What next for anti-globalization protests?
Benedict Seymour At a recent London meeting of the World Development Movement, a group campaigning for reform of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the state of things a year after the `anti-globalization’ protests in Seattle was summarized for the packed audience by Naomi Klein, one of the protests’ most conspicuously media-nominated representatives. We don’t need to invent a movement, she declared, but to recognize the movement we already have. Following the anatomization of the corrosive effect of transnational corporations and the institutions of neo-liberalism on our own `captive state’ by George Monbiot (another much publicized commentator), Klein made the case for bringing the protests home. As many activists and commentators agree, the time has come to start fighting globalization in our own back yards. Of course the clash between protesters and police will carry on in `world cities’ across the globe, but the ability of these actions to embarrass, harass and pressurize their t
