councilor.org
| Source | Dave Anderson |
| Date | 00/04/30/00:00 |
| Barbara Epstein, who teaches in the history of consciousness department at
the University of California, Santa Cruz has an insightful article in Dissent (Spring 2000) entitled "Not Your Parents' Protest." She says, "...It is tempting for those of us old enough to remember (the sixties) to see in the Seattle mobilization, and whatever may follow it, an opportunity to replay the movements of the sixties. In fact there are major differences between the two, and many of those differences are to the advantage of the new movement. "The most important difference is that movements of the sixties, especially the anti-war movement, were directed against the state; the Seattle mobilization was directed against the global corporations. In the sixties, the civil rights movement blamed the U.S. government for the discrepancy between democratic rhetoric and the denial of the rights of citizens to blacks. The movement demanded that the state ensure equal rights. Many left activists of the sixties understood that the state was intertwined with the corporations; in 1966 Carl Oglesby, then president of the Students for a Democratic Society, described the system that the movement opposed as 'corporate liberalism,' and pointed out that liberals in power were pursuing policies designed to protect the interests of corporations. Radical intellectuals traced corporate influences on government policy. But it was the liberals who were the focus of the movement's attack. "The enmity of sixties radicalism to the liberal state had some unfortunate side effects. Though at first Oglesby and others carefully distinguished between the liberal rhetoric used by the state to manipulate popular consent and the authentic liberal values of reformers, as the war in Vietnam expanded and anger at the government rose, these distinctions tended to slip away. Antiwar activists began to use 'liberal' as a term of abuse and to measure their own radicalism by how far they had moved from their own recently liberal politics. The movement's tendency to cast radicalism and liberalism as polar opposites made alliances between radicals and liberals difficult. But despite these problems, the movement's view of the liberal state as the enemy made sense. The war in Vietnam was being conducted by liberals in power who defended it with their own cold war rhetoric. One of the contributions of the movements of the sixties was to expose the hollowness of cold war liberalism. "...In the sixties, especially as anger about the war intensified, differences between radicals and liberals tended to be hostile and divisive, with each side digging in their heels. The differences in Seattle over what should be done with the WTO and global corporations were friendly and fluid. Many of the people whom I talked with, from labor, mainstream environmental movements, and the direct action movement, agreed that no one has the answer to the question of how the global economy should be reorganized, and discussion of these issues must continue. Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange, a left-leaning human rights organization in San Francisco, argues that the movement must drive a wedge between the state and the corporations, and put pressure on the state to defend democracy against corporate power. This approach was exemplified in Seattle, where President Clinton felt compelled to move from statements expressing vague support for the protesters to a call for a code of labor rights and sanctions against nations that violated them. Clinton's aides quickly denied that he meant what he had said, but his waffling added to the legitimacy, and no doubt the influence, of the protest. "The second major difference between the mobilization in Seattle and the movements of the sixties, especially the antiwar movement, is that the former involved a coalition between progressive groups, including young radicals, and labor, while labor was for the most part absent from the movements of the sixties, and supported the war in Vietnam, creating the deepest rift with its progressive sometime allies in U.S. history. There has not been a labor-left alliance in the United States since the thirties, when communists and socialists played a major role in organizing the Congress of Industrial Organizations and leftists, liberals, and trade unionists joined forces in demanding greater rights for poor and working people. Together they put sufficient pressure on the government to shift the New Deal to the left. The left/liberal/labor alliance of the thirties created a national political culture in which there was room to promote egalitarian values. The movements of the sixties had something of the same effect despite rifts with labor and liberals, because their critiques of the war, and of racism and sexism, struck responsive chords, especially among youth. But since the end of the war in Vietnam the divisions between progressive groups and labor, and for that matter among progressive groups, have weakened the left and allowed the right to dominate public discourse. The mobilization in Seattle holds out the hope, for the first time in decades, of a broad and potentially powerful coalition for a more egalitarian social order. "In Seattle, relations among trade unionists, environmentalists, and direct actionists seem to have been governed by a spirit of respect and mutual support that I do not remember from the sixties. "The tactics of the radical and the more mainstream groups were