March 30th, 2001By Naomi Klein "We are here to show the world that another world is possible!" the man on stage said, and a crowd of more than 10,000 roared its approval. What was strange was that we weren't cheering for a specific other world, just the possibility of one. We were cheering for the idea that another world could, in theory, exist. For the past thirty years, a select group of CEOs and world leaders have met during the last week in January on a mountaintop in Switzerland to do what they presumed they were the only ones capable of doing: determine how the global economy should be governed. We were cheering because it was, in fact, the last week of January, and this wasn't the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It was the first annual World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. And even though we weren't CEOs or world leaders, we were still going to spend the week talking about how the global economy should be governed. Many people said that they felt history being made in that room. What I felt was something more intangible: the end of The End of History. And fittingly, "Another...

30 March, 2001

March 28th, 2001By Naomi Klein Next Friday, trade ministers from the 34 countries negotiating the Free Trade Area of the Americas will meet in Buenos Aires. Many in Latin America predict that the ministers will be greeted with protests much larger than the ones that exploded in Seattle in 1999. The FTAA's cheerleaders like to pretend that their only critics are white college kids from Harvard and McGill who just don't understand how much "the poor" are "clamouring" for the FTAA. Will this public display of Latin American opposition to the trade deal change all that? Don't be silly. Mass protests in the developing world don't register in our discussions about trade in the West. No matter how many people take to the streets of Buenos Aires, Mexico City or Sao Paulo, defenders of corporate-driven globalization just keep on insisting that every possible objection lobbed their way was dreamed up in Seattle, by somebody with newly matted dreadlocks slurping a latte. When we talk about trade, we often focus on who is getting richer and who is getting poorer. But there is another divide at play: which countries are presented as diverse, complicated political landscapes where citizens have a range...

28 March, 2001

March 21st, 2001By Naomi Klein "I am worried that free trade is leading to the privatization of education," an elementary school teacher in Ottawa tells me. "I want to go to the protests in Quebec City, but is it going to be safe?" "I think NAFTA has increased the divide between rich and poor," a young mother in Toronto tells me. "But if I go to Quebec, will my son get pepper-sprayed?" "I want to go to Quebec City," a Harvard undergraduate active in the anti-sweatshop movement says, "but I heard no one is getting across the border." "We're not even bothering to go to Quebec City," a student in Mexico City says. "We can't afford to get arrested in a foreign country." If you think that the next big crackdown on political protest is going to take place when 5,000 police officers clash with activists outside the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City next month, you are mistaken. The real crackdown is already taking place. It is happening silently, with no fanfare, every time another would-be protester decides not to publicly express his or her views about the proposed free-trade area of the Americas. It turns out that...

21 March, 2001

March 15th, 2001By Naomi Klein Anyone still unclear about why the police are constructing a modern-day Bastille around Quebec City in preparation for a forthcoming summit and the unveiling of the Free Trade Area of the Americas should take a look at a case being heard by a Canadian provincial supreme court. In 1991 a United States waste management company, Metalclad, bought a closed-down toxic treatment facility in Guadalcazar, Mexico. The company wanted to build a huge, hazardous waste dump, and promised to clean up the mess left behind by the previous owners. In the years that followed it expanded operations without seeking local approval, earning little goodwill in Guadalcazar. Residents lost trust that Metalclad was serious about cleaning up, feared continued groundwater contamination, and eventually decided that the foreign company was not welcome. In 1995, when the landfill was ready to open, the town and state intervened with what legislative powers they had available: the city denied Metalclad a building permit, and the state declared that the area around the site was part of an ecological reserve. By this point the North American Free Trade Agreement, Nafta, was in full effect, including its controversial chapter 11 clause that allows...

15 March, 2001

March 3rd, 2001By Naomi Klein I've never been to Chiapas. I've never made the pilgrimage to the Lacandon jungle. I've never sat in the mud and the mist in La Realidad. I've never begged, pleaded or posed to get an audience with Subcomandante Marcos, the masked man, the faceless face of Mexico's Zapatista National Liberation Army. I know people who have. Lots of them. In 1994, the summer after the Zapatista rebellion, caravans to Chiapas were all the rage in north American activist circles: friends got together and raised money for secondhand vans, filled them with supplies, then drove south to San Cristobal de las Casas and left the vans behind. I didn't pay much attention at the time. Back then, Zapatista-mania looked suspiciously like just another cause for guilty lefties with a Latin American fetish: another Marxist rebel army, another macho leader, another chance to go south and buy colourful textiles. Hadn't we heard this story before? Hadn't it ended badly? Last week, there was another caravan in Chiapas. But this was different. First, it didn't end in San Cristobal de las Casas; it started there, and is now criss-crossing the Mexican countryside before the planned grand entrance into...

