AUT: (Fwd) Fwd: The 'real' story of June 18

[Patrick Gun_Cuninghame <P.Gun-Cuninghame@xxxxxxxxx>]

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date:          Wed, 30 Jun 1999 08:43:46 -0700 (PDT)
From:          dr wooo <vornman@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject:       Fwd: The 'real' story of June 18
To:            j18-London@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Reply-to:      j18-london@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

>
> The real story of June 18
>
> By Mark Lynas
> mark@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> 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
>
>
>





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