MAKING MOVEMENTS AT THE MILLENNIUM:

CYBER-MOBILIZING FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE AGAINST

GLOBAL CAPITALISM, 1999-2000

I. INTRODUCTION

According to the seventeenth-century philosopher John Locke, governments exist via the tacit consent of the governed. The idea of tacit consent means that members of a polity accept both the benefits and obligations of that polity.

The difficulty is, what ought to be looked upon as a tacit consent, and how far it binds, i.e., how far any one shall be looked on to have consented, and thereby submitted to any government, where he has made no expressions of it at all.

And to this I say, that every man, that hath any possessions, or enjoyment, of any part of the dominions of any government, doth thereby give his tacit consent, and is as far forth obliged to obedience to the laws of that government, during such enjoyment, as any one under it; whether this his possession be of land, to him and his heirs for ever, or a lodging only for a week; or whether it be barely travelling freely on the highway; and in effect, it reaches as far as the very being of any one within the territories of that government (Locke, Second Treatise, Section 119).

Thus, tacit consent is subjective acceptance that legitimates government. In the view of those who work for social justice in our own millennial era, government allows those who exploit society to exercise control over it and fail in their obligations. This leads some social justice activists to view government itself as illegitimate, as it has abdicated state power to corporate influence. These activists withdraw their subjective acceptance of a government controlled by those who fail to fulfill the obligations they incur while enriching themselves. As this consciousness grows, activists begin to mobilize. The most visible manifestation of this mobilization is protest.

How might these activists come to conclude that such abdication of power or undue influence on state decisions was unfair? In 1994, social psychologist Tom R. Tyler, then at UC Berkeley, concluded from one of his studies that societal dynamics existed that prevented such radical critique. He found that citizens accept governmental outcomes they viewed as unfair if they considered the procedures under which they were decided to be fair and balanced. A majority of Tyler’s respondents concluded that if fair processes were observed, laws should be followed and government should be considered legitimate. The central question I asked in this paper is: how do activists conclude that outcomes are not fair, refuse to give tacit consent, and move to proactive mobilization and protest?

One concrete expression of the refusal of tactic consent manifested at the protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle, Washington in late November of 1999, which took the world by surprise. Beforehand, Americans knew little or nothing about the WTO, formed in 1995 to lower barriers to international trade. When 50,000 people appeared on the streets of Seattle to disrupt the WTO summit, America began paying attention. The seriousness of the activists’ commitment was tested as tear gas, beatings, and arrests ensued. Then, on April 16, 2000, 30,000 people arrived in Washington, D.C. to disrupt a meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The United States had not seen protests on this scale, with a comparable use of police force, since the 1960s. The discovery that a group was planning a protest of similar scale at the Democratic Party National Convention in Los Angeles, during August of 2000, prompted my research project on this new wave of protest. “D2K” signifies the action planned at the Democratic National Convention held during August 14 to August 18, 2000, in downtown Los Angeles. D2K is a play on the ubiquitous term used to describe the Millennium, Y2K. For a year and a half, the contours of this new activism were probed via participant-observation, interviews, and surveys.

In spirit, the movement echoed observations of Herbert Marcuse in Repressive Tolerance. If we believe that objective truth exists, history is an inconstant struggle toward that truth. One message of this truth, borne out by the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement, taught us that we, as a society, are rewarded with a higher quality of life when more of us achieve equality. As life chances for people of color improve, their cultural and scholarly contributions, invisible earlier in our history, enrich our lives. In this way, social progress and increasing human rights benefit society on a broad level.

The Reification of Capitalism: Imprinting a Social System Based on Private Interest

In recent years, the dominant modes of corporate globalization, including privatization and the lending requirements of the World Bank and the IMF, have produced many unfortunate setbacks to social progress. Capitalist globalization, in weakening national sovereignty by imposed privatization requirements, also lowers the living standard of significant segments of the world population.[1] Until recently, the effects went largely unnoticed here in America except by the victims and their families. Movements against capitalist globalization expanded, however, in other countries. The Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, is one recent example.

To a large extent, the Zapatista uprising is simply the latest in a centuries-long series of violent confrontations between the indigenous peoples of the region and the expanding economic appetites of Mexican elites. [A]s the population grows, wages drop and multinationals gain access to Chiapas, so the PRI's ability to play the middleman has diminished. The final straw for Chiapas was the NAFTA accord, which flooded the Mexican market with cheap American corn, destroying one of the last sources of cash available to poor farmers. On January 1, 1994, the day NAFTA went into effect, the Zapatista Army for National Liberation took the world stage.[2]

The Zapatistas, suffering the effects of the global capitalist enterprise in their homeland, served as a rallying point for a growing international movement against the mythology of the neo-liberal idea that globalization raises the living standards of all who participate. A sociopolitical event with a similar trigger, the Sandinista uprising in El Salvador circa 1980s, proved to be a consciousness-raising event with profound implications for this new movement.

The difficulty of developing a critique of corporate globalization becomes apparent when one considers that capitalism as a self-justifying ideology has become reified in American consciousness. In contrast to the political structures of many developing countries, the idea that prosperous corporations benefit the average person has become a dominant ideological tenet in the United States. Beginning with Supreme Court rulings early in this century, law has endowed corporations with the same rights as natural persons. Corporations also benefit from legal protections that allow them latitude to operate in an amoral manner if they so choose. Corporations are accorded great leeway in pursuing profit by the legal fiction of the corporate body, bearing the rights of natural persons, with additional protections that assure near-immortality while insulating management from criminal acts. As the members of movements such as the Zapatistas have done, dissidents here in the U.S have grown to view the unchecked power of transnational corporations as injurious to the public good. This level of consciousness often leads to the opinion that government policies and laws that favor corporations over other human concerns brings governmental legitimacy into question. Further, dissidents query the role of “the media” as purveyors of the dominant rhetoric rather than neutral observers and reporters of events.

In analyzing the genesis of the reification of capitalism, in Habermas and the Public Sphere, Craig Calhoun described the primary contribution of capitalism to the development of the bourgeois public sphere. During the eighteenth century, private property rights became conflated with the right to privacy (Calhoun 15). The public good in this way becomes the private, subordinate to private property interests. In this manner, people who control means of production have obtained a “natural” right to use this property as they see fit to enrich themselves, and any affiliated stakeholders. “Conceptually, it was crucial that the laws of the market were seen as a natural order.” He maintained that the constitutional states emphasized civil rights that appeared to subjugate the public sphere to the private sphere, so that the public sphere was neutralized in regard to power and domination. (Calhoun 16). This naturalistic image of civil society belied the key role of government in its own creation. In other words, the views of capitalist elites reinforced the rights of property over the rights of human beings to the degree that human rights never gained ideological credibility. Thus, property rights are viewed as “more equal” than human rights, and thus more natural.

If the laws of the market are viewed as natural, it does not seem surprising that Americans on the whole have decided that private markets, mythological and naturalized, are the solutions to all public problems. As a bystander at D2K who opposed the new social movements stated, “Capitalism is just common sense.”[3] The legal system maintains this view with the support of “the media,” who enjoy projecting the image of fairness and balance while working within a system that works against both of these concepts. If capitalism were indeed a beneficial social system this media support of reification could be considered support of the public good. Evidence exists that argues against this idea.

Law’s Role in the Justification and Structure of Capitalist Globalization

Law naturalizes corporate power. Art Wolfe, a legal scholar, described the inequality of power between the corporation and the individual. The corporation is treated as an individual in law when convenient, but the similarity ends there.[4] For example, corporations are essentially immortal. Corporations cannot be jailed for violations of the law. No “Three Strikes” laws apply to corporations. Seldom do executives of corporations serve prison time for even the most heinous crimes. Wolfe uses the term the “capitalist paradigm” to describe “the fundamental beliefs that teachers, scholars, public policy commentators, politicians, and others who speak and write about our American brand of economics and law espouse. It also refers to the training process through which most of us who participate in our economic and legal system gain our place in the economy (Wolfe 31).” For Wolfe and many others, the Lockean tenet of individual self-interest leading to the public good has evolved into the capitalist paradigm.

The limits set by individualism are clear: events that escape the control of individual choice and will cannot coherently be encompassed in moral calculation. But, that means that much, if not most, of the workings of the independent American political economy, through which individuals achieve or are assigned their places and relative power in this society, cannot be understood in terms that make coherent sense (Wolfe 596).

Due to this definition of self-interest as a public good, corporations have evolved without a sense of community. This means that on the broadest level, these institutions that have been legally endowed with more rights and privileges than natural human beings have no civic responsibility. A commitment to the best possible quarterly per-share earnings figures precludes such responsibility. Nevertheless, under pressure from citizens, corporations now attempt to project a friendlier image. For example, a new phenomenon in public relations, greenwashing, aggressively conveys the image that corporations do in fact care about people and our environment.[5]

Michael Moore, the labor activist and pundit, maintains in his book, Downsize This, that nowhere in the American constitution are stockholders given rights. Gabel and Feinman, two legal scholars, disagree, stating that in the Supreme Court decision Lochner v. New York, 198 US 45 (1905) [6] and its progeny, that contract law in relation to the purchase of the labor of human beings was imbedded in our legal structure as a Fourteenth Amendment right. The purchase of labor became a protected right under that ruling.

The general right to make a contract in relation to his business is part of the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, and this includes the right to purchase and sell labor, except as controlled by the State in the legitimate exercise of its police power (Lochner).

