________________________________________________________________________________ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - is the temporary home of the nettime-l list while desk.nl rebuilds its list-serving machine. please continue to send messages to and your commands to . nettime-l-temp should be active for approximately 2 weeks (11-28 Jun 99). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: Patrice Riemens Subject: The 'real' story of June 18 (fwd) To: nettime-l@desk.nl Date: Sat, 3 Jul 1999 11:02:25 +0200 (CEST) ----- Forwarded message from Helena Earnshaw ----- Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 16:19:36 +0100 (BST) Originator: j18discussion@gn.apc.org From: Helena Earnshaw Subject: The 'real' story of June 18 The real story of June 18 By Mark Lynas mark@oneworld.org When Mexico's Zapatista rebels surged out of the mountains and jungles of Chiapas to occupy San Cristobal de las Casas, they probably had little idea that their local revolt would eventually transform itself into the beginnings of a global revolution. But even back then on January 1 1994, the ideas were formed which five years later would help galvanise an unprecedented coalition of Western environmental activists and Third World social movements to hold a global day of protest on June 18. No-one, not even Reclaim the Streets, one of the principal organising forces behind the UK end of June 18, expected the day to end with the financial heart of London looking like a battle zone. But dramatic as these scenes were, they don't tell the whole story. In Nigeria, June 18 saw 10,000 brave military repression in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, to march to the gates of Shell Oil, and to hear a speech by Owens Wiwa - brother of the executed Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa. Half a world away in Tel Aviv, hundreds held a peaceful street carnival where torches were lit for the victims of 'corporate rule'. In Gujarat, Pakistan, union leaders in disguise evaded police cordons to speak at a mass rally demanding 'bread not nuclear bombs'. In Minsk, Belarus, McDonalds was picketed by leafletters, while in Montevideo, Uruguay the main square of the town's financial centre was converted into a 'trade fair' - looking at issues as diverse as education, child labour, consumerism and community radio. There were street parties in Toronto, Los Angeles, Madrid, Prague, Zurich, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Eugene (Oregon), Austin (Texas) and Barcelona, with reports still coming in of others. In almost all cases, the targets chosen focused squarely on financial capital. In Geneva 50 protesters 'washed' major banks, and in Madrid and Vancouver the stock exchanges were blockaded by hundreds of people - including, in Melbourne, a group of dead wombats. Press coverage of the June 18 protests has - perhaps unsurprisingly - been almost entirely negative. Coverage in the UK focused almost exclusively on the riots, with right-wing Murdoch-owned tabloid 'The Sun' printing pictures under the headline: "Savages". The Sunday Times, also a Murdoch paper, recently launched a smear campaign - labelling several people 'masterminds' of a terrorist-style network. On the contrary, the June 18 events were the apex of a very wide and entirely open global movement. This was largely sparked by the Zapatistas, who held two 'encuentros' (meetings) - one deep in the Lacandon jungle of Chiapas in 1996, and the second a year later in Spain, to which delegates from countless different groups converged. They sought to highlight not just the symptoms of poverty, landlessness and environmental collapse, but their perceived causes too - free trade, corporate control and capitalism itself. In February 1998, a third international meeting was held in Geneva - People's Global Action (PGA) Against 'Free' Trade and the WTO - attended by 400 people, who in turn represented activist groups and social movements from 71 countries. Six months later, as the G8 met in Birmingham, 200,000 Indian peasant farmers in Hyderabad marched to demand India's withdrawal from the WTO. Over 30 Reclaim the Streets parties in over 20 countries took place, while in Brasilia 50,000 unemployed, workers and landless peasants took to the streets. Through People's Global Action - an 'organisation' without offices, funds or paid staff - a global movement was beginning to crystallise. And with a great irony, its formation was hugely assisted by the invention of that most paradoxical spin-off from the computer age - the Internet. As the realisation dawned that the power of global finance could only be challenged through global resistance, the Internet proved an ideal medium through which to organise. The long struggle of the Mexican Zapatistas was paralleled through the 1990s in the UK by the rise of the anti-roads movement, which in the mammoth battles of Twyford Down, the M11 Link Road and the Newbury Bypass left thousands of people dedicated to the use of non-violent direct action as a preferred means of achieving social and environmental aims. Across the Third World too, direct action seemed to promise a new way forward. The million-strong landless peasants movement in Brazil didn't just lobby the government for land reform, they occupied empty ranches and brought the land directly back into use to provide for the hungry. An estimated 150,000 people have been resettled through direct action in Brazil - an amazing feat, far outstripping meagre government anti-poverty programmes. In the run-up to the latest G8 Summit, which began in Cologne on June 18, a group of 500 farmers from India and Nepal toured Europe in an 'Inter-Continental Caravan', holding protests and making links with European activists. In the UK the farmers visited a genetic engineering test site which had been recently cleared by activists and converted to organic agriculture. "We have come here to build bridges between people who want to reclaim their future, to disobey the institutions that run the current, self-destructive system of global economic, political and military governance, and to take their own power in their hands in order to construct a different world," wrote Professor Nanjundaswamy, leader of the Karnataka State Farmers Association, as the G8 Summit got underway. The likely next focus of globally-coordinated protest will be the World Trade Organisation's Third Ministerial Conference, taking place in Seattle from November 30 to December 3 this year. As we head into the new millenium, two powerful forces are on a global collision course. From above, a powerful coalition of multinationals, financiers and rich-country governments are pushing for stricter free trade rules and an intensification of economic globalisation. From below, millions-strong social movements across the Third World are uniting with activists in the West to demand an end to poverty and the unsustainable exploitation of the earth's environment. There can be no compromise between these two competing forces - their agendas are utterly irreconcilable. And as the two worlds collide, the riots in London on June 18 1999 may come to be seen as a small foretaste of the upheavals yet to come. See also OneWorld's June 18 campaign page: http://www.oneworld.org/campaigns/june18/index.html ________________________________________________________________________________ no copyright 1999 rolux.org - no commercial use without permission. is a moderated mailing list for the advancement of minor criticism. more information: mail to: majordomo@rolux.org, subject line: , message body: info. further questions: mail to: rolux-owner@rolux.org. archive: http://www.rolux.org