Anti-globalization movement

In some Roman Catholic countries such as Italy there have been religious influences, especially from missionaries who have spent a long time in the Third World (the most famous being Alex Zanotelli).

Internet sources and free-information websites, such as Indymedia, are a means of diffusion of the movement's ideas. The vast array of material on spiritual movements, anarchism, libertarian socialism and the Green Movement that is now available on the Internet has been perhaps more influential than any printed book. ^{[citation needed]}

Organization

Although over the past years more emphasis has been given to the construction of grassroots alternatives to (capitalist) globalization, the movement's largest and most visible mode of organizing remains mass decentralized campaigns of direct action and civil disobedience. This mode of organizing, sometimes under the banner of the Peoples' Global Action network, tries to tie the many disparate causes together into one global struggle. In many ways the process of organizing matters overall can be more important to activists than the avowed goals or achievements of any component of the movement.

At corporate summits, the stated goal of most demonstrations is to stop the proceedings. Although the demonstrations rarely succeed in more than delaying or inconveniencing the actual summits, this motivates the mobilizations and gives them a visible, short-term purpose. This form of publicity is expensive in police time and the public purse. Rioting has occurred at some protests, for instance in Genoa, Seattle and London – and extensive damage was done to the area, especially targeting corporations, including McDonald's and Starbucks restaurants.^{[citation needed]}

Despite, or perhaps because of, the lack of formal coordinating bodies, the movement manages to successfully organize large protests on a global basis, using

• Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa
• The
  EZLN in Mexico
• Fanmi Lavalas in Haiti
• The Homeless Workers' Movement in Brazil
• The
  Landless Peoples Movement
  in South Africa
• The Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil
• United States of America
• Narmada Bachao Andolan in India
• The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign in South Africa

Demonstrations and appointments

Berlin88

The Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, that took place in West Berlin in 1988, saw strong protests that can be categorized as a precursor of the anti-globalization movement.^[28] One of the main and failed objectives (as it was to be so many times in the future) was to derail the meetings.^[29]

Paris89

A counter summit against G7 was organized in Paris in July 1989. The event was called "ça suffit comme ça" ("that is enough") and principally aimed at cancelling the debt contracted by southern countries. A demonstration gathered 10,000 people and an important concert was held in la Bastille square with 200 000 people. It was the first anti-G7 event, fourteen years before that of Washington. The main political consequence was that France took position to favor debt cancellation.^[30]

Madrid94

The 50th anniversary of the IMF and the

J18

One of the first international anti-globalization protests was organized in dozens of cities around the world on June 18, 1999, with those in

In April 2000, around 10,000 to 15,000 protesters

In September 2002, estimated number of 1,500 to 2,000 people gathered to demonstrate against the Annual Meetings of IMF and World Bank in the streets of Washington, D.C. Protesting groups included the Anti-Capitalist Convergence, the Mobilization for Global Justice.^[51] 649 people were reported arrested, five were charged with destruction of property, while the others were charged with parading without a permit, or failing to obey police orders to disperse.^[52][53] At least 17 reporters were in the round-up.^[54][55] Protestors sued in Federal Court about the arrests.^[56] The D.C. Attorney General had outside counsel investigate apparent destruction of evidence,^[57][58] and forensic investigations continue,^[59][60][61] and the testimony of the Chief of Police.^[62] In 2009, the city agreed to pay $8.25 million to almost 400 protesters and bystanders to end a class-action lawsuit over kettling and mass arrests in Pershing Park during 2002 World Bank protests^[63][64]

Law enforcement reaction

Although local police were surprised by the size of N30, law enforcement agencies have since reacted worldwide to prevent the disruption of future events by a variety of tactics, including sheer weight of numbers, infiltrating the groups to determine their plans, and preparations for the use of force to remove protesters.

At the site of some of the protests, police have used tear gas, pepper spray, concussion grenades, rubber and wooden bullets, night sticks, water cannons, dogs, and horses to repel the protesters. After the November 2000 G20 protest in Montreal, at which many protesters were beaten, trampled, and arrested in what was intended to be a festive protest, the tactic of dividing protests into "green" (permitted), "yellow" (not officially permitted but with little confrontation and low risk of arrest), and "red" (involving direct confrontation) zones was introduced.^{[citation needed]}

In

On June 15 and 16, 2001, a strong demonstration took place in

The

The first World Social Forum (WSF) in 2001 was an initiative of Oded Grajew [pt], Chico Whitaker, and Bernard Cassen. It was supported by the city of Porto Alegre (where it took place) and the Brazilian Worker's Party. The motivation was to constitute a counter-event to the World Economic Forum held in Davos at the same time. The slogan of the WSF is "Another World Is Possible". An International Council (IC) was set up to discuss and decide major issues regarding the WSF, while the local organizing committee in the host city is responsible for the practical preparations of the event.^[66][67] In June 2001, the IC adopted the World Social Forum Charter of Principles, which provides a framework for international, national, and local Social Forums worldwide.^[68]

The WSF became a periodic meeting: in 2002 and 2003 it was held again in Porto Alegre and became a rallying point for worldwide protest against the American invasion of Iraq. In 2004 it was moved to Mumbai, India), to make it more accessible to the populations of Asia and Africa. This Forum had 75,000 delegates. In 2006 it was held in three cities: Caracas, Venezuela, Bamako, Mali, and Karachi, Pakistan. In 2007, the Forum was hosted in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2009 it was in Belém, Brazil, and in 2011 it was in Dakar, Senegal. In 2012, the WSF returned to Porto Alegre.