Gabel and Feinman assert that this ruling transformed the work of human beings into a commodity. It follows that human beings themselves become commodified. We are “consumers,” “costs of production,” and “dead wood.[7]” The results of this commodification have had powerful consequences for society, contributory to the reification of the interests of private individuals as commensurate with public good. “Contemporary capitalism is a coercive system of relationships… with contract law as a legitimating ideology… The central point to understand is that contract law today constitutes in large part an elaborate attempt to conceal what is going on in the world.”[8]

How is this accomplished by legal structures? Gabel and Feinman argue that contract law in the twentieth century has evolved from its original purpose, the regulation of agreements between individuals, to an instrument that “retains the legitimating features of private agreement while effectuating the regulatory and stabilizing component that is a central principle of the contemporary economy (505).”[9] The regulatory coordination that supports capitalism in the United States, and the continued pressure to lower the social safety net, is exemplified by the lack of enthusiasm in Congress for the Workplace Preservation Act, House Bill HR 987.[10] Susan Hall Fleming, an OSHA spokeswoman, said she knew of no business group that has endorsed the proposed ergonomic standards. But she said that is not surprising. “They prefer no regulations to any regulations at all.” Businesses take a stand that government regulation of any sort impinges on their rights. One of the subjects of this study pointed out that the argument against business regulation might be countered with the example that people are not allowed to set up storefronts to sell cocaine by government law. He also observed that the structure of capital has been unable to survive without government aid and protection.[11] Although outside the scope of this study, an investigation by Time Magazine in 1998 showed the effects of corporate welfare.[12] The study concluded that corporate welfare insures corporate profit while subsidizing job flight.

The rise of this coordinated capital economy is supported by law’s ability to transform the ideals of “freedom and equality” and “freedom of contract” into a new image. This new view, while retaining the legitimating power of the older image, translates into ideological engines that accustom the public to view the goals of corporations as similar to their own. As an example, millions of Americans consider the Dow Jones average[13] an indicator of their own financial well being. Rather, stock market gains benefit few. The top one percent received 42 percent of the gains in the market in 1997.[14] The advantages of broadened stock ownership to the dominant interests in society are touted in a report to Congress from the Joint Economic Committee Study. “[I]t is suggested that broadened stock ownership can erode class conflict, for as capitalism expands, a lot of ‘them’ can become ‘us.’ It [stock ownership] brings us all together as stakeholders-in-common.”[15] The report further notes that this increases self-interest. The cynical observer might note that this increase in self-interest has no substantive benefit to those in lower socioeconomic classes. It takes disposable income to enter the stock market, and a considerable investment in time to develop the skills necessary to make good stock transaction choices. Educated people are far more likely to successfully trade in stocks[16]. This becomes another mechanism to widen the income gap, while providing chimerical hopes of riches to the less fortunate. Thus, stock market investment becomes a tool to increase the hegemonic percolation of the values of elites through the layers of class. This attenuates the interests of people in collective well-being and collective action. It enhances a system where self-interest becomes paramount. If a corporation that one invests in conducts business in an amoral or unethical manner, it is easy for a stockholder with no management connection to claim a lack of knowledge or interest in such amoral or unethical behavior. This mode of thought serves the interests of transnational corporations. They remain free to exploit people and natural resources with no effective legal hindrance as long as they remain profitable.

Corporate disasters that linger in the collective mind of society include the Challenger space shuttle, Bhopal, and the Exxon Valdez, for which no corporate executive served prison time. Many significant but less publicly traumatic acts occur too regularly for the comfort of social justice activists. Although collections of this information have been difficult to obtain in the past, as the Justice Department does not appear to keep statistics on economic crime as it does for street crime, sources have become available on the Internet. The Corporate Predators website documents what they title “the top 100 corporate criminals of the 1990s.” Many corporations respected by Wall Street, and thus by the American public, pay tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in criminal fines yet still continue to violate laws. The Corporate Predators site calls these “recidivist” corporations.[17] Violating the same laws repeatedly, and paying huge fines, must be profitable enough that behaviors are not changed. The legal paradigms that that allows this gross criminality provide a basis to analyze the growing power of transnational corporations in capitalist globalization. As policies that favor privatization of services and goods grow in favor, members of the middle class as well as those members of society whose life chances condemn them to poverty are increasingly in agreement regarding the illegitimacy of government. Much of this growing consciousness has arisen from the massive layoffs and job flight that began to occur in the late 1970s and 1980s (Newman).

The corporate operational mode consists of meetings of boards of directors behind closed doors. In the same manner, the World Trade Organization has administered its charter in a manner that appears undemocratic, via closed sessions and autocratic decisionmaking processes, since its inception in 1995. This undemocratic process has increased the concerns of those who are convinced that the ideology of free-market capitalism dominates governmental policy at all levels. In the background, governmental policy serves to promote corporate interests against those of unions, unorganized workers, and average citizens. Rather than the economics construct of the “invisible hand” regulating supply and demand, anti-corporate activists see an “invisible 800-pound gorilla” controlling supply and manipulating demand. The WTO appears to use its mandate to impose corporate will upon the citizens of nations.

According to Ralph Nader, “the philosophy allegedly behind the globalization agenda is that maximizing global economic deregulation will in itself result in broad economic and social benefits.” The case of China-U.S. relations shows that the real goal of international policy is maximizing short-term profit. When, in 1994, human-rights issues were at stake, China’s most-favored-nation trade status continued. However, in 1995, when property rights were endangered, “McDonald’s lease and Mickey Mouse’s royalties were cause for $1 billion in threatened U.S. trade restrictions against China” (Wallace and Sforza 9). In the view of Nader and important scholars such as Noam Chomsky, the moral stance of the United States in relation to other nations seems uncannily tied to its economic interests. Chomsky wrote in a pamphlet entitled The Umbrella of U.S. Power: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Contradictions of U.S. Policy, that the U.S. government makes a practice of condemning countries who adhere to portions of the Universal Declaration (UD) while eschewing others. He documented, throughout this work, that the U.S. does the same thing, eschewing portions of the UD that do not conform to the individualist ideology that supports a capitalistic globalizing system. The UD condemns slavery and involuntary servitude, as one example. The use of prisoners to perform labor for corporations here in America has resulted in little outcry. As a matter of fact, the United States is allowed to export prison-made goods, while China received sanctions for the same action (Chomsky 48).[18] This situational morality leads observers such as Chomsky to see the government as illegitimate in its equivocal positions on human rights and its emphatic support of corporate demands as exemplified by most of the rulings of the WTO and similar trade organizations.

The Role of the Media in Reification

Despite the media posture of neutrality, all media in the United States is controlled by the elite owners of media corporations. This contrasts to the situation in most other Western countries, wherein some media continues to be operated or supported by the state, such as the BBC in England, which allows for a degree of independence from programming decisions that do not depend on a view to the “bottom line.” Such independence is difficult to maintain in a global corporate media world. The increasingly transnational media supports the naturalistic view of markets, which helps explain the reification of capitalism. As of 1997, nine transnational corporations controlled most major media.[19] In Manufacturing Consent, Herman and Chomsky developed the construct of successive filters that prevent important news from reaching the public. These filters allow the views of the nine owners of major media to shape the news. This allows establishmentarian views to exert extraordinary influence that shape the public understanding and evaluation of events.[20] Following Gramsci, in this way views of the elites percolate through layers of class due to this media concentration, so that narrow ideology assumes hegemonic power. Examples of this media filtering abound, especially in relation to and accelerating with political dissent, beginning with Seattle and continuing through the protest cycle. The effect of media filtering has multi-faceted consequences for protest movements.

Additional media theory may help clarify this issue. “Gatekeeping” describes the function of corporate media in “mediating the world” for our consumption, rather than our critical reflection. W. L. Bennett’s 1988 book News, the Politics of Illusion agrees with Herman and Chomsky that the American mass media “to an important extent, regulate the content of public information and communication in the U.S. system.” [21] News events are “framed” and predigested for the public, rather than presented in the context of a balanced view of the facts that would allow evaluation of the meaning of the news by citizens.

As well as regulating content, news is shaped by situating in selective context. Gregory Bateson coined the term “frame analysis” to identify a method by which the shaping of a news item may be determined. Reporters search for frames to situate a story in an easily-assimilated context, generally conforming to dominant cultural viewpoints. Erving Goffman applied the concept of frame analysis to segments of information he called “strips.” These “strips,” taken out of context, provide rich material for distortion (Bennett). As a reporter applies a frame, an analysis or judgment of a news item occurs. Further judgment occurs when an editor reviews the item.[22] This is important to the reification of capital as well as shaping institutional response to dissent. Media framing, strips, and editorial decisions may heighten tensions and even justify the use of force against citizens engaged in legal protest activities.

The coverage of the protestors in Los Angeles followed a pattern seen in the past. According to Chip Berlet, an author who writes on the politics of the extreme right-wing in America, “countersubversion ‘theory’ ” was developed by opponents of labor in the late nineteenth century. This perspective, used to marginalize dissidents, was fed by a strong current of nativism in late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Corporate elites and state agencies blamed labor militancy on outsiders, using phrases such as, “a few ringleaders conspiring to foment criminal subversive activity and eventually armed revolution.” [23] The countersubversion perspective posited the ringleaders as immigrants, fueling a backlash that resulted in deportations, or worse, for those who actively criticized government. Berlet identified another more recent tactic that may help explain the demonization of citizens who disagree with government policies. He notes that, “Centrist/Extremist theory … sees dissident movements of the left and right as composed of outsiders--politically marginal people who have no connection to the mainstream electoral system or nodes of government or corporate power. The solution prescribed by centrist/extremist theory is to marginalize the dissidents as radicals and dangerous extremists,” who need not be treated seriously. “Law enforcement can then be relied upon to break up [what are depicted as] any criminal conspiracies by subversive radicals that threaten the social order.” Such a viewpoint favors unfettered activity by law enforcement.

In the media coverage of protest in this cycle, activists have sought substantive coverage of the issues central to their mobilization. To their dismay, in a method that works to diffuse the power of dissent, the media has engaged in one of the forms of bias outlined by sociologist Michael Schudson in “The Power of News.” He argues that in order to remain “neutral and detached,” journalists tend to focus on strategy and tactics.[24]

Focusing on the technical enables the journalist to be professional, because he or she can then remain apart from “the conflicts of interest, perspective, and value that are the dangerous stuff of political life.” Political reporters tend to be politics-wonks rather than policy-wonks, absorbed in the “inside baseball” analysis rather than fascinated by the question of how the government should run the country (Schudson 10).

This focus on strategy and tactics appears to hold much power and safety for mainstream journalists. It also appears to serve the interests of corporate media in withholding knowledge from the public that may cause them to sympathize with or affiliate with social movement actors.

