Party crasher

The growing grassroots movement against corporate globalization is targeting this summer's major-party conventions for Seattle-style protests. But what does it all mean?

text and photos by Ben Geman

PROCESS POWER: organizer Kai Lumumba leads a group of activists in nonviolent direct-action training.

PHILADELPHIA -- Inside the major-party convention halls this summer, the presidential nominations of Texas governor George W. Bush in Philadelphia and Vice-President Al Gore in Los Angeles will be scripted, sanitized, and devoid of drama. They'll be as dull and pre-programmed, in other words, as the candidates themselves.

Outside the halls, however, the scene will be anything but dull. Tens of thousands of activists are expected to flood the streets of Philadelphia, where the Republican National Convention takes place July 31 through August 3, and LA, where the Democrats will meet August 14 through 17. The mass protests, marches, and civil disobedience will mark the next big action of the growing movement against corporate globalization that came to prominence with last year's demonstrations against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle. A smaller, but nevertheless impressive, showing at last spring's meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, DC, proved the movement wasn't a fluke.

LOCKDOWN: Cathie Berrey, a "blockade trainer" with the Ruckus Society: "I just train people in hypothetical situations they may or may not engage in."

The convention protests will likely show that this growing grassroots movement has staying power -- and that it's evolving and making new allegiances. Organizers will focus on issues such as welfare rights, health care, prisons, and American poverty, and they'll work with locally based groups and organizations that have focused more on domestic policy. In Philly, you can also expect protest around the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the radical black journalist on death row for the fatal 1981 shooting of a Philadelphia police officer. (Activists say Abu-Jamal was never given a fair trial and contend he's a political prisoner.) Other planned events in Philadelphia include a march by the Ad Hoc Committee To Defend Health Care July 29 and a Unity 2000 rally the next day focusing on health care, prisons, low wages, and numerous other issues. Organizers will also team up with the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, which will engage in civil disobedience July 31 with an unauthorized "March for Economic Human Rights." The group has been working to transform activism against welfare reform into a global issue (see "Welfare Outrage Goes Global," News and Features, June 1). In Los Angeles, planned events include a march against the WTO and protests focusing on police brutality, immigrants' rights, and workers' rights. All this will mark a substantial shift in focus from global to domestic issues, but the movement as a whole is likely to be strengthened by the ties made between local activists and groups like the California-based Ruckus Society, which trains activists in nonviolent civil disobedience. "You know how in Seattle it was the Teamsters and the [sea] turtles?" says Margaret Prescod, an organizer of the Los Angeles protests. "Now it's the Teamsters, the turtles, and the welfare mothers. You have a lot of people doing community-based work in a way that didn't happen in Seattle and didn't happen in DC."

LINING UP: Celia Alario, a media trainer with the Ruckus Society, engages in civil-disobedience training.

The new focus was apparent last weekend in Philadelphia. At the Friends Center, a Quaker institution located downtown, about 100 people gathered for the "People's Action Camp," a weekend of tutorials in nonviolent civil disobedience and media and strategy training for activists. The camp was put together by the Philadelphia Direct Action Group and the Ruckus Society, which played a significant role in the Seattle and DC protests. Saturday's training unfolded with some get-to-know-you games. Standing in a circle of about 60 people, the activists were asked to state their names and organizations -- and the answers displayed an impressive array: ACT UP; student activists from New York; the Next Movement, a Boston-based group of young activists of color; Chicago ACORN; the radical group Refuse and Resist; and a farmworkers' advocate.

The diversity of groups showed something else besides a shift in focus from global to local issues: color. In Seattle and DC, the props and puppets were colorful but the protesters' faces, when you could see them behind the masks and bandannas, were largely white. The crowd at the People's Action Camp in Philly was nothing if not diverse. African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Latinos stood alongside white activists. "We made a conscious effort here for this training to link the issues of global corporate domination to what is going on domestically and to bring to the table activists who represent constituencies of the most marginalized peoples in the United States -- people of color, poor people, people with AIDS, the queer community," says Amadee Braxton, of the Philadelphia Direct Action Group and the Black Radical Congress.

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Ben Geman can be reached at bgeman[a]phx.com.