BY SEAN HEALY
BRISBANE — Have you ever worried about what would happen to all the protests if the summits of world leaders suddenly stopped? Well, don't. On the evidence here in the last few days, the movement for global justice is still ready to mobilise, summits or no summits.
The top leaders of the Commonwealth — Britain's Tony Blair, Australia's John Howard, Canada's Jean Chretien — cancelled the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), scheduled to start on October 6, because they had a war to launch.
This did not deter the broad array of activist groups — socialists, forest blockaders, local indigenous people's organisations — which had worked together for months to plan protests outside the summit.
Blair pulled out of CHOGM on September 28. Within hours Howard announced the whole thing was off.
By October 1, the alliance of activist groups had decided the protests would go ahead with the original five demands: a treaty between black and white Australia; cancel the Third World debt; no new World Trade Organisation talks; action on climate change; and respect for human rights. To that list they added a sixth: no to war and racism.
Around 3000 protesters turned out on October 6 for the People's March. They filled the city with noise and colour as they moved from Emma Miller Place to Musgrave Park to listen to speakers and music late into the night.
The protests — small actions and convergences on October 5, the People's March, and the October 7 counter-conference — were remarkable, and not just because of the energy of the mostly young protesters. They combined the radicalism of the big anti-capitalist protests in Melbourne last September and the stock exchange blockades on May 1 with the urgent message: "We have a war to stop".
"This isn't really an anti-war protest because the war hasn't started yet", one man told me as we crossed the Brisbane River. "This is a protest against all of the things which cause war."
Karen Fletcher, one of the principal organisers and the spokesperson for the CHOGM Action Network (CAN), the broadest of the three coalitions organising against CHOGM, said something very similar after the marchers had filed exhausted into Musgrave Park. "What makes this more than some of the peace marches I've been on in the past is that we're not just calling for peace. We're calling for all the things which will bring about peace: an end to racism, economic justice, world-wide action on the big issues."
Sam Watson, an inspirational figure in Brisbane's Aboriginal community for more that 30 years and another CAN organiser, spoke of his people's long struggle for justice and his support for refugees who are forced to come here. "Aboriginal people say to those refugees from Afghanistan and Iraq, you are welcome in our country. In fact, we'll swap you for Mr Howard. You can come and he can go."
Tafadzwa Choto, an activist in the Zimbabwe Movement for Democratic Change and a leader of the International Socialist Organisation of Zimbabwe, received a rousing reception after her speech, which attacked her country's ruler, Robert Mugabe, and the institutions of corporate globalisation. She stated bluntly that "it is capitalism we must get rid of".
Human rights lawyer Ross Daniels drew cheers when he said, "Yes, we should arrest the terrorists. But why stop at Osama bin Laden? Surely if we were genuinely committed, we would arrest Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and almost every American president? And we'd arrest John Howard and Kim Beazley and all those associated with training the Indonesian military to do what they did in East Timor."
The People's March was a protest about the big picture. In the words of one speaker: "Scary stuff ... which makes you want to curl up in a ball". Yet it was a celebration of people's unity in the face of corporate greed and imperialist warmongering.
The sense of interconnection was obvious in the crowd itself. Many sought to use the march as a chance to say what they were for, and not just what they were against.
Defying mass media descriptions of the movement as "anti-globalisation", there were dozens of hand-painted placards, tie-dyed bandanas and homemade T-shirts emblazoned with "globalise peace", "globalise love", "globalise democracy" and "globalise resistance".
The radical mood swept many along. The banner of one of the more moderate and restrained of the many environment groups present read "Climate change? Social change!"
"First time I've ever seen them say that", one activist winked at me.
Also remarkable was the prominence in the protests of support for the fight for justice by Australia's indigenous people. The global justice movement has often been accused by its critics of being a "white" movement. But indigenous issues were uppermost in many people's minds. There is a "war at home, right here in our own country", one person pointed out.
Protesters were welcomed to Turrbal land, sought and received a traditional blessing, were reminded that where they sat was once ceremonial ground, that just on the other side of the hill Turrbal people were massacred in the 1840s, that these people who in 1861 were proclaimed by white authorities to be "extinct" have survived it all.
The march was led by local indigenous leaders and a giant red, black and yellow flag. It ended at Musgrave Park, a place with great significance for Brisbane's Murris.
Watson told Green Left Weekly that the involvement of indigenous people in the CHOGM protests was a big step forward, both for his community and for the movement. "There is a sea change on these issues. More people, especially the young ones, see how important justice for Aboriginal people is and how, if you want to come from a strong place as a movement, you have to come hand-in-hand with our communities."
The decision to march despite CHOGM's postponement was a good thing, Fletcher enthused. "It has brought the left together. When the terrorist attacks happened in the US and the war threat rose, and then when we had to figure out what to do once the thing was cancelled, we had to talk together. We didn't talk about the tactics that had divided us for months but about the politics, the issues, and realised that there is so much common ground between us."
Already discussions have begun about what to do at "CHOGM mark II" in six months' time. An all-in activist conference is likely in November and there might even be enough agreement to form a single organising coalition.
"Bring it on", said Fletcher, rubbing her hands.