The WTO: A Flashpoint for Consciousness-Raising

What processes have led social justice activists to view the WTO as a catalyst for protest? The WTO, in harmonizing trade, enhances capitalist globalization. Globalization of industry operates on the idea that competitive advantage may be gained by locating aspects of product or service production in certain areas. In a global strategy, a firm chooses any nation wherein advantage lies for component fabrication, product assembly, or the conduct of research. For instance, assembly of certain products occurs in Taiwan or Singapore to take advantage of a pool of educated, motivated, but inexpensive labor (Porter 1990:57).[25] Many other advantages accrue to corporations that are able to globalize via direct capital investment in other nation’s industries, thus avoiding import barriers or enhancing access to local natural resources, such as in the mining industry. Concentrating production in one nation where conditions are favorable and exporting components or finished products to other nations, is typical in the aircraft, machinery, materials, or agriculturally related products (Porter 1990: 55-57). Global coordination of economic activities may yield benefits due to allocating subtasks among different locations to allow for specialization, or to take advantage of currency exchange fluctuations. Coordination among marketing units may warn of changes in consumer preference in one area that may presage worldwide changes in consumption patterns. Leverage may be enhanced with local governments by the ability to grow operations in one nation at the expense of others (Porter 1990:58-59.)

The WTO enhances the capability of transnational corporations (TNCs) to achieve the benefits of a globalized economic playing field. The WTO states that its primary goal is “to improve the welfare of the peoples of the member countries.”[26] The means to accomplish this goal? By making certain that trade flows as freely as possible between nations. Its trade rules derive from the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The GATT protocols have existed since the end of the Second World War, and have been revised in periodic negotiations, called “rounds.” The most recent round, the 1986-1994 Uruguay round, resulted in the set of rules administered by the WTO.

The WTO maintains that it rules by consensus, the most democratic form of decisionmaking. The entities who consent, however, are governments. Many scholars and political observers maintain that governments do not represent the interests of all constituents, beginning with Marx and Weber. It is difficult for many people in the U.S. to continue to believe that our government looks out after the interests of the individual. The passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which only shortly preceded the creation of the WTO, was strongly opposed by labor unions and many others in the working class, who foresaw the “giant sucking sound” of more jobs leaving the U.S., to borrow Ross Perot’s famous line. President Bill Clinton bragged about the number of new jobs created in the American economy. A citizen retorted that he knew all about the new jobs, he needed three of them in order to maintain his family. Jobs with higher pay and benefits are increasingly less available to those with a high school education.

Frances Fox Piven maintains that recent trends in globalization represent capitalism operating as usual. However, what is currently taking place “[I]s a class power struggle which has to be understood in power terms, a predatory mobilization by capitalists made possible by working-class weakness and disarray, although justified in economic terms as the result of new market imperatives (Piven and Cloward 1998.)”

Welfare state protections, the main political achievement of the industrial working class, are being whittled back in the interest of labor market "flexibility;" cutbacks in social benefits intensify worker insecurity, smoothing the way for lower wages and less secure conditions of employment. And inequalities are widening, especially in Britain and the United States, where income and wealth inequalities are spiraling to nineteenth-century levels.

To be sure, it still is capitalism. But we think the innovation and development characteristic of capitalism is interacting with shifts in class power to produce convulsive changes not only in patterns of production and exchange, but in patterns of culture and politics (Piven and Cloward 1998.)

The Mission of the WTO

Despite media marginalization and the reification of capital as obstacles to consciousness-raising about the nature of these institutions, something has broken through these systemic safeguards. In particular, the creation and operation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, the international arbiter of trade policy, has provided an opportunity for political mobilization by social justice activists. The World Trade Organization functions much as NAFTA does: removing “protectionist” barriers to “free” trade. From the “whatis” page of WTO website:

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. The goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business.[27]

The site also states that its goal is to help people and break down barriers between peoples and nations by lowering trade barriers.

At the heart of the system — known as the multilateral trading system — are the WTO’s agreements, negotiated and signed by a large majority of the world’s trading nations, and ratified in their parliaments. These agreements are the legal ground-rules for international commerce. Essentially, they are contracts, guaranteeing member countries important trade rights. They also bind governments to keep their trade policies within agreed limits to everybody’s benefit.

The agreements were negotiated and signed by governments. But their purpose is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business. The goal is to improve the welfare of the peoples of the member countries (Emphasis added.)[28]

The Ten Benefits of the WTO

1.The system helps promote peace; 2. Disputes are handled constructively; 3. Rules make life easier for all; 4. Freer trade cuts the costs of living; 5. It provides more choice of products and qualities; 6. Trade raises incomes; 7. Trade stimulates economic growth; 8. The basic principles make life more efficient; 9. Governments are shielded from lobbying; 10. The system encourages good government

The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) portion of the site gives simplistic and vague explanations of the methods and goals of the organization. If the uncritical reader believes in the supremacy of free trade as a cure for the ills of the world, the reader will be satisfied by these explanations. The site also provides pages that answer what it terms:

The Ten Misunderstandings About the WTO

The WTO dictates policy; 2. The WTO is for free trade at any cost; 3. Commercial interests take priority over development …;4. … and over the environment; 5. … and over health and safety; 6. The WTO destroys jobs, worsens poverty; 7. Small countries are powerless in the WTO; 8. The WTO is the tool of powerful lobbies; 9. Weaker countries are forced to join the WTO; 10. The WTO is undemocratic.[29]

This section was added to the site after the Seattle protests and attempts to address the questions that average citizens have brought to the organization since November 1999. The responses to these misunderstandings are similarly unempirical and unsatisfactory. Often, the effects are too difficult for the organization to assess or calculate. For example, in the answer to misunderstanding “#6, The WTO destroys jobs, widens the gap between rich and poor.” The partial response follows.

Not true: The accusation is inaccurate and simplistic. Trade can be a powerful force for creating jobs and reducing poverty. Often it does just that. Sometimes adjustments are necessary to deal with job losses, and here the picture is complicated. In any case, the alternative of protectionism is not the solution. Take a closer look at the details. The relationship between trade and employment is complex.

Nowhere in this section are protections of existing standards to protect labor addressed, let alone improving the wages, benefits, or working conditions of workers in any country. This substantially weakens the claim that the WTO exists to improve the welfare of the peoples of member countries.

Countries can “bargain” to retain certain protections against others, so it is a matter of choice, not pressure, according to the WTO FAQ. The rhetoric at this site casts trade protection as “discrimination.” The WTO also claims to carefully consider trade that hurts the infrastructure of developing countries, and evidences concern over the environment, human health, and job creation. The responses assert the untruthfulness of these misunderstandings but fail to produce definitive answers. Often, figures are not available or difficult to calculate. The record of WTO rulings argues against assurances about its stated mission of helping the people of its member nations.

Emerging Critique of the WTO

As one example of the problems that WTO rulings create for human health, it is useful to examine the case of UNITED STATES STANDARDS FOR REFORMULATED AND CONVENTIONAL GASOLINE (1996). The Environmental Protection Agency, in the Federal Clean Air Act, established a baseline for the cleanliness of gasoline in order to improve air quality using a standard set in 1990. Venezuela and Brazil considered this baseline as protectionist. They sought to have this section of the Clean Air Act invalidated, and were successful in 1997.^[30] Following is the “shrimp” case that gave rise to a powerful symbol at the anti-WTO protests, UNITED STATES - IMPORT PROHIBITION OF CERTAIN SHRIMP AND SHRIMP PRODUCTS.^[31] Countries, including India and Thailand, which did not require their commercial shrimp fishers to install an inexpensive device to halt capture of endangered sea turtles filed a complaint against the U.S. through the WTO.^[32] They were successful in invalidating the U.S. regulations that forbade importation of these shrimp. The WTO maintains on its site that this ruling supports its commitment to the environment. In the response to question four in the “misunderstandings about the WTO” section, the site maintains that, “A ruling on a dispute brought to the WTO (an appeals report in a case about shrimp imports and the protection of sea turtles) has reinforced these principles. WTO members can, should and do take measures to protect endangered species and to protect the environment in other ways, the report says.”[33] The ruling itself states, [“The panel]concludes that the United States measure, while qualifying for provisional justification under Article XX(g), fails to meet the requirements of the chapeau of Article XX, and, therefore, is not justified under Article XX of the GATT 1994.”[34] This single misrepresentation of the WTO’s position represents what fuels critics worldwide.

When the protests occurred, many observers were perplexed by a number of people who wore turtle costumes. These costumes symbolized one of the victims of free trade, the “losers” in UNITED STATES - IMPORT PROHIBITION OF CERTAIN SHRIMP AND SHRIMP PRODUCTS, the sea turtles endangered by the shrimping practices that were the focus of the proceeding. The symbol also gave rise to an important slogan for the movement: “Teamsters and Turtles Together.” The slogan coded the merger of Labor and environmental interests coalesced and created synergy in this new phenomenon. In sum, people oppose the WTO and like organizations due to the emphasis on reducing trade barriers with no substantive consideration for labor, environmental, or health concerns of the populations of participating countries.

Evidence exists that the policies of the WTO set a ceiling on the rules by which nations may trade their products, but no floor. In other words, no minimum standards are set to take care of concerns of the most vulnerable in the lowering of world trade barriers. For an organization that contends that its main goal is to improve the welfare of the people of the trading countries, the lack of concern for health, safety, wage and benefit, and environmental protection baselines appears to be a glaring omission. Activists believe that the WTO and affiliated institutions hasten the “race to the bottom” in two ways. First, rulings of the WTO and its parent organizations, the IMF and the World Bank, allow capital flight without establishing mechanisms to allow people to follow the capital should they be so inclined or able. The crisis in Southeast Asia in the late 1990s exemplifies the problems created by capital flight, as the economies of these Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) collapsed under multiple pressures from free-market ideologues in the US who interfered with the state-supported capitalist system in effect. Millions were banished from the middle class into poverty.[35] Second, due to the ability of companies to easily move production offshore, corporations use the “threat of exit” to chill worker demands for increased pay and benefits, and often act on their threats. The increasing income gap in the United States attests to the serious nature of the changes that our society as a whole suffers. The relentless quest for more efficient profit-earning methods generally results in lower paying jobs with no benefits. This places pressure on public supports systems and weakens the social safety net. To illustrate this point, WTO critics Wallace and Sforza cite additional cases wherein WTO rulings undermine national health, safety, environmental, and labor protections.[36] One example given wide coverage in the popular press involves the continuing European Union Ban on beef treated with hormones. The EU absorbs $115 million dollars in trade sanctions a year to maintain the ban. In order to remove these sanctions, the WTO mandates that a nation must prove that the trade item produces harm. For the EU, absorbing the cost of this ban is not overly burdensome, but for developing nations without the capital to absorb such sanctions, degraded product must be imported and sold. Merely disputing WTO rulings imposes high costs, again with the result that developing nations have no recourse. This thesis will investigate the means by which individuals and citizens’ groups search for empowerment against seemingly intractable reified ideologies and institutions as outlined above. In the face of what many see as the deleterious effects of the growing power of the managers of transnational corporations to affect local personal life choices, people are acting, despite the unique challenges to protest represented by media marginalization and the reification of capitalism.

Research Questions

Three primary research questions presented themselves as the work on the thesis progressed. First, what motivates citizens to mobilize and join a movement against global capitalism today? Second, what links exist between today’s movement and those of the past? Third, how does today’s movement work compared to those of the past? On a concrete level, what causes people to come to conclusions that take them onto the hot August pavement in Los Angeles to face a militarized multi-agency, multi-state and national police state response to legal dissent? [37] ^, [38] In order to assist in gaining insight into these questions, it became important to see what could be learned from the literature on the theories and structures of social movements.

II. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

To comparatively inform this thesis, scholars who have studied the tools and methods of resistance to power will be analyzed. A focus on the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, and the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s provides a rich backdrop for comparison to today’s anti-corporate and anti-capitalist activism. A progression from criticism to changing consciousness led to radicalization, and views of aspects of government as illegitimate. People who found common cause coalesced into groups to act synergistically, and mobilization followed. Groups were beset by problems of funding, organization, and internal strife. Government reacted on several levels.

Social Movement mobilization modelss

Recent scholarly literature regarding social movements has focused on five models of social movements. First, Piven and Cloward posit a pressure model, with a focus on “unmet economic expectations that give rise to grievance and protest.” Second, Useem’s solidarity model looks to the existing “social ties and networks” between movement participants, as well as an extended infrastructure that supports participants. Third, McCarthy and Zald propose a “resource mobilization theory” based on “financial resources and movement organization”: contributions from participants and supporters, both overt and covert. “Activists with strong ties to mass-based indigenous institutions” and support structures from earlier mobilization activities lend strength in their model. They also investigate the additional power that celebrities or other supportive public figures add to a movement. Both internal and external sources of support in their model can lead to an independent movement organization. Fourth, Tarrow proposes a political process theory, critical of resource mobilization theory, which examines “the environment a movement faces and the political opportunity structure it presents.” Fifth, an uncredited new social movements model focuses on “identity as a basis for mobilizing and also to the role of movements in forming and negotiating identities.”[39]

Piven and Cloward’s pressure model has relevance in today’s movement formation. Relative deprivation for whites in particular has grown during the last thirty years as real wages have stagnated, while prices increase. The poor have suffered the most. Further, the mass layoffs that began in the 1970s dramatically lowered the living standards of millions of families here in the United States as well as abroad.[40] The difficulty in building mass resistance to the concentration of wealth lies in the character of modern society.

Piven and Cloward argue that mass defiance, not formal organizations, fueled the movements of the 1930s and 1960s. Mass defiance arises from perceived injustice on a personal level, often spontaneously, in their view. This mass defiance arose in communities where people lived and worked side by side. Modern life has eroded such communities. Few “factory towns” remain in America. Further, Blacks were kept in the South by legislation during the Post-Reconstruction period that forbade them to relocate to the West and North of the United States.[41] Economic or legal restrictions no longer regulate this mode of community formation. Thus we see lessening of the possibility of such movements occurring in the millennial era in developed countries, where people work in smaller groups at differentiated tasks. Communities have deteriorated. People who live next door remain strangers as work hours increase and social lives revolve around individualized forms of entertainment such as television. This means that the virtual communities of like-minded people that are forming on the Internet increase in consciousness-raising power. Nevertheless, Piven’s pressure model does not account for the growth of today’s movement. Discontent over the direction of America’s economy has flared numerous times over the last thirty years, but no movements have grown from that discontent. In Poor People’s Movements, Piven and Cloward discuss the growth and decline of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). Once people began to receive the welfare for which they qualified, they lost interest in the organization. The movement collapsed into a small bureaucracy, ultimately unable to sustain itself. This example shows the weakness of movements not founded upon solidarity of some kind.

As seen above, the structure of modern American society weakens the possibility that Useem’s solidarity model of existing “social ties and networks” between movement participants can function today in America. The same difficulties lie in a wholesale application of resource mobilization theory, as individuals find it more difficult to tap indigenous mass sources of support. This further indicates the importance of mass communication that is not filtered by corporate media to building new social movements.

New social movements theory applied to the evolution of SNCC presents intriguing possibilities for analysis. Identity politics increasingly supplanted a class-based analysis as a more powerful organizing tool in the minds of many SNCC workers. The Black Power slogan, used most dramatically by Stokely Carmichael, seemed more effective in increasing community participation especially among the young. Eventually, insistence on an all Black organization by some, primarily the Atlanta Separatists, created a rupture in SNCC that played a large role in the weakening of the organization (Carson). Despite the power of identity movements in mobilization, research into D2K revealed a different dynamic than existed for SNCC.

Most important to the investigation of D2K is the political opportunity theory. Sidney Tarrow’s book Power in Movement describes this theory, and pertinent ancillary analyses that illuminate both this social movement and the institutional response to the movement. In addition to the environment of the movement, the dynamics of the interplay between movement and target plainly exhibit in the reaction of organizations the activists oppose. Further, increasingly violent forms of state repression are appearing. The means of organizational linkage and internal movement organization exhibit characteristics intrinsic to the political opportunity theory. Tarrow maintains that a cursory look at modern history reveals that conditions of deprivation or societal disorganization alone will not trigger movements. These conditions exist, far predating and outliving movements. Variations exist more on the level of political opportunities or threats that people experience, and the level of restriction on their actions Further, he argues, external opportunities will not result in sustained social movements. “That process requires challengers to employ known repertoires of contention, the frame their messages dynamically, and to access or construct unifying mobilizing structures (Tarrow 71)[42].” Threats alone do not motivate movements. “Backstage behaviors”, or passive aggressiveness such as noted by James Scott, in Weapons of the Weak, or subrosa resentment is just as likely to result unless opportunity for mobilization appears. “It is only when a threat is accompanied by perceived opportunities for action and seen as potentially irreversible if not stopped that challengers will risk what often turns out to be heroic defeat (Tarrow 72.)”

Tyler’s Procedural Fairness Model

Let us now examine the way in which procedural fairness relates to the questions asked in this study. Tom Tyler maintained in Governing Amid Diversity that public judgments about the legitimacy of government are based on the fairness of decisionmaking procedures (Tyler 1994). Tyler’s work revolves around the issue of legitimacy. He is obviously recognizes that in diversity, discontent can arise. Tyler attempts in Governing Amid Diversity to explain why a population as differentiated in class, race, ethnicity, and social values as exists in America can continue to view government as legitimate despite adverse policy outcomes. Tyler concluded that procedural legitimacy in law and policy holds our society together in a broad consensus despite diverse populations. For this society, wherein people have been conditioned by the ideology that results from the capitalist paradigm, Tyler’s argument may be partially correct.

The main difficulty with Tyler’s study lies in the lack of contextualization. The vignettes he employed deal with policy issues that may never directly affect the respondents. First, he asked respondents to consider a hypothetical situation: “Suppose that Congress took up the question of whether the government should give federal aid to hospitals that allow abortions to be performed.”[43] The second vignette asked the respondents to consider: “Suppose that Congress considered a program of federal aid for special training programs for Blacks who need additional training so they can compete for jobs.”[44] I argue that these questions deal with issues remote from the means of support and quality of life for people on a day-to-day basis. This remoteness allows respondents a degree of abstractness in judgment that may not apply should they be asked a question such as: suppose that Congress took up the question of the level of governmental financial support for women’s access to medical care? Or as another example: suppose Congress was considering legislation that would make it more easier for those with limited educational opportunities due to violation of their human rights to receive higher education? Since the purpose of this paper is not to replicate Tyler’s work or refocus it, these questions must wait for others to research. Nevertheless, if the underlying context of the questions were more obvious to the respondents the answers may have been far different from what Tyler obtained through his painstaking research. If decisionmaking processes are procedurally fair, but the decisions are unjust on an economic and social level, people may agree with the outcome far less often. This appears to be the level of analysis at which the participants in protest work today. They examine the underlying constructs that inform policy and legislation, and often find fundamental injustice in not only the outcome, but also the framing of the question.

The Structure and Dynamics of Social Movements

In the 1960s, the SNCC operated on a basis that looked much like the consensus process. A new protest movement arose from the lunch counter-sitins at Greensboro, North Carolina that began on February 1, 1960. Four college freshmen, in bull sessions, came up with a plan to challenge Jim Crow segregation at the local Woolworth’s. This “ignited one of largest of all Afro-American protest movements (Carson 1).” When the organization was small and focused on assisting the growing movement, consensus operated well. As the organization diversified, one group decided to support voter registration drives for Blacks in the Deep South. Another faction continued to support direct action with the Freedom Rides designed to highlight the segregation in public facilities such as bus terminals. Consensus became a more complicated and wearisome method of operation. Meetings dragged on interminably, often without resolution.[45] This flat hierarchical structure The history of consensus and experience with consensus has been a powerful force in shaping today’s movement.

