BY SEAN HEALY
MELBOURNE — "We can do it, we will do it and we must do it. Let the struggle begin", said Malaysian consumer rights activist Meena Ramon of the global movement to end corporate globalisation, to rousing cheers at a seminar here on September 8 organised by the Australian Council for Overseas Aid.
There might have been more suits in the audience than knitted beanies, but the 250 people who crammed into the North Melbourne Town Hall, mainly representatives of non-government organisations, delivered a strong statement of opposition to what Ramon described as an "undemocratic system full of doubletalk" and clear support for non-violent protest against the World Economic Forum.
After weeks of breathless media sensation about the prospects for "violence" at the protests, this seminar, with its examination of the impact of globalisation on the world's people, was a welcome relief to many: at last, a discussion about the issues.
Giving the keynote address, Filipino activist and academic Walden Bello, the executive director of the progressive think-tank Focus on the Global South, spoke passionately of the destruction wrought by IMF structural adjustment programs and corporate depredations. He also spoke with great enthusiasm of the movement which has arisen all over the world against corporate globalisation.
The "three main institutions of international economic governance", the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation, are in a "severe crisis of legitimacy", he said, not only because of their manifest failings but because of this movement.
"Truth might be eternal", he said, "but it was only when that truth joined the power in the streets that it became fact".
The issue that dominated discussion was what stance NGOs should take to attempts to reform these institutions, and what response should be given to these institutions' attempts to coopt their critics, either through direct discussion or through other consultative mechanisms like the United Nations.
"Will NGOs allow themselves to be sucked into World Economic Forum dialogue when they see it as a tactic for silencing criticism?", Bello asked rhetorically. "Would it not be more realistic and more cost effective ... to move to disempower if not abolish [these institutions]?"
On a similar note, Friends of the Earth's Cam Walker chided some "NGOs in the centre" for not standing up to police and media attempts to split the more radical wing of the S11 movement from the more moderate wing, suggesting that they had been used by the World Economic Forum.
While everyone recognised the danger of NGOs being used to re-legitimise increasingly desperate institutions, many seemed to be happy to leave it at that.
The representative of Amnesty International's corporate responsibility group, Paula Gerber, stood by the organisation's dialogue initiatives with big companies. ACFOA's Janet Hunt called for a strengthening of the United Nations system. And manufacturing workers union national secretary Doug Cameron defended tariffs for Australian industry, so as to allow a stronger national economy to lend greater assistance to poor countries in the future.
Differences aside, all stated their support for people's opposition to corporate greed and the WEF summit.