Anti-Capitalist Road Trip

It seems so long ago, but the movement against global capitalism that featured mass protests against meetings of capital’s biggest criminals and powerbrokers (usually one and the same) had center stage a mere twenty-five years ago. For those who participated, it was an exhilarating time filled with confrontation, conversation, debate and determination represented by the decision of so many to risk prison and injury. It was also a time that saw the forces of law and order show the reality of capitalism—a reality that evoked the viciousness of the Pinkertons and the military in railroad and miner strikes of more than a century ago. Indeed, one of the last major such protests saw police murder Carlo Giuliani in Genoa, Italy. The scenes of police violence against protesters, media and supporters that followed reminded the world just how much the accumulation of wealth by the already wealthy meant to them.

As noted, Giuliani’s murder was the culmination of less than three years of rapidly intensifying protests and even greater attacks on those protests and the protesters organizing and participating in them. Although the bulk of the protests involved nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience, there were also incidents of property destruction and fighting with police and vigilantes. Much of the latter was attributed to a phenomenon that became known as the Black Bloc. In my understanding, most of the streetfighting was defensive on the part of most protesters, with the Black Bloc often being the first to fight back.

There were many among the protesters—from organizers to participants—who disagreed with the tactics of the Black Bloc. Although it seems fair to say that most of those who disagreed were what might best be called militant liberals, several leftist groups and individuals also joined in the criticism. Of course, more mainstream liberals in corporate media and corporate politics added to the chorus, often with a vehemence one would expect from a jackbooted skinhead or a cop like the one-time chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, Bill Gates. Say what you like about the Black Bloc and its tactics, they certainly revealed the brutality behind the veneer of culture and decency that liberal capitalism hides behind.

For those who might not remember or know, the members of the Black Bloc identified as anarchists. Like any political philosophy, the term anarchism is a big umbrella. However, if one were to generalize (always a tricky tightrope to walk), suffice it to say that anarchy rejects the state in all of its forms, rejects the capitalist economy and believes in the self-organization of the workers, peasants, students and intellectuals. Mutual aid is one of its essential elements and profit is something to be eliminated. There are certain anarchists who believe technology to be the curse of humanity, while others argue that the pursuit of profit is that curse and it is that pursuit that has turned technology into the enemy o the earth and of much of humanity. Other anarchists—and I would argue that it is this definition which is truest to historical anarchism—consider themselves to be libertarian socialists or council communists. This element considers the workers and small farmers as the essential class in society and it is through their organization into an anti-capitalist movement of local communes and confederations of those communes that a genuine revolution against capital and its political systems must occur. Historically, the power of anarchists has lain in the industrial strike and the propaganda of the deed.

Back to 1995. This is when the author Tomas Rothaus of Another War Is Possible: Militant Anarchist Experiences in the Antiglobalization Era begins his story. He is in Athens, Greece, struggling to get by, but not overly concerned as he watches street battles between police and anarchists on television. A few pages and a few months later he is in Paris fighting fascists and police; the reader begins their journey, more or less riding shotgun as Rothaus describes city after city and protest after protest. The first several protests are anti-fascist and pro-migrant. He zigs and zags across France. As he lays out his narrative, Rothaus introduces friends and discusses the politics of the movement, the Black Bloc and those who require thousands of police to protect them during their meeting,s intended to maximize their profit no matter what the human cost. It’s an interesting juxtaposition of revolutionary adventure and human greed; youthful insurrection and fascist police; radical humanitarian hope and capitalist brutality in the name of humanity.

The author continues his story with a brief segue discussing the massive protests of late Autumn 1999 in Seattle against the World Trade Organization. Although he didn’t attend those days of rebellion, he rightly pegs them as the announcement of the anti-capitalist globalization movement on the world stage. A little more than a month later in January 2001 he was in the streets of Washington, DC for the inauguration of George W. Bush. A few months later, Rothaus is describing a border crossing from Vermont to Canada on the way to the March 2001 protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) summit in Quebec City north of Montreal. The FTAA, was a plan to eliminate or reduce trade barriers among all countries in the Americas except for Cuba. The idea was to create the largest free trade zone in the world, stretching from Alaska to Patagonia and the primary beneficiaries of the agreement would be US corporations and financial institutions. Rothaus’s somewhat humorous description of the carload of anarchists interaction with border police in rural Vermont reminded me of my unsuccessful attempt to cross that border a few dozen miles west for the same protest. Although we had nothing suspicious in our vehicle—no leaflets, no wire-cutters, no picket signs, nothing—the border police insisted we get out of the car while they took it apart. Still, they found nothing. Then they told us to turn around and go back to where we started, which was a convergence center in Burlington, VT. I asked why and was told by a not-unfriendly agent that some of us were on a list of people not allowed to enter Canada at least until the protests were over. Rothaus describes the protests in detail, detailing moments when his group of affinity groups broke through police lines, when they were joined by locals and when they pissed of the locals for bringing police repression to places the cops had ignored previously.

Rothaus continued his journey all the way to Genoa and what turned out to be the last of the big protests against the summits of the bosses of capitalism. It was only a few weeks later that the events of 9-11 took place in Manhattan, Virginia and Pennsylvania and provided those bosses with the perfect rationale to intensify their transition to fascism—a process that continues with even greater intensity today.

Another War is Possible is history, memoir, social critique, and perhaps even something of a coming-of-age story, both for the author and the movement he participated in then and chronicles in this text. It’s honesty reminds the reader who was around then of the debates and quarrels about tactics, targets, and the protesters themselves, especially the Black Bloc. That same honesty provides the rest of the readers with a reminder that to be part of a social movement against the powerful and the fascists is never static, occasionally joyful, sometimes stressful and always important.

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