The Faces of Activism: composition of social movementst Leadership and Participation

Women’s Roles in Social Movements

How do movements grow and change in composition and focus? For example, The Civil Rights Movement energized other powerful movements. At a SNCC conference at Waveland, Mississippi, in November 1964, members of SNCC presented papers on issues central to the growth in the organization. Conflict has arisen on many occasions regarding the presence of white organizers in a group established to empower Blacks. Clayborne Carson described these papers as “an initial step toward identifying the central issues of subsequent American social movements (Carson 145).” In the New Left as well as the Civil Rights Movement, women functioned mainly as figureheads or support staff. Generally they lacking opportunity to assume leadership positions, or were trapped within a patriarchal worldview. This was surprising as Ella Baker, a Black woman, designed and implemented the original concept for SNCC. One of most powerful movements of the twentieth century began with a paper presented by Casey Hayden and Mary King. A growing consciousness, fed primarily by the injustices suffered by Blacks, sowed the seeds of the Women’s Liberation Movement. The paper compared the status of women to that of blacks. “ ‘Assumptions of male superiority are as widespread as deep rooted and every much as crippling to the woman as the assumptions of white supremacy are to the Negro (Carson 147).’ ” Although the members of SNCC fought to empower Blacks in a white world, they were unable or unwilling to address the issue of sex discrimination. Male workers “derided the comments of the female staff members by arguing that sexual discrimination was a minor matter when compared with other issues (Carson 148).” The long-term historical repression of women’s rights found a radical voice at Waveland. The continuing struggle has yielded powerful change, and powerful reaction as well. The Women’s Liberation Movement’s effects become apparent in the configuration of this movement today.

The Role of People of Color in Social Movements

SNCC explicitly sought to develop indigenous, autonomous leadership for social change in the communities of the Deep South. Blacks assumed leadership positions in all organizations of the Civil Rights Movement, becoming visible in white culture. Although fraught with conflict, this process developed many people who became icons of Black resistance, including Fannie Lou Hamer. She was the twentieth child of sharecroppers, and grew up without the knowledge that Black people could register and vote. Hamer learned of a voter registration drive through SNCC. During one of her numerous registration attempts, she was jailed and beaten. Hamer was permanently injured by the beating. She became a member of SNCC’s staff in 1963. She “explained that she had become ‘just really tired’ of what she had to endure. ‘ We just got to stand up now as Negroes for ourselves and for our freedom, and if it don’t do me any good, I do know the young people it will do good (Carson 74).’ ” Fannie Lou Hamer serves as a model for today’s activist leader.

Many scholars agree that the raised consciousness resulting from the Women’s Movement and the Civil Rights movement empowered the anti-War movement. Participants in these movements have continued their criticism and activism since those years, with effects apparent in this study. The results of these powerful movements will be analyzed in the context of today’s individual demographics, along with group formation, structure and dynamics.

Institutional Response to Dissent

Wholesale social change requires major upheavals, if we subscribe to Gamson’s theory of social movements, wherein disruption seems more effective than moderation when contesting the policies of authority (Giugni, MacAdam, Tilly 1999)[46] The Civil Rights Movement provides an archetype for action and reaction. After decades of legal struggle on the part of the NAACP, the Supreme Court issued the 1954 landmark ruling Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The struggle had endured on more than just the legal front. Predating Brown, for example, in 1953 the Blacks of Baton Rouge petitioned the city for an ordinance to remove the “whites-only” seating on the buses. The ordinance was passed, but the bus drivers went on strike rather than obey. The Attorney General of the State of Louisiana ruled that the ordinance conflicted with the state’s segregation laws. The Baton Rouge bus boycott, according to Aldon Morris in The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, was the “first evidence that the system of racial segregation could be challenged by mass action.”[47] Brown v. Board, although critical to the continued struggle to end legal segregation, met resistance throughout the nation, and most emphatically in the South. Whites closed schools rather than allow segregation. Protest was met with attack dogs, high-powered fire hoses, beatings, and murder. Known murderers went without punishment. The FBI buried files with evidence against such criminals as Blanton and Cherry, who bombed a church, killing four young girls in 1963. The case at last was successfully prosecuted in 2001.[48] Justice is uncertain, slow, or absent, for challengers to hegemony. The illegal COINTELPRO operation has been condemned repeatedly by authorities since it was discovered

III. Methodology

Data Collection Modes

The Qualitative Method of Data Collection

In order to make this study meaningful to my intended audience of students and the public, I chose a qualitative research paradigm as the basis for design. Qualitative research methodology seeks context and meaning. Qualitative researchers seek to minimize the distance from their subjects to gain a contextual understanding of the phenomenon. In addition, the qualitative researcher “admit[s] the value-laden nature of the study and actively reports his or her biases, as well as the value nature of information gathered from the field (Creswell 6).” The qualitative study methodology has a history that dates back two thousand years and predominated in scientific research until the mid-twentieth century (Law and Society 2 course lecture, 2001). I admit a fondness for handmade and imperfect human process and product. As I also admit a pre-existing identification with the worldview of the D2K organizers based on coursework at the university as well as life experience, the ~~I chose the~~ qualitative method was used almost exclusively throughout this process. All researchers, as human beings, have values and belief systems. Researchers must always disclose the values and belief systems they bring to their research for the results to hold external validity (Law and Society 2 course lecture, 2001). In accordance with this thought, it is important for the reader to know that the author is in sympathy with many of the concepts that motivate movement participants.

Quantitative Data Collection

In order to lend support to the findings gathered during participant-observation and interview data-gathering methods, Likert scales were introduced into the interview. In addition, a survey was developed to address issues similar to those in the interviews. Other questions were added to the survey, in order to comparatively inform this thesis. Questions from the General Social Survey were included in order to compare the results of this study to those of the typical survey respondent in this substantial and credible social data assessment tool. Although these findings are not generalizable due to the nature of the sample, they reveal differences that may be fruitful for future social movement analysts to consider.

This study employs three methods of data gathering. First, it is a deviant case analysis. Case studies explore a single entity or phenomenon, using a number of data collection techniques, over an extended time.[49] To discover meaningful findings for a case study of a phenomenon as complex as D2K, it was necessary to cast a broad net to capture and analyze data in various formats.

To gather initial data by which to develop other modes of study, I engaged first in an ethnographic study of the D2K planning process. The technique of ethnography consists of studying discrete groups in their natural settings by collecting observational data. The researcher must constantly adapt and adjust to the realities encountered while working with the subject group (11). The fluidity of the ethnographic process demands structure, organization and discipline from the researcher. In order to remain in the heart of the action during the demonstrations and learn more about the legal issues involved, I trained to become a legal observer under the aegis of the National Lawyers Guild.

Second, from the information observed with performing the ethnographic component of this study, an interview protocol was formulated for the primary respondents. Alongside the interview protocol, background interviews for respondents who functioned outside of the D2K organizers and participants took place in order to triangulate the data obtained from the primary respondents. These interviews were subject-specific. For example, an attorney was interviewd with the National Lawyers Guild. He oversees the Legal Observers who work on the street during protest actions to help protect protestors’ civil rights and safety.

Operationalizing and Data Collection

In order to develop answers to the three major centers of gravity for this thesis, I relied upon three modes of data collection. Analytic ethnography was used to observe the group structure and dynamics. Second, for a deeper analysis, an in-depth structured interview was devised. Third, a survey protocol was developed to obtain both qualitative and quantitative data.

Ethnography

An analytical ethnography by its nature cannot contain structure that is obvious to the subject. However, the goals of the researcher must be established prior to engaging the research subjects in order to obtain sufficient quality data from which to draw conclusions. This means that the hypothesis posited by the researcher must be developed by means of an underlying database of questions that should be addressed to subjects in an unobtrusive manner. I began observation of my subjects in person during planning meetings that commenced in May 2000, as well as via the Internet, with email communications. I communicated my intention of performing research regarding D2K, and responses were positive. I developed key informants among D2K leadership by volunteering for minor tasks on the media and fundraising committee that I could accomplish via the Internet. This served me well when I was ready to contact these key informants for interviews after the action concluded.

Analysis and comparison of the methods of formation of and leadership methods of coalitions informed the ethnography. The dynamics of coalition formation and conflict have been brilliantly detailed in Clayborne Carson’s In Struggle, the history of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a group that arose as a direct action component of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. This source, as well as ~~Aldon Morris’ “The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement”, and~~ Piven and Cloward’s Poor People’s Movements served as models to lay alongside findings obtained during the course of this study. This enabled the researcher to comparatively inform the study, and to observe the process of coalition building with a structured grounding. For example, in observations of group dynamics, there has been an emphatic emphasis on lack of hierarchy. For example, in one meeting of a campus labor group whose members participated in D2K, the very word “leader” caused moans and a rustle of conversation in the assembly. The group was attempting to implement a division of tasks by creating committees, and no one was willing to create a committee chair position. This parallels the early flat organization of SNCC (Carson 1981).

The people involved in the networks and coalitions coming together for the demonstrations in Los Angeles represent an astonishing variety of social justice issues. The organizers of D2K believe that there is a central cause to the myriad ills of our economic and ideological system: governments that operate to fulfill the needs of corporations at the expense of their citizens. What kinds of people come to these conclusions? How well formed are the conclusions these people come to? Do they conclude that governmental institutions are illegitimate despite fair process, as opposed to Tyler’s respondents? What causes them to modify their traditional leisure pursuits, or in some cases their livelihoods, and join the social justice groups? What then causes them to participate in such events as D2K? These are the kinds of questions to which I seek answers.

From August 8^th through August 17^th I stayed in Los Angeles to conduct a significant portion of the ethnographic study. I reserved a hotel room one-half block from the Democratic Convention site at Staples Center. I collected ethnographic data via field notes in notebooks whenever feasible. I trained as a legal observer under the aegis of The National Lawyers Guild (NLG). The NLG is an organization of progressive lawyers who has provided Legal Observers for social justice activities for decades.[50] The NLG is not neutral in its reasons for training both lawyers and non-lawyers to observe at First Amendment events. They specifically ask trainees to document instances of police violence or illegal arrest. Their services have become crucial to protestors who have been arrested and jailed. The legal observers provide a fleeting sense of security to the participants.

Notes about the general ambience of gatherings, food served, clothing styles, relationships and organizational styles have pertinence to this study. In addition, I conducted informal interviews whenever possible in an attempt to correlate ethnographic data to survey responses. Not all subjects enjoyed the note-taking process, so I was compelled in those cases to record as many responses as possible from memory.