complementary. The impact of the mobilization resulted from the combination of two kinds of nonviolent protest: the blockade by the direct actionists, which delayed the beginning of the ministerial conference and brought media attention, and the labor march, which demonstrated the breadth of opposition to the WTO and lent the tactics of the young radicals legitimacy.... "...There is one difference between the Seattle mobilization and the movements of the sixties, especially the antiwar movement, that weighs against the prospects of a new mass movement. The war in Vietnam forced itself on the attention of the American people. Young people in particular could not ignore it. The growth of corporate power has not yet created the sort of crisis that thrusts whole sectors of the population into collective action in the way that the war did. Over the last few decades the division between the rich and everyone else has widened, and most people have found themselves working longer hours, in many cases at less secure jobs. But the large amounts of money that some people earn have led many to fasten their hopes on upward mobility and construct lives oriented toward consumption. Many of those who took part in direct action in Seattle are part of a youth subculture that opposes corporate power, and capitalism generally, because it has created a society in which virtually everything has become a commodity. These young people want community, and they want meaningful lives in the context of an egalitarian society. There is no guarantee that these views will spread, but the fact that there is a youth culture that holds such values is one of the most encouraging lessons of the Seattle mobilization. "The Vietnam War brought together a range of progressive movements previously concerned with separate issues. Among others, it brought together northern white students and black activists, many of them veterans of the civil rights movement, around a shared opposition to the war. Today's progressive movements may not come together as easily. The trade unions brought the most racial diversity to the WTO protest. The ILWU (International Longshore Workers Union) is one of the nation's most racially diverse unions, due both to the number of African Americans and others who joined in the years after World War II and to a left leadership that has emphasized the importance of radical history. And there was substantial participation by public sector unions such as the Service Employees and private sector unions such as the Hotel and Restaurant Workers, both of which are quite diverse. But the union participation in the Seattle mobilization was largely white, and the environmental and direct action groups were even whiter. The environmental movement, once virtually all white, now has an environmental justice wing that is composed predominately of people of color. But the groups concerned with trade and international issues are overwhelmingly white, as is the direct action movement. There were young people of color among the blockaders, but on the whole they tend not to be drawn to this movement. The subculture associated with direct action encourages aloofness from corporate culture, if not dropping out. They (young people of color) are rarely enthusiastic about forgoing whatever opportunities they may have. Young people of color also may have doubts about consensus politics in the context of a majority white movement. "If the Seattle mobilization was behind the movements of the sixties in respect to racial diversity, it was ahead of those movements in age diversity. The movements of the sixties were almost exclusively movements of young people in their teens, twenties, or at most early thirties. The Seattle mobilization drew protesters from high school students through seniors, with the largest numbers in their teens through middle age. With the exception of a small number of young people given disproportionate attention by the media, these groups were united not only by their opposition to WTO and their anger at corporate power but also by their commitment to nonviolence. Each of the movements in the anti-WTO coalition included people of a range of ages, but the fact that most of the blockaders were young, and the larger numbers of middle-aged people among the labor and mainstream environmental organizations, meant that the mobilization was not only a coalition of organizations but an alliance of generations. If an anticorporate movement emerges from Seattle, it seems likely that young people will be at its forefront but that it will include people of all ages." I have a small disagreement with Epstein. She says that labor "was for the most part absent from the movements of the sixties, and supported the war in Vietnam." Historian Peter Levy in his book on the labor and 1960s New Left notes that the more progressive unions helped give birth and support to the student New Left and were supportive of the civil rights movement. Tensions developed over the Vietnam war, the counterculture and the black power movement. There were always hardcore leftwing union people involved in the insurgencies of the sixties but anti-war activism by fairly influential labor leaders and mainstream union people developed in the late sixties. There was also a militant anti-war movement among soldiers (this was quite dangerous) and veterans. Almost all of these folks were working class. Dave Anderson (an old fart who definitely doesn't want to re-live the sixties)... |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho