Fw: [FI-P] IV324 S11

["Alan Bradley" <alanb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

S11 BLOCKADE A HUGE SUCCESS
WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM PARTIALLY SHUT DOWN
A NEW GENERATION OF STRUGGLE

By John Tully

MELBOURNE: The three-day blockade of the Asia-Pacific wing of the World
Economic Forum (WEF) here on September 11, 12 and 13 has been a stunning
success. The blockade was organised under the general slogans of "From
Seattle to Melbourne, fight corporate greed!" and "Stand up for global
justice and the environment!" The S11 Alliance, the umbrella organisation
behind the protest, largely kept its promise to "Shut down the World
Economic Forum". As one tired, but elated, picket said in a spirit of
friendly internationalist rivalry: "Hey, Seattle! Melbourne's right up
there with you!"

It rained, on and off, throughout the three days, sometimes torrentially,
and a cold wind blew off Port Phillip Bay, but neither that, nor the
brutality of 2000 police and a small army of security guards, could dampen
the enthusiasm of the tens of thousands of protestors. The Forum was
effectively blocked off for the duration, and its gatherings sparsely
attended. Small wonder that Australia's right-wing Prime Minister, John
Howard, looked more than usually petulant, and Microsoft's Bill Gates
looked glum. For their part, the protestors enjoyed a huge range of bands,
performers, giant puppets and other entertainment that compensated to some
degree for the weather and police violence.

The Forum was held, most appropriately, in the ugly skyscraper tower of the
Crown Casino on the Yarra bank: an apt symbol of the corporate cowboys and
bribed intellectuals who make up the WEF. Crown's owners include
Australia's richest man, Kerry Packer, who recently lost US$34 million in a
single weekend at Las Vegas. Packer will be even further out of pocket
after S11. Crown was forced to suspend operations for the duration of the
conference, and admits to having lost $10 million in takings. But more than
Crown's profits have taken a hammering. Rumour has it that the WEF
organisers are so demoralised that they are considering holding future
events by teleconference rather than brave the wrath of a new generation of
anti-capitalist campaigners.

The success of the S11 blockade shows that the world-wide upsurge of
revulsion against capitalist globalisation that began last year at Seattle
is set to continue. Tens of thousands of demonstrators sealed off the
conference and effectively disrupted its proceedings. All the entrances to
the conference venue were blocked by pickets. Ironically, a four-metre high
chain mesh fence erected by the police to keep out protestors also served
to keep out WEF guests and personnel, and its metre-high concrete base was
convenient for the spray painted slogans of the demonstrators. A number of
high-ranking conservative political figures tried to run the gauntlet but
turned back. The premier of West Australia, Charles Court, a virulent
opponent of Aboriginal land rights, was trapped for an hour in his car by a
group of Aborigines. "This is the way you've had us for 200 years," jeered
one burly Aborigine at the clearly discomfited politician. "Now you know
how it feels."
The S11 blockade culminated in a "victory march" around the central
business district, with around 15,000 protesters in a jubilant mood. The
blockaders had maintained the pickets around the clock for more than three
days, despite massive police brutality and uncertain weather. The march was
a gigantic anti-capitalist carnival, with drums, whistles and ear-splitting
rap music. However, the shouts of "shame!" from thousands of throats
whenever the police were spotted underlined the serious purpose of the
marchers and their determination not to be intimidated

A feature of the march was a gigantic banner inscribed with messages of
solidarity from individuals and groups (including supporters of the Fourth
International) who took part in the blockade. The banner will go to Prague
for the S26 protests against the World Trade Organisation there: a symbol
of the anti-capitalist internationalism that has taken root around the
world since Seattle.


The march wound through the city streets past the offices and shops of such
transnational icons as Nike (closed for the duration of S11), McDonalds,
the banks, and the Melbourne Stock Exchange; all heavily guarded by riot
police. True to his form as an unmitigated liar, deputy police commissioner
Neil O'Loughlin insisted that the marchers would "ransack" the city. Like
all of his other ridiculous allegations, it proved baseless.

The blockade was organised by a loose coalition of forces, including
socialists, anarchists, trade unionists, environmentalists, indigenous
people, church groups and campaigners against Third World debt. The
umbrella group, the S11 Alliance, was responsible for the coordination of
events, but members of a bewildering number of "affinity groups"
essentially did their own organising and came together with others on the
days of the protest. One of the most inspiring aspects of the whole
struggle was the relative youth of many of the blockaders. Many thousand
high school students attended some or all of the protests, giving fresh
hope to older generations of activists that the struggle for a better world
will continue. Although reactionary media and political figures attacked
S11 for "involving children", these young people refused to be patronised
and made it clear that they knew what they were fighting for.

Government and media hypocrisy was shown when many of these young people
were bashed by the police ? we hear no cries of "child abuse" from
moralising newspaper editors and shyster politicians. Dozens were
hospitalised after unprovoked attacks by the notorious "Swat Squad", the
paramilitary tactical response unit. The police rode their horses into
crowds, savagely batoned passive demonstrators, and even stamped on heads
in a rampage of violence. In one of the worst instances, the police bashed
pickets early in the morning when other gates were unattended. Several
hundred police suddenly erupted through the gates, catching a much smaller
number of pickets by surprise from the rear, and flailing indiscriminately
with their fists, boots and three-foot-long batons. All in all, several
hundred demonstrators were injured, compared with a handful of police. The
attack followed demands by WEF officials the day before that the police get
tough with the pickets. In another incident, the!
 police turned fire hoses on demonstrators around 3am, with temperatures
around 4 degrees Celsius, presumably in order to amuse themselves, as the
pickets were sitting down with their backs to the police.

