Talk:Anti-globalization movement
What have:
- politicians
- business leaders
- the general public
- older pressure groups
done in response? Ordered crackdowns (in the case of politicians)? Told the protesters to get a haircut and a real job (some of the business leaders)? Pointed out that some of the meetings the protesters have blockaded were to discuss some of the concerns they are raising, as far as any clear ideology of the protestors can be figured out? What's the deal? --Robert Merkel
This sentence is needs editing:
- police use tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper spray, night sticks, and water cannons to repel the protestors, as is common when policing large demonstrations.
Earlier, the article describes 3 distinct groups of demonstrators: law-abiding, frivolous, and law-breaking. Surely the police are aware of this distinction and treat the 3 groups differently.
If there is evidence that police violently disperse law-abiding demonstrators, this evidence should be in the article. Otherwise, we should state clearly that the police violence is directed only at the (deliberate) law-breakers.
Disclaimer: I favor free speech and the right of assembly to protest grievances, and oppose both those who incite riots and those who use excessive force to disperse unruly demonstrations. I hope my bias will not infect my comments or contributions.
- Generally speaking, the police don't differentiate. However, this is a simplification; a common tactic is to herd the protesters together so that they can use the (more socially acceptable) violence against the law-breaking as an excuse to disperse everyone. I'm speaking here from first-hand accounts of protesters and non-protester journalists, as well as knowledge of police tactics gleaned from reading the released COINTELPRO documents. I'll try to dig up some quotes if nobody beats me to it.
- This brings me to a topic I was planning on writing a meta essay on: when is evidence required on wikipedia? It seems to me the general rule is "Evidence is only required when you disagree with the authorities." I think it would be silly if all of us had to give cites for a stub article on monkeys, but I've seen some pretty blatant propaganda that I don't have evidence to dispute, while common wisdom of protesters is apparently (and rightly, if this is to be at all scholarly) not enough to have an article stand up here. DanKeshet
- In case anyone asks, the material I added to the Quebec City segment isn't "common wisdom," but things that either I or my father witnessed personally. - montréalais
You raise a good general question, Dan. I don't think the Wikipedia has an evidence rule per se.
About police vs. protestors, I've been in several demonstrations (sometimes as a counter-demonstrator) and read countless articles about them. I'd like to see some encyclopedia-quality distinctions made about the tactics of both police and demonstrators. I daresay police in various times and places differ in their sensitivity to protestors' rights. On the other hand, sometimes agitators deliberately stir up trouble for propaganda purposes: "See how brutal those police are? We were just minding our own business when..." On the still other hand (hm, do I have 3 hands?), at Kent State on May 5, 1970 (if I recall correctly) National Guardsmen shot and killed four protestors who were doing nothing more violent than throwing stones.
The issue we're discussing now transcends the current article. Maybe we need an article on police tactics or police-civilian relations or riot control or demonstrations and violence. Sometimes the fault is more on the police side, sometimes more on the demonstrators' side. Often it's hard to tell. For now, let's try to avoid blanket statements. Ed Poor
- Excellent idea! We can factor out all the general talk of crowd control and repeat only the specifics on the appropriate pages (like here or Kent State). I like crowd control because police tactics are massively different during demonstrations vs. walking a beat, and because "riot control" only applies to riots, and not non-riot demonstrations. DanKeshet
How about making separate pages about some of the major mobilizations? A page about what happened in Seattle, one about Genoa ... this would make it possible to provide more detailed information about what happened at each place rather then making a big simplification of the whole thing. -- Peter Winnberg, Thursday, March 28, 2002
- I've seperated out Seattle from the rest so if you want to pull that out and write a longer article on it, you can. There are also paragraphs on Quebec City and Genoa that could easily be seperated out. DanKeshet, Friday, March 29, 2002
- One possibility for dividing the material in this article could be anti-globalization movement and anti-globalization protests. The former would be limited to describing the philosophy that underlies, the reasons for and against, and the variety of its sb-groups. The latter would deal with the events where members of the movement have demonstrated, and the police treatment of those demonstrations. "Crowd control" is much broader in a different direction, and covers the application of such measures not only at events like Kent State, but also the Haymarket riots of 1886, and the Winnipeg general strike of 1919. Eclecticology
Talking about mass demonstration and protest tactics is really only interesting in the context of a general analysis of how they affect the strategy of "anti-globalization". Else it might as well be a soccer riot.
For instance the Barcelona riots recently had 250,000 people rioting for a week and no one on either (police or protest) side was seriously injured... so, why are these violents considerably less violent than say soccer riots?
There's an angle to this, which is often ignored, which is the crowd proving it can control itself better than the police can control it... the first step in proving you're a viable political movement, pikcing your confrontations...
Not everyone involved is a Gandhian, trying to get hurt without hitting back, of course, but some are, and that strategy is spreading, and it's maturing the political side of this from the bottom...
... while the critique from the top is that the people who claim to be trustworthy to run the world engage in a "War on Drugs", "War on Terror", etc., which escalate the point of disaster in all cases, at great human cost.
These movements are interlinked pretty intensely - I don't think the article gives justice to that...
Frankly, without understanding the terms consensus process and basis of unity, there's just no chance whatsoever that anyone can understand why the movement is dis/organized the way it is... how it 'learns' by moving around via these mobilizations.
I'd appreciate someone from India expanding on the relation to Shiva, Sen, Roy and their village movements...
and ending or reforming capitalism or just corporate capitalism.
- What's the difference between "capitalism" and "corporate capitalism"? Is the claim that some people are ok with capitalism, as long as the players are individuals and very small organizations, not huge firms?
I think, regardless of whatever respect I may have for Nader, that he is not, first and foremost, an "economic theorist".
- certainly not. --KQ
This article looks like one of 24's contributions. And, as much as I may agree with much of "The Movement"'s ;-) goals, I think this article is far from NPOV. --KQ
- Yup. A fair amount of the article was written by 24. DanKeshet