Globalize or mobilize

Free-trade foes target Windsor next.

by Curt Guyette
5/24/00

Activists expect at least 2,000 people for teach-ins, demonstrations and civil disobedience.

The acronyms and locations keep changing, but the core issues fueling a backlash against global economic policies remain the same.

There was Seattle and the WTO last year, followed by Washington, D.C., and the IMF. Next up is a binational showdown that will bring activists to Detroit and Windsor to protest the policies of the OAS.

Activists expect at least 2,000 people to converge on the cities during the first week in June for a series of teach-ins, demonstrations and civil-disobedience actions.

Like the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, the Organization of American States has free-market globalization atop its agenda.

In the case of the OAS specifically, the issue being pushed is formation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, described by critics as NAFTA on steroids.

Both demonstrators and law enforcement can draw lessons from the previous actions. Last December, at the "Battle in Seattle," protesters succeeded in entirely disrupting the WTO meeting. Police were better prepared for April protests in Washington, D.C., where a "no-protest zone" was established to make sure IMF deliberations could take place.

Authorities on both sides of the Detroit River say they will be fully prepared to handle the upcoming OAS protests. Detroit police will be issued riot gear and be on alert status throughout the conference, according to the Associated Press.

The problem, say opponents, is that free-trade agreements such as these are essentially undemocratic, resulting in multinational corporations gaining even more power than they already have.

"These ‘agreements’ aim to eliminate international restrictions, forcing countries to compete against each other in a rush to the bottom," explains the Coalition to Shutdown the OAS on its Web site. "This means environmental, labour and human rights policies are deregulated as soon as they threaten corporate profit. Community initiatives, local economies and so-called ‘democracy’ are crushed ..."

Providing testament to the scope of these policies is the range of groups opposing them. The actions in Seattle last year brought together organized labor, environmentalists, human-rights activists and students.

The same sort of coalition will be on display when the OAS convenes in Windsor for three days beginning June 4.

The Canadian Auto Workers has been particularly active. Working with the Canadian Labour Congress, the union is mobilizing a mass demonstration in Windsor.

"We’re hoping that, by putting people on the streets, we’ll be able to pressure the ambassadors," says the CAW’s Rick Kitchen. "We want to bring the people’s agenda to the OAS."

Kitchen and others point out that, although the OAS says all the right things when it comes to issues like the rights of workers to organize, its actions don’t match the rhetoric.

Kitchen, for one, finds it ironic that the current OAS secretary general is Cesar Gaviria, formerly the president of Colombia – the most dangerous country in the world for union leaders, many of whom have been targeted by paramilitary death squads. According to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, four of every 10 trade unionists who are murdered because of their labor activities are Colombian.

Kitchen has seen for himself the conditions in Colombia.

"Workers can’t afford to buy the products they produce," he reports. "I went to a car plant where workers make $40 a month producing vehicles that cost $17,000. Workers producing palm oil make 80 cents a day for a 12-hour day, and a liter of palm oil costs $2.20."

And it’s not just workers who are suffering.

"The way they treat their indigenous people – it’s damn near genocide what they are doing to get the land of their aboriginal people."

"One of the really hard things about working on the OAS is that they try to put a human rights face on things, but those issues have not really been dealt with," says Brian Sharpe of the Coalition to Shutdown OAS in Windsor. "Where most of the focus really goes is into trade issues."

While the unions look to rallies on Sunday, June 4 – there will be a demonstration beginning at noon at Detroit’s Hart Plaza to mirror a similar protest across the river – as a way to raise public awareness, others are preparing for civil-disobedience actions that, as was the case in Seattle, will look to completely disrupt the meeting itself.

Because some of the OAS delegates will likely be staying in Detroit, attempts to shut down traffic on the tunnel and bridge connecting the two cities are entirely possible.

Beginning June 1, there will be workshops on civil disobedience and direct action.

"What that means, no one is saying," explains 26-year-old Jason Wade of the Detroit Coalition to Shutdown the OAS. "If you are going to commit a crime, you don’t broadcast it."

"One of the beautiful things about something like this is that it’s loosely organized," adds Sharpe. "People come together and they decide how the action will unfold.

"If people from an affinity group – which may be five to 15 people who know and trust each other – decide to chain there arms together and make a blockade, then they can. But no one knows exactly how things will unfold until it actually does happen."

For more information, the Detroit Coalition to Shutdown the OAS can be contacted by phone at 313-770-2041. Information can be obtained on the Web at www.tao.ca/~stopftaa/.

Curt Guyette is the Metro Times news editor.