Interview and Survey Protocols

The question base for both interviews and surveys was developed then tested it on sixteen non-participants to assess ease of use and clarity of response. These instruments will collect empirical data with which to support any conclusions reached in the thesis. The interview includes both open-ended and closed-ended questions. In addition, some Likert scale questions were introduced into the interview protocol to develop quantifiable data from the interviewees. The interview was piloted with six people who were participants and non-participants in D2K. The first pilot interview took almost four hours, so protocol was adjusted significantly to streamline the process. Demographic data questions were placed at the end of the survey and interview, as suggested in The Basics of Social Research (Babbie). These easily answered questions helps the respondents to feel as though they are rapidly reaching the end of the process.[51] The interviews were designed to correlate roughly with GSS questions and the questions that Tom Tyler asked in Governing Amid Diversity. The sampling scheme sought responses from members of three or more groups involved with D2K.

In order to develop the question base for the survey, the General Social Survey (GSS) was used, a tool employed by social scientists since 1972. “The mission of the GSS is to make timely, high-quality, scientifically relevant data available to the social science research community. Key features of the GSS are its broad coverage, its use of replication, its cross-national perspective, and its attention to data quality.”^[52]This design improves external reliability and coding procedure. Further, this allows correlation of responses to those of Americans in general, as sampled by the GSS. The GSS is a broad personal-opinion survey conducted almost annually by the National Opinion Research Center. Thousands of social scientists have employed the GSS to write articles, theses, and books, including Earl Babbie in The Basics of Social Research. The questions in the GSS are not posed to all respondents. In addition, some questions are developed in modules to address unique circumstances. This means that some questions have a small sample base for comparison.

The interviews were designed to correlate with the questions that Tom Tyler asked in Governing Amid Diversity. Most interviews were conducted in person. Some critical respondent were unable to arrange time to meet, so the form was revised to send via email or regular mail. Respondents who did not sign a Waiver of Confidentiality form are coded by interest and number. Thus, a member of the “Free Mumia Coalition” organization would be designated MC1 or MC4.

The data was fascinating, but it would have well to heed the words of Creswell when he said that the use of both qualitative and quantitative methods in one study was best suited to well-funded projects with many researchers involved. With the time, money, and personnel constraints of a senior thesis, this data cannot be optimally mined. Thus some of the quantitative data conclusions will be unrefined.

Respondents

The respondents sampled for the thesis will be indicated by symbols when Waiver of Confidentiality was not requested. First on the core group list are the D2K organizers. When not identified by name, the D2K symbol will be employed, along with a number, to identify the source of the response. Second, the “Free Mumia Coalition” was sampled. MC will identify members of this group. This group seeks the freedom of those who are considered political prisoners in the criminal justice system of the United States, such as Leonard Peltier. Their most urgent concern is for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal has been confined on Death Row in a Pennsylvania prison since 1982 for the alleged slaying of a Philadelphia policeman. Abu-Jamal contends that he is not guilty and was framed for the murder to silence his political voice. The award-winning journalist disagreed with the Mayor of Philadelphia on various policies related to the African American community. Specifically, they disagreed on the treatment of members of the group MOVE. Abu-Jamal’s case is due for review once more, and he could possibly win a new trial.

The third group in the primary sampling core is DNC. DNC simply stands for Democratic National Convention. DNC is an “affinity group,” a new phenomenon in protest organization that arose from the consensus method of decisionmaking, which will be described further on. People who are interested in a particular issue or travel together from another location develop affinity groups. Affinity groups exist for a number of reasons. Members agree to serve as a resource in to protect one another on the street, and to serve as a liaison to family members of other group members in case of arrest, injury, or the other problems that beset travelers. Some affinity groups plan non-violent civil disobedience direct actions or other activities, such as street theater. Members of the DNC affinity group also traveled to Seattle for the anti-WTO protests and the a16 protest in Washington, D.C. in April 2000. Two were arrested in Seattle. They return to their homes to describe the actions to members of the community and conduct teachins on the issues surrounding the protests. Fourth, members of labor unions were sampled. Due to the lack of support for D2K from organized labor, it was difficult to find three members of the same affinity group to interview. This group is coded LU. Fifth, members of environmental groups were sampled. As this was not a geographically coherent group, and more oriented toward direct action, it was difficult to locate members of just one organization, as with the labor union participants. This group is identified as ENV. Other interviews were gathered as an opportunity sample. Although the design began as a purposive quota sample, due to the problems noted above, it took on more of the characteristics of a snowball sampling. It is important to note this difference as it renders the interview results, both qualitative and quantitative, far less generalizable. Nevertheless, respondents that represent diversity in age, race, ethnicity and affiliation were sought and the results reflect this diversity.

Pilot Study

The interview was piloted with six people who were both participants and non-participants in D2K. The first pilot interview took almost four hours, so protocol was adjusted significantly to streamline the process. A learning process occurred during the pilot interviews that allowed for compression of questions as well as techniques in guiding interviews for respondents who are extremely interested in sharing their views.

The survey instruments were lengthy as well, twelve pages long. The pilot group consisted of ten student activists who were not affiliated with the D2K action. An initial estimate of twenty to thirty minutes for completion had to be extended to one hour. As that appeared to be unacceptably long, advice was sought from Professor Kathy Kellerman of the Communication Department at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Much of her work has involved survey design and implementation. Her advice was invaluable in helping to condense the questions and improve the attractiveness of the documents.

IV. Mobilization

The Rise of Critique

The Daily News, the second largest paper in the Los Angeles area, ~~often~~ runs to the politically conservative. Nevertheless, the paper seemed to avoid the more inflammatory rhetoric in which the editors of the Los Angeles Times indulged. This article appeared on July 3, 2000. The title, “L.A. demonstrations may spoil Democrats' big show” seems disconnected from the text. This phenomenon often occurred during the D2K study. It appears to be the influence of the editorial function. This article is included because it assesses the character of the millennial movement with acuity.

This new millennium movement has drawn disparate groups together under a single ‘big tent’ in just eight months, drawn by a general concern for what they see [as] social, economic and political injustice.

‘It's a very interesting social movement that while reminiscent of the 1960s, is also very distinct,’ said Margaret Levi, professor of political science at the University of Washington in Seattle, where the movement was born last December during the World Trade Organization conference.

‘It's a movement that while very young is growing, changing and consolidating. The networks are wider; the links stronger and deeper. The protesters now have the capacity to convey their messages in more sophisticated ways.’[53]

One of the most fruitful results of the research pointed to the ~~innumerable~~variety of ~~number~~of paths that dissidents may take to reach the conclusion that government is not legitimate. The results echo the conclusion of the above article, wherein disparate concerns are united under an umbrella that sees the causes as related. Gramsci traced the patterns of a crisis of hegemony. He maintained that:

In every country the process is different, although the content is the same. And the content is the ruling class’s hegemony, which occurs with because the ruling class has failed in some major political undertaking for which it has requested, or forcibly extracted, the consent of the broad masses (war for example), or because huge masses (especially of peasants and petit-bourgeois intellectuals) have passed suddenly from a state of political passivity to a certain activity, and put forward demands which taken together, albeit not organically formulated, add up to a revolution. A ‘crisis of authority’ is spoken of: this is precisely the crisis of hegemony, or general crisis of the state.[54]

This assertion maintains consistency with the findings of this thesis. Although the paths to dissent are many, the results are the same. Gramsci further noted that social classes become detached from their historical parties when the parties are no longer recognized as the expression of their views.[55] When this recognition of detachment occurs, and mobilization follows, what Gramsci described as a “conjunctural moment” follows.[56] This conjunctural moment has arisen, according to movement participants, from an analysis sprung from earlier movements against imperialism and neo-colonialism. Criticism of the WTO and similar trade pacts and organizations appears to be the ignition for an ever-growing cycle of protest. This pattern accounts for one reason for the rise of critique on the part of the political left, and the reason that both the Republican and Democratic Parties were targeted for protest in the summer of 2000.

One of the primary organizers of D2K, Don White, stated this succinctly in the course of several interview sessions. When asked if D2K had been successful, he stated that the action did not achieve one of its most important goals, “We weren’t able to really penetrate the mentality of the average delegate on trade policies of the Democrats, and how they are the same as the Republicans and how they are two branches of the one economic party.” Protestors sense a disconnect from the views of citizens on the part of these organizations. This sense is fueled by both parties’ support of NAFTA, the WTO, and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA.) FTAA, currently under negotiation with the thirty-four countries of South and North America, seeks to expand NAFTA to the entirety of both continents, with the glaring exception of Cuba.

How do people sense injustice, begin critique that leads to consciousness-raising, then mobilization into social protest movements? The rising expectations model used by many social movement theorists, especially Piven and Cloward, fits the data gathered. From 1968 until 1992, with the exception of Jimmy Carter’s weak Democratic presidency (1976-80), that office has been held by Republicans. Upon the election of Bill Clinton, the Democratic Presidential nominee, in 1992, the hopes of the Left for positive social change rose[57]. At the beginning, Clinton took several bold steps that heartened progressives. He sought to overturn the restrictions against gays in the military, lifted the “global gag rule” that banned women’s reproductive health clinics abroad from discussing abortion that received U.S. funds, and announced that a priority of the Clinton administration would be the development of a national health insurance system. With this encouragement, progressives may have been subject to a phenomena termed “rising expectations.” When rising expectations are not met, discontent soon follows. “The Democrats' own traditional constituencies, having spent two years watching campaign promises drop like timber in an Amazon rain forest, feel impotent and ignored, and lack the enthusiasm needed to fuel a successful election campaign.”[58]

This model gains credibility via studies conducted by many scholars, including Piven and Cloward in Poor People’s Movements. In writing about the rise of protest during the Depression, they note, “[t]he inauguration of a president who promised to look to the forgotten man and the passage of legislation which promised to protect the forgotten industrial worker that gave the discontented an élan, a righteousness, that they had not had before. The impact on workers was electrifying.”[59] Workers then transformed felt grievances into public grievances. Requests to form and join unions skyrocketed. As these unions suffered from elitism and fossilized, hierarchical organization, the unionization of workers suffered. In addition, manufacturers resisted unionization despite the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) that gave them the right to limit production and fix prices. NIRA also gave workers codes governing wages and hours, and the right to bargain collectively. Union membership sank to another historic low by 1935. Nevertheless, worker militancy was spreading. In 1934, a million and a half workers were involved in strikes.

