Multi-Focus Or Bust

Anyone that the US goes after these days is bound to be a reallybad guy. In the New World Order power is so unbalanced that good guys give in.

When Nelson Mandela took office in South Africa globalcorporations handed him their neo-liberal shopping lists and he just about gaveaway the store. Perhaps he could have bargained a little better, still, he waswise to fear economic isolation. No one who cares at all about his people willrisk the label "rogue state."

That’s why our official enemies in the global era--SaddamHussein, Manuel Noriega, Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban—have been men whodon’t flinch at bringing more misery down on the people near to them. Theyalso don’t mind murdering me. Now that I know they can reach me, I wantprotection.

A week after the World Trade Center was destroyed severalhundred New Yorkers showed up to plan a big anti-war march. Before the meeting asub-committee had come up with four "principles of unity" that they hoped wecould all agree on: we mourn the victims and condemn the attack; we opposeanti-Arab and anti-Islamic racism (or any other kinds of racial and religiousattacks, the group added); we won’t give up our civil liberties; war is notthe answer. A young woman suggested we add: "The criminals should be broughtto justice." By a show of hands the group was about equally split on theaddition. The chair ruled that since this point clearly divided us itshouldn’t be included as a principle of unity. "We’d better leave it outfor the time being. Everyone is free to make their own signs and leaflets."

No one in that room mistook Osama Bin Laden for a freedomfighter. It’s just that some people were flying on automatic pilot as theypinned on the generic peace buttons that they’ve fished out of the drawerevery time the US intervened in yet another third world country. But Al Qaedisn’t a liberation front, it’s a gang of terrorists and all Americans wantprotection from terrorism. To say nothing about how we’ll protect ourselves isto say "leave it to George." That’s too dangerous.

When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.Since George has an army, he immediately called the attack on the World TradeCenter a declaration of war. We, as an anti war movement, responded properlywhen we called it a terrible crime. George wants war. We want to apprehend thecriminals and protect ourselves from other such gangs.

Crime fighting, as we learn from cop shows, involves legworklike interviewing witnesses and following the money trial. It may also offer thediversion of an occasional high speed chase or even a limited shoot out. But acop who killed a building full of innocent by-standers, not to mention a countryfull, would be thrown off the force. By going with the crime analogy we say thatwe, like most Americans, want immediate protection from criminals. We also wantlong range crime prevention.

OUR LONGER RANGE PROTECTION

In the days after the attack, Downtown Manhattan’s UnionSquare Park was spontaneously transformed into a peace encampment. Like otherpublic spaces in the city, it was also papered with the hand made MISSING signsthat gradually metamorphosed into memorials. When relatives came to Union Squareto place candles and American flags near the pictures of their dead, they setthem down amid the peace symbols. Something, perhaps it was all the incense,made them feel the peacenik atmosphere was appropriate.

Union Square was comforting in those first days and I went thereoften. I also went to a couple of packed and informative anti-war teach-ins thatcollege students got together quickly. These would have heartened me too exceptfor a distressing flash- back.

I remembered Septembers in the early nineteen sixties. Westudents returned to campus after a freedom summer in Mississippi or a stintwith Ceasar Chavez and the farm workers asking ourselves "Why do I work threemonths for the grape strikers and then study agribusiness nine months for thegrowers?" "Am I really going to spend my adult life breeding squaretomatoes, mixing agri-poisons and programming computers to speed up workers?"Those questions led rapidly toward images of a deeper democracy. For a while itseemed like we really could change the country. Then came the Vietnam War. Ourantiwar groups came together quickly because of the networks we’d formedthrough civil rights and similar activities. But to stop that one war we had tomobilize so many people, so often, for so long. And when the war was over all wehad was the peace we needed to go forward in the first place, only everyone wasexhausted. Occasional cynics still suggest that the Vietnam War "gave you guysa cause." In fact, antiwar work was a terrible setback for our real causes. Itwas a decade of intense mark-time march.

That’s why I was disturbed when I saw so many antiwar eventspulled together so quickly as campus anti-sweatshop/anti-IMF/anti-WTO networksswitched gears. Despite all those antis, the movement carelessly labeled"anti-globalization" embodies it’s own positive image of a deeperdemocracy. Only it’s vision of equitable and ecologically sustainablesocieties is less provincial than ours was in the nineteen sixties. This time itwas beginning to seem like we really could change the globe.

Indeed our infant movement had already slightly ameliorated thegrim limitations that Nelson Mandella faced when the ANC first took office. Forinstance, South Africans are beginning to buy, if not manufacture, generic drugsagainst AIDS and other diseases despite the originally stern prohibitions fromthe Word Trade Organization and the US Government. This leeway exists because arange of "anti" globalization activists first had the patience to decipherand explain the Byzantine "Free Trade" regulations that actually increasetrade barriers and drug costs. Then we mounted the world wide protests that gavesmall countries a little wiggle room.

Our vision of global justice encompasses more, of course, than alittle wiggle room. But until recently you had to be a rogue state, a SaddamHussein, a ruler with no concern for your own people to do something as defiantas buy generic drugs.

If our positive "anti" global movement gets subsumed intoantiwar work, the world will be left with no choices, no wiggle room in betweenBush and bin Laden. That’s why we can’t abandon global justice for peace orvice versa. We’re going to have to keep many balls in the air at once for thenext few months, few years, or few decades.

(Barbara Garson's latest book is "Money Makes the WorldGo Around: One investor Tracks Her Cash Through the Global Economy" Viking2001)

(By arrangement with Zmag)