Canadian journalist NAOMI KLEIN is one of the chief spokespeople of the anti-corporate globalisation movement. Her book, No Logo, foretold the events of Seattle in 1999. She explained how many young people are fed up with corporations for all kinds of reasons, from their exploitation of sweatshops to their relentless drive to put a brand name on everything we see.
Come April 20-22, Klein will be in Quebec, joining protests there against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), an expanded version of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
If she weren't there she'd be at the Labor Notes conference, and she sends her greetings to the anti-FTAA demonstration in Detroit that will be part of the Labor Notes weekend. Labor Notes interviewed Klein about the labour-environmental-student coalition many hoped was born in the streets of Seattle.
After Seattle, everyone talked about the "coalition in the streets" between labour and the direct action folks, but then the AFL-CIO [American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations] seemed to lose interest. In Washington DC, for the April 16, 2000, protests, the AFL-CIO's priority was arguing against China being in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and they put all their effort into their own separate rally, and lobby day earlier in the week. Are there any prospects for the Seattle "coalition" being rebuilt?
The AFL-CIO absolutely dropped the ball. They got a taste of being a part of a genuine social movement, and the power that would be implicit in that, and ever since then they've sabotaged it at every step. They haven't just damaged the coalition with the students, though. They've damaged the coalition with the global South [less developed countries] by joining with the American right and being associated with this border-line racist, protectionist rhetoric against China. We're talking shortsighted goals, immediate political expediency.
The internationalism of the anti-globalisation movement is not just a hobbyhorse. Internationalism is the power that [the movement] has, and the way you know that's the power of the movement is that that is exactly where the leaders of the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank are trying to break the coalition.
Immediately after Seattle, the [London] Economist magazine ran a cover of a starving Indian child saying, "Why are you trying to take my food away?" Ever since then all the rhetoric has been the same: "Global trade is a mass philanthropic project, and you people are just selfish."
Increased divisions
Of course, this message plays in the global South, because they assume that Americans are protectionist and out for themselves and out to screw them because everything in their history has taught them that. So that was the context in which the AFL-CIO decided to make this coalition with the right around China's entry into the World Trade Organisation. That just confirmed everything that was being said by the head of the World Bank.
It was fine for the AFL-CIO to oppose China's joining the WTO, because that will just make conditions worse for workers everywhere, including China. But the way they did it increased divisions between North and South and put real distance between the labour movement and youth/direct action camps.
The Canadian labour movement is not that short-sighted. Since Seattle, there's been really great work between the labour movement and the student movement and the anarchists. We saw it in Windsor when the meeting of the Organisation of American States was held in June.
[The] Canadian Auto Workers [union] understand themselves to be part of a social movement, and that means giving money to and working with very radical anti-poverty groups that are organising the unemployed and are occupying buildings. They understand there has to be a diversity of tactics depending on the level of enfranchisement, and that they happen to represent people who are very middle-class at this point. The CAW paid for buses, and so did the steelworkers [union], for students and people who were part of the Shutdown Coalition.
There was a moment during the protests when some young people put a banner up on a fence and some CAW marshals pulled them off. There was immediate bad blood about that, but CAW leadership worked very hard to fix that, in fact bailed quite a few of the students out of jail. There was some real solidarity in Windsor. That's just an example that not every union is taking this idea as lightly as the AFL-CIO.
Why would the unions draw back from being part of a real social movement?
There's a very long history of the AFL-CIO's relationship to foreign policy. [John] Sweeney's election [as AFL-CIO president] was supposed to be a break with that and in many ways has been. There are obviously limits to that, and we're butting up against those limits.
Historically it's been the top leaders of the labour movement have been leery of being part of coalitions they don't control. They might be especially nervous about people who seem out of control, in their view.
I think the labour leaders might think that this opportunity isn't going to go away. That of course students and environmentalists would want to work with labour because they have this ability to mobilise numbers. So that when they feel ready again to work in coalitions there's not going to be a problem. And they might be right, but they might be wrong. Because there is already quite a lot of distrust, and there's such a vast gulf in organising styles.
So many of the organisers believe so passionately in non-hierarchical organising - the cornerstone of the way these protests have been organised, through affinity groups and convergence centres, really radically decentralised democracy.
In that context a lot of unions look incredibly hierarchical and seem to replicate traditional power structures. The only way to get through some of this is to work together, and if you don't, then a lot of bad blood gets created.
Part of it has to do with the fact that a lot of the young people are coming from an environmental background not a labour background. A lot of young people see unions as a job protection racket. They also see unions as representing polluting industries and not being terribly concerned with the issues that move them.
So there needs to be serious work done that's more than marching together for an afternoon. And I don't see much evidence from the AFL-CIO leadership that there's too much interest in doing that serious work.
It's really too bad, because, of course, labour has much to contribute to this movement particularly in terms of educating some of the younger activists on what it means to take power seriously - to not just protest but sit down at the table and negotiate it and go to the next step. That's where I think the coalition would go both ways.
It's not just getting labour's bodies, it's getting labour's skills and expertise.
Wouldn't you also say not just skills and expertise but basic social power?
Absolutely.
The unions are badly flawed, but that's where the workers are.
Where some of them are.
Where a shrinking number of workers are.
Which is part of the reason why I don't understand why they're so cocky.
[From Labor Notes, March 2001. For subscription details write to Labor Notes, 7435 Michigan Ave., Detroit, MI 48210, USA or email