In comparison, the election of Bill Clinton, even in less dire times, must have looked like a promise of compassion and progress in government to those who are concerned about social justice. The actions of the early Clinton administration were soon offset by the implementation of NAFTA. Those who watched television will remember the 1991 Presidential debates between Ross Perot, Bill Clinton, and George H.W. Bush. Perot said that the passage of NAFTA would create a “giant sucking sound” as American jobs moved to Mexico. Although mainstream analysts said that the alleged sucking never materialized,[60] some studies indicate otherwise.[61],[62],[63] Further, the promised boon to the Mexican people has never materialized.[64] Some have argued that a Republican President could have never gained the support needed in Congress to assure passage of NAFTA.

The same argument is applied to several regressive pieces of legislation passed under the Clinton watch. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Effective Death Penalty Act, the 1996 Federal Welfare Reform Act represent some of the most egregiously anti-human legislation passed in recent years. As Jettie Townsend, an African-American male, 40 years old said:

More people were exasperated than at the beginning of the decade, because it was becoming increasingly obvious that if we did not intervene, no one else would in our behalf. Also, with an increased awareness of the impending catastrophes of global warming, and environmental collapse in general more people became willing to express their displeasure and feelings of futility by banding together. Seattle was a way to utilize their collective voices to send a signal to corporate headquarters that not everyone was happy. It was a method whereby people could release pent up anxieties towards the ruling powers of the world for being subjected to a barrage of unsolicited toxins, deprivations and an impending nuclear holocaust.

Another respondent, when asked what he thought motivated the movement now, stated that the protests were caused by, “Growing fear as well as concern for greater corporate control of resources and diminishing self-government by the people. The expanding corporate rule legitimized by their own laws and (in)justice system (MC4).”

Mobilizing Disparate Social Groups into a Movement

One distinctive feature of this movement is the canopy it provides for diverse groups. It explicitly intends to do so. It brings in labor, anti-sweatshop, immigration reform, and environmental groups, to name just a few. Many of these bring constituencies beyond their traditional membership base. For example, the environmental movement brings in not just “tree-huggers” but white middle class protestors against environmental racism.

An analysis by Robert Bullard helps explain this new synthesis. Dumping in Dixie studied the reasons that African-Americans failed to become involved in the early environmentalist movement. Bullard asserts that poor and black populations viewed the movement as elitist, a disguise for oppression (Bullard 9). Furthermore, the early environmentalists used organizing techniques unfamiliar to African-Americans who worked in the Civil Rights Movement. These techniques, based on a grassroots activism that focused on social justice, seem better suited to ground level consciousness-raising than appeals to save whales or trees. The methods of the Civil Rights Movement, the main significant effective empowering activity for individual Black citizens in this century, may have seemed the only authentic means of creating change in the system to those suffering from the twin plagues of environmental injustice and corporate “threats of exit.” Bullard uses the term environmental elitism, and groups it into three categories:

(1) Compositional elitism implies that environmentalists come from the privileged class strata.

(2) Ideological elitism implies that environmental reforms are a subterfuge for distributing the benefits to environmentalist and costs to non-environmentalists.

(3) Impact elitism implies that environmental reforms have regressive distributional impacts. (Bullard 9)

Newer emerging grassroots environmental groups, on the other hand, attract those who view themselves at the low or “wrong” end of the class and hierarchical spectrum. Such environmental justice groups often focus on area-specific or single-issue problems. As an example, community activists Bullard states that, “these groups appeal to some black community residents, especially those who have been active in other confrontational protest activities” (Bullard 12). In this way, local concerns begin to link to global concerns in the minds of participants

What does this mean if we want to analyze the growing coalition that focuses on the

ills that multinational corporations, and by extension, capitalism, bring to citizens who are not part of the economic and social power structure? From the labor actions of the late 1800s, unrest has manifested in our society by demonstrations and other forms of civil disobedience. The structure provided by the Civil Rights Movement became the pattern for protest of numerous policies and actions of the Military-Industrial Complex, or the Establishment, during the 1960s and 1970s. The anti-nuclear groups and The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) patterned themselves after the Civil Rights Movement. These movements did not seem to draw from their membership from historically disadvantaged groups, despite their grounding in the strategy and tactics of the Civil Rights Movement. The integration of these groups with seemingly disparate identities and aims becomes an important issue for this new movement.

Recently, activism around issues related to the hegemony of corporate ideology seems to be on the rise. Even older groups, such as CISPES, have gained new life in this movement as part of the anti-sweatshop movement.[65] Organizations that served as halfway houses for social justice, such as the American Friends Service Organization, still operate in that function. To what may we attribute this growth?

To resituate Bullard’s contention, mainstream or conventional social movement organizations have been swayed by the capitalist ideology that percolates through society to accept a narrow view that environmental justice action will weaken or destroy local employment opportunities for their constituencies. It may be that a larger view has invigorated local analysis, and that more working-class and people in lower socioeconomic classes are beginning to see a connection between the local and global exploitation of workers and our environment. Individual or local interests are affected by the growing consolidation of corporations as jobs dwindle. Perhaps people see a glimpse of their own futures when contemplating the gross exploitation of labor in the global South.

The question has become, for dissidents: is the efficiency of capital indeed a yardstick by which to measure the needs of human beings? Many base their worldview on the Marxist concept that law is the superstructure by which capital gains legitimacy as a social ordering mechanism. Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, built on Marx’s theory of superstructure, holds that the beliefs of the elite percolate through society. This theory may explain why Tyler was able to develop the data that confirm the efficacy of fair procedural justice as a device to retain societal consensus. In viewing the increase of social justice activity, it seems that the old saw “What’s good for GM is good for America” may be losing its hold over the electorate. Perceptions of fairness in procedure may be giving way to perceptions that the substantive results do not benefit the public as a whole, and work only to the benefit of social and economic elites.[66]

To illustrate some of the ways in which people react to perceived unfairness or reject societal consensus, it is useful to examine a recent study. In Weapons of the Weak, James Scott, a Professor of Political Science at Yale University, assumed the mantle of the cultural anthropologist to observe the reaction to power politics among the peasants of the Malay Peninsula. These peasants experienced degradation in their way of life due to mechanization of rice cultivation and harvest (The Green Revolution.) Scott inferred that daily incremental forms of resistance may have stronger long-term effects for the benefit of the common person than sudden revolution. He also maintained that revolution may develop, not from forces outside, but through an accumulation of these minor rebellions. Such resistance action included a gate on the village road that excluded only tall vehicles, such as trucks bound for the rice paddies; work slowdowns, and social sanctions on landlords who failed to provide loans or rent relief during poor harvests.

Multiplied many thousandfold, such petty acts of peasants may in the end make an utter shambles of the policies dreamed up by their would-be superiors in the capital. The state may respond in a variety of ways. Policies may be recast in line with more realistic expectations. They may be retained but reinforced with positive incentives aimed at encouraging voluntary compliance. And, of course, the state may choose to employ more coercion (Scott 1985: 35). [67]

Scott discussed two divergent interpretations of acquiescence to rule of elites. First, the view that the exploited group, due to hegemonic religious or social ideology, accepted its stratified position as necessary to proper societal function. This assumes an acceptance, and perhaps active promotion, of the existing social order. Marxists name this phenomenon “mystification” or “false consciousness.” The assumption is that elites dominate the physical means of production and the symbolic means of production as well. A passage from Scott summarizes the theory.

[T]his symbolic hegemony allows them to control the very standards by which their rule is evaluated. As Gramsci argued, elites control the ‘ideological sectors’ of society—culture, religion, education, and the media—and can thereby engineer consent for their rule. [T]hey build a symbolic climate that prevents subordinate classes from thinking their way free. For Gramsci, the proletariat is more enslaved at the level of ideas than at the level of behavior. (Scott 1985: 39.)

Scott’s alternate interpretation maintained that acquiescence may be obtained by relationships of force, and that peace held due to remembered or anticipated repression. The strategies that our local and national governments employ to quell dissent begin to look much like this.[68] Jonathan Barker, a professor of politics and development, in his book Street Level Democracy, further discusses theoretical bases of class analysis based on the thought of Max Weber and Antonio Gramsci. He analyzes the power of the capitalist paradigm, to borrow Wolfe’s concept, and the ways in which awareness and action regarding injustice attenuates at an individual level. The power that concerted action by marginalized persons might bring to the political arena is diluted by ties of kinship, organization, and cultural attachment, thus undermining the Marxian forecast of cataclysmic revolution.

Barker maintains in his argument groups at the high end of the hierarchy unite more completely through “corporate networking, government assistance, and the conviviality of world cities (Barker 17).” From this view, Barker develops the concept of scale mismatch. Workers cannot obtain the power under current legal and cultural structures to bargain on the same level as giant corporations. Transnational firms contract with production facilities in many countries. The actions of workers at one facility generally fail to affect workers at other facilities, unless the owner is able to pit one group of workers against another (Barker 18). For example, in the United States, the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1948 banned sympathy strikes. [69] Public awareness of the concept of scale mismatch has grown with the continued pressures of layoffs and mergers upon the higher paid positions in companies all over the United States. Why and how does the capitalist paradigm reinforce harmful behaviors, and why do we permit it to continue? Why is profit a modern secular deity? These are the questions activists seem to be asking now.

Frances Fox Piven argued in Eras of Power that late capitalism has engendered just one of many shifts in the power relations between workers and capitalists. Although fully cognizant of the different nature of the struggles that workers face now with a more mobile capital structure that effectively uses the threat of exit or exit itself to restrict labor costs, she and Richard Cloward see a structural sameness. “[M]uch of this is not really new in any case, that international integration characterized earlier periods of capitalist development, particularly the years before the First World War “ (Piven1, 2). Thus, although we see epoch-making changes in these relations, these changes do not result from any new phenomena in the nature of capital. Others argue that we now see a newer and more rapacious form of capitalism.