The idea of creating a meeting place for organizations and individuals opposed to Neoliberalism was soon replicated elsewhere. The first European Social Forum (ESF) was held in November 2002 in Florence. The slogan was "Against the war, against racism and against neo-liberalism". It saw the participation of 60,000 delegates and ended with a huge demonstration against the war (1,000,000 people according to the organizers). The following ESFs took place in Paris (2003), London (2004), Athens (2006), Malmö (2008), and the latest ESF in Istanbul (2010).

In many countries Social Forums of national and local scope were also held.

Recently there has been some discussion behind the movement about the role of the social forums. Some see them as a "popular university", an occasion to make many people aware of the problems of globalization. Others would prefer that delegates concentrate their efforts on the coordination and organization of the movement and on the planning of new campaigns. However it has often been argued that in the dominated countries (most of the world) the WSF is little more than an 'NGO fair' driven by Northern NGOs and donors most of which are hostile to popular movements of the poor.^[69]

North Korea

After the Second World War, North Korea followed a policy of anti-globalization. However, in recent decades have shown a distinctive rise in globalization movements in North Korea, introducing a number of reforms in areas such as technology and trade.^[when?] The reform that had the most significance to North Korea was trade; a change in trading partnerships resulted in the country not only traded with themselves but also with South Korea and China. North Korea introduced these reforms because it was lacking in areas of technology and trade and realized that it could not maintain itself as a society without help from other nations, but even with these new reforms North Korea still remains the most isolated society in the world.^[70]

Impact

The global justice movement has been quite successful in achieving some of its key aims, according to academic and global justice movement activist David Graeber.^[71] For example, many countries no longer rely on IMF loans and so, by the mid-2000s, IMF lending was at its lowest share of world GDP since the 1970s.^[72][73]

Criticisms

Lack of evidence

Critics assert that the empirical evidence does not support the views of the anti-globalization movement. These critics point to statistical trends which are interpreted to be results of globalization, capitalism, and the economic growth they encourage:

• There has been an absolute decrease in the percentage of people in developing countries living below $1 per day in east Asia (adjusted for inflation and purchasing power). Sub Saharan Africa, as an area that felt the consequences of poor governance and was less responsive to globalization, has seen an increase in poverty while all other areas of the world have seen no change in rates.^[74]
• The world income per head has increased by more over period 2002–2007 than during any other period on the record.^[75]
• The increase in universal suffrage, from no nations in 1900 to 62.5% of all nations in 2000.^[76]
• There are similar trends for electric power, cars, radios, and telephones per capita as well as the percentage of the population with access to clean water;^[77] however, 2.6 billion of the world's population in 2008 lacked access to proper sanitation,^[78] and billions of people ("around 1 in 4 people") still live without clean drinking water as of 2020.^[79]

Members of the anti-globalization movement argue that positive data from countries which largely ignored neoliberal prescriptions, notably China, discredits the evidence that pro-globalists present. Concerning the parameter of per capita income growth, development economist

Economist Jagdish Bhagwati argues that reforms that opened up the economies of China and India contributed to their higher growth in 1980s and 1990s. From 1980 to 2000 their GDP grew at average rate of 10 and 6 percent respectively. This was accompanied by reduction of poverty from 28 percent in 1978 to 9 percent in 1998 in China, and from 51 percent in 1978 to 26 percent in 2000 in India.^[83] Speaking not only on China but East Asia in general, economist Joseph Stiglitz commented: "The countries that have managed globalization on their own, such as those in East Asia, have, by and large, ensured that they reaped huge benefits and that those benefits were equitably shared; they were able substantially to control the terms on which they engaged with the global economy. By contrast, the countries that have, by and large, had globalization managed for them by the International Monetary Fund and other international economic institutions have not done so well."^[84] According to The Heritage Foundation, development in China was anticipated by Milton Friedman, who predicted that even a small progress towards economic liberalization would produce dramatic and positive effects. China's economy had grown together with its economic freedom.^[85] Critics of corporate-led globalization have expressed concern about the methodology used in arriving at the World Bank's statistics and argue that more detailed variables measuring poverty should be studied.^[86][87] According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the period from 1980 to 2005 has seen diminished progress in terms of economic growth, life expectancy, infant and child mortality, and to a lesser extent education.^[88]

Disorganization

One of the most common criticisms of the movement, which does not necessarily come from its opponents, is simply that the anti-globalization movement lacks coherent goals, and that the views of different protesters are often in opposition to each other.

Lack of effectiveness

One argument often made by the opponents of the anti-globalization movement (especially by