different peoples and "progress"--instead of opposing the metastasis of capitalist rapaciousness.
Hey, I love being able to get reggae records imported from Jamaica, order an electronic tanpura from India online, or acquire a Turkish saz from a Web site in Appalachia. (You can probably guess who this is now.) I just hate the idea that all the world's industry is being exported to countries that pay 30 cents an hour, have negligible environmental regulations, and execute union organizers.
"Ink-stained"?
You are using ink? And you accuse us of being backwards-looking reactionaries?!
No, seriously, "globophobe" is a succint and slightly tongue-in-cheek shorthand. We all know (I hope) that what we oppose is corporate globalization, and that the transnational alliances of labor, environmental and community groups which are necessary to fight it themselves constitute a sort of "globalization-from-below." Nuff said?