CWA 1180 - Solidarity Works

Another world is possible
In New York and Porto Alegre, thousands challenge corporate globalization
February 2002

"I'm here because what's going on there will come back to haunt us all," said Dana Holland at an anti-sweatshop rally on January 31. Holland and several other 1180 members joined thousands of others at the demonstration, which was called to protest the GAP's use of sweatshops and was part of five days of protest and education organized by global justice activists during the meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The 15,000 to 20,000 people who participated in the week's events were all brought together by the same basic idea that Holland expressed: that economic and social conditions in other parts of the world ultimately affect us, too.

Corporate and government elites have steered the development of the global economy in directions that sacrifice human need to profit imperatives, and the result has been rising inequality within and between nations, and falling living standards and growing insecurity for the world's working and poor populations. In developing countries, the policies stemming from these profit-driven priorities literally cost lives; 19,000 children die every day from malnutrition in the developing world. In industrial nations like our own, the same corporate agenda puts the downward pressure on wages and shreds our social safety net.

Contrary to what politicians (from both parties) and business leaders would like us to think, this state of affairs is not the "inevitable" outcome of some natural course of economic development. It's the deliberate result of policies that sanctify "the market" and benefit corporate interests, and it doesn't have to be this way. That was the message that tens of thousands of people brought to New York City during the WEF protests. Indeed, the name of the coalition that sponsored several of the biggest events says it all: "Another World is Possible."

The World Economic Forum is an exclusive group of several thousand government and business leaders that meet every year to talk about, quite literally, the state of the world. It is not a formal body (like the World Trade Organization or the International Monetary Fund, for instance); it's more like an elite club that sets the agenda for those organizations. The protest events that surrounded the WEF meeting January 31 through February 4—which included several mass demonstrations, counter-summits and -forums, teach-ins, cultural and dozens of other events—were the latest in the worldwide movement in which millions of people have demanded democratic accountability from these unelected world economic bodies.

While the world's ruling elites were meeting in New York City, some 60,000 activists met in Porto Alegre, Brazil for the second annual World Social Forum (WSF). Organized as a deliberate counter-weight to the WEF, the WSF consisted of hundreds of workshops, panels, plenaries and forums dedicated not only to analyzing what is wrong with corporate globalization but also to beginning to define positive alternatives. The five-day event was deemed by all participants to be "an inspiring success," in the words of one journalist.

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