Indeed, it came close to being, in some important ways, the kind of broad-based coalition that is needed at the present moment to take on the pseudo-populist Right. So now seems like a good time to look at the lessons of our movement’s rise—and fall. Because if that movement had been able to translate its street power into more policy victories, it would have been unthinkable for Trump and his corporate cabinet to tap into the rage at unfair global trade rules and wrap themselves in the cloak of “fair trade.”
In the late 1990s through to the early 2000s, from London to Genoa, to Mumbai, to Buenos Aires, Quebec City and Miami, there could not be a high-level gathering to advance the neoliberal economic agenda without count-erdem-onstr-atio-ns. That’s what happened in Seattle during a summit of the World Trade Organization, where the city was completely shut down by protesters, derailing the meetings. It happened a few months later at the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, and at summits to push the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a deal that would have stretched from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. And this movement was no small thing: by July 2001, roughly 300,000 people were on the streets of Genoa during a G8 meeting.
Unlike today’s hypernationalist right-wing movements that rail against “globalism,” our movement was proudly international and internationalist, using the novelty of a still-young Internet to organize easily across national borders, online and face to face. Finding common ground in how those deals were increasing inequality and looting the public sphere in all our countries, we called for open borders for people, the liberation of medicines, seeds, and crucial technologies from restrictive patent protections, and far more controls over corporations.
At its core, the movement was about deep democracy, from local to global, and it stood in opposition to what we used to call “corporate rule”—a frame more relevant today than ever. Our objection was obviously not to trade; cultures have always traded goods across borders, and always will. We objected to the way transnational institutions were using trade deals to globalize pro-corporate policies that were extremely profitable for a small group of players but which were steadily devouring so much of what used to be public and commonly held: seeds, water rights, public health care, and much more.
One of the early fights that typified what was at stake involved the Bolivian city of Cochabamba and the American corporation Bechtel. As part of the push to privatize the city’s services, Bechtel won a contract to run the local water system. As a result, prices for this most essential of services soared, and it was even deemed illegal to collect rainwater without special permission. Residents of Cochabamba rose up in what became known as “the Water War” and threw Bechtel out of the country. But then Bechtel turned around and sued Bolivia for $50 million in damages and lost revenue. So even when the people reclaimed their democratic rights over this corporation, they were still vulnerable to brutal claims in trade court. Which is why we saw trade policy as such a core fight between democracy and oligarchy.
Anyone who has paid attention during Trump’s first months in office, or seen who he has surrounded himself with, knows that he is not going to reverse these trends, but accelerate them.
Teamsters and Turtles—Together at Last!
One area of concern was how these deals were leading to devastating job losses, leaving behind rust belts from Detroit to Buenos Aires, while companies such as Ford and Toyota looked for ever-cheaper places to produce. But for the most part, our opposition was not grounded in Trump-style protectionism; it was trying to stem the beginning of what already looked like a race to the bottom, a new world order that was negatively impacting workers and the environment in every country. We were arguing for a model of trade that would start with the imperative to protect people and the planet. That was crucial then—it’s urgent now.
The movement was even starting to win. We defeated the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. We brought World Trade Organization negotiations to a standstill. And the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund could no longer speak of “structural adjustment”—meaning forcing neoliberalism on poor countries—in the open.
Looking back, one of the reasons we succeeded was that we stopped fixating on our differences, and came together across sectors and national borders to fight for a common goal. There were plenty of conflicts over tactics, and environmentalists and trade unionists still had large areas of disagreement. In spite of that, however, on the streets of Seattle you had trade unions like the Teamsters marching alongside environmentalists under the banner Teamsters and Turtles: Together at last!
That’s a long way from those trade union leaders outside the White House, cheering on Trump.
Shocked Out of the Way
So what the hell happened?
The short answer is: shock happened. The September 11 attacks, and the whole era of the so-called War on Terror, pretty much wiped our movement off the map in North America and Europe—an experience that started me off on an exploration of the political uses (and misuses) of crisis that has gripped me ever since.
Of course, the movement never disappeared completely, and many organizations and good people continued to work diligently to raise the alarm about new unfair trade deals. In Latin America, opposition forces came into government in such countries as Bolivia and Ecuador and set up their own “fair trade” networks. But in the Global North, we rapidly ceased to be an unignorable mass movement that changed the conversation in dozens of countries. After September 11, 2001, we suddenly found ourselves under attack from politicians and media commentators equating rowdy anticorporate street demonstrations (and yes, there had been battles with the police and broken store windows) with the deranged forces that had staged the attacks on the World Trade Center. It was a vile comparison, entirely without basis. But it didn’t matter.
Our movement had always been a very big tent—a “movement of movements,” as we called it (a phrase that has come back into the lexicon). But after September 11, large parts of the coalition got spooked by the “with us or with the terrorists” rhetoric. The nonprofits who rely on large foundations feared losing their funding and withdrew, as did some key unions. Almost overnight, people went back to their single-issue silos, and this remarkable (if imperfect) cross-sectoral alliance, which had brought together such a diversity of people under a pro-democracy umbrella, virtually disappeared. This left a vacuum for Trump and far-right parties in Europe to step in, exploit the justified rage at loss of control to unaccountable transnational institutions, direct it toward immigrants and Muslims and anyone else who makes an easy target, and take the project of corporate rule into new and uncharted waters.
Many stayed active in this period and joined other broad coalitions, but by comparison these were thin and tactical: “Defeat Bush,” “Stop the War.” The deeper analysis of the global economic forces we were all up against regardless of which party was in power was largely lost.
Vacuum, Meet Trump