There were also reports that police used capsicum gas spray and many police
officers removed their identification badges before assaulting
demonstrators. In fact, the police were sometimes so hyped up that they
assaulted journalists and damaged their cameras. There is also evidence of
plainclothes police acting as provocateurs. The writer's son, a 15-year-old
high school student witnessed the arrival of a vanload of provocateurs at
one picket. These individuals threw tin cans and other objects at security
guards before being warned off by S11 organisers, luckily before the police
could arrive to "restore order".

It is to their credit that despite police violence, the discipline of the
protestors held. S11 had promised that the protest would be non-violent,
and the promise was kept. Pickets would link arms or sit down in front of
the gates to prevent the so-called "delegates" from entering Crown Casino,
but they would not fight back. Injured pickets were thus particularly
incensed by the attitude of the Victorian state premier, Steve Bracks, who
praised police for their conduct whilst condemning the alleged violence of
the pickets. Bracks is a member of the Australian Labor Party, but his
claims to have any meaningful links with organised labour are extremely
tenuous. He attended the WEF conference at Davos in Switzerland early this
year, and flew back to break a strike of electricity workers. He brought
enormous pressure to bear on the leadership of the trade unions to boycott
the S11 blockade, but was only partially successful. One of the highlights
of the three days was a series of !
marches on the Casino by thousands of construction and metal workers.

Predictably, the bourgeois media attempted to whip up hysteria in the weeks
leading up to S11. They told and retold the big lie that demonstrators had
been responsible for the violence last year's demonstrations against the
World Trade Organisation in Seattle. The implication was that the same
would happen in Melbourne. Rupert Murdoch's local rag, the Herald-Sun,
carried screaming headlines just prior to S11, announcing: "POLICE: WE'RE
READY FOR S11 VIOLENCE". Several hundred S11 supporters retaliated by
briefly occupying the newspaper offices. The media also played up
government threats to re-open old asylums and dickensian police cells to
ensure that there was sufficient space to house arrested demonstrators.

Yet, for all of this hysterical hype, the demonstrators remained
uncooperatively non-violent and the police were able to arrest only 12
people. The non-violent tactics were very successful, however. Hundreds of
the so-called "delegates"  were unable to get into the conference. Many
others, who had arrived earlier, were unable to leave the premises except
by helicopter and attendance at meetings was well-down, with TV coverage
showing dispirited clumps of suits in echoing halls. One news clip showed
dejected groups of well-heeled individuals trudging through a waterlogged
field to their limousines after being evacuated from the Crown Tower by
helicopter. It must have rankled for these rich and powerful individuals to
have to creep about under massive police protection, bleating about being
"held to ransom by unrepresentative minorities".

In fact, it is organisations such as the WEF which are the real minorities,
and which act against the interests of the overwhelming majority of people
on the planet. Although Forum bigwig Claude Smadja claimed that the WEF has
no real power, it is in fact it is an immensely powerful rich man's club.
The WEF is made up of representatives of the richest and most powerful
groups in the world. Its members include the CEOs of the top 1000
transnational corporations, besides influential political leaders, tame
academics and gurus of neoliberalism, along with representatives of the
World Bank, the World Trade Organisation, the Asian Development Bank, and
the IMF. It was founded in 1971 by Klaus Schwab as the European Management
Forum, but was renamed in 1987 "to reflect its increasingly global
outlook", according to WEF literature. The WEF's members are divided into a
number of areas: media, mining, textiles, pulp and paper, and so on. They
include corporations such as Exxon, Chase M!
anhattan Corp, De Beers Mining, Rio Tinto, Toyota, Western Mining
Corporation, Turner International, Royal Dutch Shell, Microsoft, McDonalds,
Monsanto, Boeing and Nike. Readers will be aware of the anti-social, even
criminal activities of many of these corporations.

The WEF meets annually at  the Swiss alpine resort town of Davos. There,
amidst the kind of luxury that would seem like science fiction to the huge
mass of the dispossessed and the hungry of the world, the WEF makes
decisions which affect every citizen of the planet: and without being
elected by, or accountable to, anyone save the shareholders, the
corporations and the mega-rich. Contrary to the disingenuous claims of
Claude Smadja, the WEF admits that its annual Davos meeting is "now
considered the global summit which defines the political, economic and
business agenda for the year." WEF literature also admits that the
organisation spurred the launch of the Uruguay Round which led to the
replacement of GATT by the World Trade Organisation in 1995. It is also
unquestionable that the WEF is instrumental in setting the agenda of the
WTO Millennium Round. This latter round of talks aims to renegotiate the
General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) "with a view to achieving a
p!
rogressively higher level of liberalisation" of the burgeoning service
sector.

The WEF's agenda, as the S11 Alliance has pointed out, is: "massive global
poverty; ever-increasing inequalities between rich and poor; attacks on
workers' wages, conditions, occupational health and safety standards; and
widespread environmental and human rights abuses." It is an agenda of
unchecked corporate power that quite literally means death for the poorest
people on the planet. It means the plundering of the assets of whole
peoples in the name of privatisation and deregulation. It means a winding
back of human progress in education and health care for billions of people.

Far from capitalist globalisation being a "rising tide that will lift all
boats", it will sink those of the poor and fill those of the rich with more
booty than the pirate and slave ships of old. Yet, as the protests in
Seattle, Davos, Washington DC, and now Melbourne show, they face stiffening
resistance from workers, students, farmers, environmentalists and many
others. This movement is broad, pluralist, democratic, anti-capitalist and
internationalist in inspiration. It will prove wrong those bourgeois
ideologues such as Francis Fukuyama who proclaimed free-market capitalism
as "the end of history". The new generation coming into struggle will not
settle for such hollow clichés, but will fight for a better world. Margaret
Thatcher be warned: there is an alternative!



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