What I saw at the revolution, continued

by Ben Geman

When I asked James Johnson of Service Employees International Union Local 535 about the role of labor in the grassroots protests, he echoed Sweeney's comments. "The reality is that Gore is opposed to the privatization of Social Security and supports increasing the minimum wage," he said. "We feel that Gore is better than Bush on labor issues any day."

Re-forming the "Seattle Coalition" -- as the union of labor, environmentalists, and other activist groups has been called -- is one challenge facing activists in the wake of the convention. Another challenge? Catching their breath. "The mobilization fatigue is real," said Han Shan, program coordinator for the Ruckus Society, when I interviewed him at the Los Angeles Independent Media Center, where protest organizers carved out a space to publicize their efforts. "There are folks who have been working for a year in crisis mode. There's burnout. We don't have the resources that our opponents do." This new movement has been busy since it started getting ready for Seattle. Organizers of Seattle's WTO protests had more than a year in which to plan. The protests against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC, came together in less than half that time. The window of organizing for the convention protests was shorter still.

But Shan thinks that even if the protesters weren't fatigued, the movement would need to take some time to self-assess. "Everyone has known for months that it will be necessary to step back," he told me. "We will be slowing down this fall and thinking about long-term strategy so we are not just showing up every time big capital shows up."

In the meantime, expect to see smaller-scale mobilization. For example, activists will probably protest Ralph Nader's near-certain exclusion from the presidential debates when George W. Bush and Al Gore square off in Boston on October 3. The next big anti-globalization protest will take place overseas, in Prague, in September. But it's hard to say how many Americans will make the expensive trip. With activists experiencing mobilization fatigue, moving into Nader-campaign mode, and taking time out to gain perspective, it will probably be some time before the United States sees another large-scale mobilization on the order of Seattle, or even Los Angeles.

Leo Ribuffo, a George Washington University historian who specializes in 20th-century American history, says he's not convinced that a broad new social movement is afoot in any case.

"The analogies to the '60s are all wrong -- I think it is much closer to the low-level activism of the late 1950s against ROTC, capital punishment, and HUAC [the House Un-American Activities Committee]," he says. "I think the only thing 1960s about it is a kind of flamboyance. I don't think that we are on the verge of a new wave of social activism on the scale of the 1930s or 1960s. We are not fighting an unpopular war with a half-million troops abroad."

True, it's not the movement against the war in Vietnam. But it's something new for disparate interests to come together and challenge the status quo at a time when prosperity is considered to be widespread for all. This type of activism didn't exist even a year ago. And LA's broader failures notwithstanding, the new activism showed signs of vitality at the Democratic convention. There was plenty of innovation and action at the Los Angeles Independent Media Center, which broadcast radio and television programming on the activism in LA and published reports about the protests on its Web site (www.la.indymedia.org). And the other Independent Media Centers popping up all over the world -- there are now about 20 of them -- aren't closing down when the events they're set up to cover are over. You can still visit the centers set up for Seattle and Washington, DC (at http://seattle.indymedia.org and http://dc2.indymedia.org, respectively). Also, many activists told me that they thought events such as the LA demonstrations might spur people on to organize in their hometowns.

For the last big action of the week in LA, protesters marched to the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, where some of the protesters arrested throughout the week were being held. Amid the cheers -- loudest when the protesters walked through underpasses -- activists at the front tried to keep the tired group together. "Nice and slow," said one leader. "Baby steps."

Media coverage of the protests was indifferent at best, and the impact of the protests on the convention was minimal. But now that the protests have been over for a few days, I think that people's expressing themselves on the streets with baby steps is a lot better than their taking no steps at all.

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