03 March, 2001

December 27th, 2000By Naomi Klein Ever since I wrote a book about nasty multinationals and the activists who bash them, I started getting the question: "So Miss No Logo, where do you shop?" Those are the aggressive people. The nice ones ask, "Where should I shop?" Sometimes, they send e-mails requesting annotated lists of "good corporations." Last week, an Irish radio interviewer asked me, on air, for suggestions of ethical gifts his listeners could give their children. I don't know how I became a professional ethical shopper, and I'm not very good at it. But I can sympathize with the dilemma. The newspapers are scattered with stories about factory fires in Bangladesh and sweatshop-stained children's toys imported from China. Last week, a coalition of labour and human-rights groups announced that, despite encouragement from the Department of Foreign Affairs to restrict trade with the brutal dictatorship in Myanmar, Canadian retailers have actually increased their imports from that country -- by 170 per cent since last year. But it's tough to turn this information into shopping advice. The more you know about how consumer goods are produced, the harder it becomes to offer practical dos and don'ts. I usually give long-winded...

27 December, 2000

December 20th, 2000By Naomi Klein Where do we go from here? There's a big space in the political landscape for a new party, one that looks at the calls for localization and doesn't see a dire threat to national unity. There is a very simple reason to have a left-wing alternative to the Liberal Party: People are suffering. Despite all the wealth created by deregulated markets, many Canadians are seeing no part of it. In fishing communities from coast to coast, on family farms, on the streets of large cities, Liberal Canada's recipe for economic growth has meant people being thrown into the global market without a net. In response, we have seen a wave of political organizing and militant protests. Students blockade trade meetings where politicians are bargaining their futures away in exchange for foreign investment. In First Nations communities, from Vancouver Island to Burnt Church, there is growing support for seizing back control of the forests and fisheries—people are tired of waiting for Ottawa to grant permission that the courts have already affirmed. In Toronto, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty is occupying buildings and demanding the shelter that is the right of all Canadians. There is no shortage...

20 December, 2000

December 13th, 2000By Naomi Klein When Canadian Auto Workers president Buzz Hargrove called for an emergency task force on the future of the NDP, he got blasted. Mr. Hargrove was "posturing," an NDP insider said. "The press isn't the place to do this," Nancy Riche of the Canadian Labour Congress said— in the press. And NDP Leader Alexa McDonough claimed the process Mr. Hargrove demanded was happening already. It is time to "let a thousand flowers bloom," Ms. McDonough said with a cheerfulness that has become increasingly manic, recalling a post-Regis Kathie Lee Gifford. Elsewhere, Ms. McDonough insisted that "there are no questions that are not fair game to put on the table." The real question is: Why on earth would anyone on the left entrust this process to the NDP? The defensive responses to Mr. Hargrove's call for a task force (not the dissolution of the party, remember) say a lot about why the NDP must be demoted to guest, not host, of any gathering where the topic is the reinvention of the left. Too many times, attempts to reach out to "social movements" have been slapped back by party insiders so busy protecting their piece of power that...

13 December, 2000

December 6th, 2000By Naomi Klein On the weekend, the man in the mask came down from the jungle and held a press conference. In the new year, he will travel to Mexico City and address Congress on the need for an Indian bill of rights. Subcomandante Marcos, voice of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, has been keeping a low profile lately. But he's back, in trademark ski mask, rifle over his shoulder, and pipe hanging from his mouth. Rumour has it he is a university professor who fled to the hills to lead an indigenous uprising in Chiapas, but Marcos has no comment. Showing his face, he jokes, would disappoint his female fans. It's a mark of the Zapatistas' influence that the very first act by Mexico's new president was to order a partial withdrawal of troops from Chiapas. Vicente Fox also invited the Zapatistas to resume negotiations that broke down under his predecessor. Marcos told reporters he's ready to talk, but not until Mr. Fox completes the troop withdrawal and releases all political prisoners. It's clear that Mr. Fox sees settling the Zapatista standoff as key to Mexico's stability. Less understood is how powerful the Zapatistas are outside of...

06 December, 2000

November 29th, 2000By Naomi Klein Last week, two Canadians made international headlines by burning their passports. They were protesting Canada's leading role in making sure that the climate summit in The Hague was a complete disaster. The catalyst? A coalition of 287 environmental groups handed daily "fossil" awards to countries that were especially obstructionist in the negotiations. Canada ended the conference with more awards than any other country, including the United States. For most people, the passport bonfire was a bit extreme—"shrill" to quote The New York Times. When Tooker Gomberg, one of the passport pyros, called from The Hague on Sunday, I told him he may have done the cause of climate change a disservice. "If a single journalist had asked me why I burned my passport," he replied angrily, "I would have been happy to tell them." He has a point. Mr. Gomberg's stunt was the only event at the summit that managed to pry the attention of Canadians away from our election and the Florida recount—if only for 30 seconds. And the scandalous events in The Hague deserve much more scrutiny than that. In Kyoto three years ago, Canada, along with the other signatories, committed to reducing...

29 November, 2000