In reviewing the theories of Jurgen Habermas, Richard Held’s excellent analysis of the thought of the Frankfurt School of Social Science served well. Held states that Habermas argued, against Piven’s view, that we now see more pernicious strategies in capitalist globalization. These strategies remain obscure to many citizens because of the ideology that our society has developed to support an unjust economic system. Habermas seated ideology as a form of distorted communication used to establish consensus through coercion or similar kinds of compulsion. As this distorted communication grows on a global basis, Held developed a description of ideology as “ those belief systems which can maintain their legitimacy despite the fact that they could not be validated if subjected to rational discourse (quoting Trent Shroyer) (Held 257).” Habermas asserted that we are developing a growing capacity to “master theoretical and practical discourse [a]bout statements that make problematic truth claims and discourse about the rightness or correctness of norms (Held 257).” In terms of today’s activists that certainly seems true. Some respondents spoke to me of Gramsci, Marx, Goldman and Weber in the course of interviews. In an earlier stage of development of this thesis, it seemed important to probe respondent’s family history of education to see if the growing democratization of higher education at the end of World War II held significance for the increasing communicative capacity of activists. In order to answer the main questions more fully, time forced the abandonment of this line of questioning. Nevertheless, a hint of the power of higher education emerged during the course of the study.

Here I wish to analyze the umbrella organization for the August 2000 protests, referred to as D2K, in relation to respected works on the structure and nature of social movement groups and organizations. Further, I intend to show how the Internet may be a tool that aids in resolution of some of the problems encountered by earlier groups.

Tarrow, in Power in Movement, outlines the evolution of social movement theory.

According to Marx, people will “engage in collective action when the working class is in fully developed contradiction with its antagonists. However, as capitalism developed, divisions among workers and institutional mechanisms integrated them into capitalist society.” Lenin expanded upon Marxian theory to “impose an intellectual vanguard on an unsophisticated working class.”

Gramsci accepted the need for a vanguard but added two further concepts: “first, a fundamental task of the party was to create a historic bloc of forces around the working class: second, this could only occur if a cadre of ‘organic intellectuals’ developed from within the working class to complement the ‘traditional’ intellectuals in the party. Gramsci recognized the need for a cultural foundation to build consensus around a party’s goals.”[70]

These features of collective action—the translation of a movement’s mobilization potential into action through organization, consensus mobilization and political opportunity structure—form the skeleton of contemporary social movement theory. But in place of Lenin’s centralized party, we now recognize the importance of looser mobilizing structures; instead of Gramsci’s collective intellectual, we focus on broader, and less controllable cultural frames; and for the tactical political opportunism that both theorists favored, we work from a more structural theory of political opportunities. But first, a newer strand of collective action theory must be introduced and assimilated (Tarrow 17).

In more recent movement theory, developed during and after the revitalization during the 1960s, social movements fail when they rely upon internal resources, as did Gramsci’s involvement with Italian social change actors. His movement failed and he died in prison. External resources—“opportunities, conventions, understandings and social networks…coordinate and sustain collective action. Together, opportunities, repertoires, networks, and frames are the materials for the construction of movement. Let us begin with the structure of political opportunity.[71]” The anti-corporate globalization movement, crystallized in the anti-WTO protests and their progeny, represents political opportunity on a scale unseen before. The respondents sampled for the thesis will be indicated by symbols when Waiver of Confidentiality was not requested. First on the core group list are the D2K organizers. When not identified by name, the D2K symbol will be employed, along with a number, to identify the source of the response. Second, the “Free Mumia Coalition” was sampled. MC will identify members of this group. This group seeks the freedom of those who are considered political prisoners in the criminal justice system of the United States, such as Leonard Peltier. Their most urgent concern is for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal has been confined on Death Row in a Pennsylvania prison since 1982 for the alleged slaying of a Philadelphia policeman. Abu-Jamal contends that he is not guilty and was framed for the murder to silence his political voice. The award-winning journalist disagreed with the Mayor of Philadelphia on various policies related to the African American community. Specifically, they disagreed on the treatment of members of the group MOVE. Abu-Jamal’s case is due for review once more, and he could possibly win a new trial.

The third group in the primary sampling core is DNC. DNC simply stands for Democratic National Convention. DNC is an “affinity group,” a new phenomenon in protest organization that arose from the consensus method of decisionmaking, which will be described further on. People who are interested in a particular issue or travel together from another location develop affinity groups. Affinity groups exist for a number of reasons. Members agree to serve as a resource in to protect one another on the street, and to serve as a liaison to family members of other group members in case of arrest, injury, or the other problems that beset travelers. Some affinity groups plan non-violent civil disobedience direct actions or other activities, such as street theater. Members of the DNC affinity group also traveled to Seattle for the anti-WTO protests and the a16 protest in Washington, D.C. in April 2000. Two were arrested in Seattle. They return to their homes to describe the actions to members of the community and conduct teachins on the issues surrounding the protests. Fourth, members of labor unions were sampled. Due to the lack of support for D2K from organized labor, it was difficult to find three members of the same affinity group to interview. The AFL-CIO delayed its decision to support Al Gore as their preferred Presidential candidate until near convention time, but due to this decision it would have seemed in bad form to monetarily support protest against their chosen candidate. Many members of organized labor participated. However, the union hierarchy did not support group participation. The only group that appeared with support from union officials was the Service Employees International Union (S.E.I.U.), an AFL-CIO affiliate. Their action was approved in advance by the Democratic National Convention committee. The fifth core group consists of members of Increase the Peace, an environmentally oriented group that seeks to tie environmental concerns to social justice concerns. One member of the environmental group is the main organizer in the Santa Barbara area for EarthFirst!, an environmental direct action organization. During the course of the interview, when asked about the activities of the other members, he acknowledged, “When you operate a direct action group, it is hard to hold it together when no actions are planned for the near future (ENV3).”

Consciousness Raising

Numerous sociopolitical occurrences lend themselves to consciousness-raising, respondents report. During the last twenty years in particular, massive downsizing, neo-conservatism, the growth in the prison population fueled by the “war on drugs,” destruction of affirmative action, the widening income gap, the continued concentration of businesses in all industries, the vast amount of money funneled thereby by narrow business interests to legislators, weakening support for our environment, the continued coarsening of popular culture, the rise of the Religious Right, attacks on women’s bodily autonomy, and the renewal of the “Star Wars” missiles in space program represent grave societal problems to the progressive population, and my respondents in particular. What is different about the millennial protest cycle? The root causes of all these problems are being tied to the profit motive, for most, after a long period of reflective analysis. It appears that most believe that the particular issues they are most concerned with result from the perception of unbridled greed of the economic structure under which we operate.

This perception becomes clear when reviewing the respondents’ answers to several of the interview questions. When asked, “What there a single triggering event, or did your insights into the political system change over time?” the participants responded as below.

MC3: The development of my political ideology occurred slowly over time, beginning with an awareness that something wasn’t right in society but lacking the political analysis/critical pedagogy/ideology to understand what was the cause of social problems and how we might go about struggling for liberation.

LU1: During the Vietnam War, there was an ideological split in my family. My father was a Major in the Marine Corps. My brother joined the Marines and went to Vietnam, where he was wounded. My draft number was coming up, and I knew I did not want to go and get injured or die for no reason. I investigated the causes of the war and the reasons for American involvement. That was when I began to believe that there was something wrong with the system. I was still a redneck cracker though. When I came to California, I made friends with some Chicanos at junior college, a new experience for me. My analysis deepened when I started talking with some lefties who were taking history courses with me at Cal State. Nothing I have learned since has caused me to retreat from the positions I have taken against capitalism and imperialism.

MC4: Getting politicized for me has been a long process that bloomed in college taking Ethnic Studies courses and participating in collective organizations like GW books. But I believe that the seed of social justice and sense of fairness that I have embraced ever more started a long time ago from my parents and relatives who are practicing Catholics.

LU3: I had to move to Cabrini Green (the notorious Chicago housing “project”) when I was a teenager. When I was young, I thought racism caused poverty, and some whites were accidentally caught. I knew I could escape the projects because I was white. When I was in high school, the Cuban missile crisis (1962) occurred. It struck me then that the United States was willing to start a war just to keep other countries from doing what we were doing. I went to the library and started reading then. I read Kapital. I understood it poorly but understood that money was at the base of the analysis. I then believed that something was seriously wrong with American society.

Jettie Townsend (MC): I was raised in a predominantly white city and neighborhood, a so-called Christian neighborhood. During my primary years, I attended a parochial school with many insensitive teachers, all of who were bigoted, white, and male. I felt and learned of the reality of racism very early. Their redemption was granted through the efforts of a few female teachers, all of who were white, yet kind, gentle and compassionate. I owe much of my salvation to those dedicated ladies.

Don White, D2K organizer: My father was a union organizer for the International Typographical Union (ITU) and a New Deal Democrat. He disliked Sen. McCarthy a lot and I began to root for witnesses before the House Un-American Activities Committee and grew to dislike Sen. McCarthy and what he stood for. I knew we were liberals and that Sen. McCarthy was "the enemy," not because my parents were in the party but because it was "the face of fascism" to bring people before government agencies and inquire about their political beliefs.

The events that triggered raising consciousness for these people either affected them directly, or had the potential to affect them. To emphasize an earlier contention, Tyler’s questions were not contextualized. That is, they did not relate to citizens’ daily concerns. The people who participated in the interview process had been affected either by their education, or personal witness to injustice, or both. This means that they had contact with concepts or events that changed their perception of the legitimacy of one or more government policies. Exposure to further injustices leads to a broader analysis of the government under which we live. As respondent DNC1 stated, “Only if you close your eyes REALLY REALLY TIGHT can you exist here without understanding the injustice that arises when you compare ideology to daily social and economic processes.”

For younger activists, the hegemonic percolation of the dominant ideology seems easier to escape. Global Exchange, an organization founded by Medea Benjamin and Kevin Danaher ten years ago, began working on the Nike sweatshop problem among other social justice issues.[72] A whole generation of young people now thinks about what kind of sports shoes they buy. Work by two scholars fed a movement on college campuses that had a profound impact at Seattle and A16. Richard Appelbaum, a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Edna Bonacich, a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside, collaborated on a study of the garment industry. This book, Behind the Label, made college students nationwide aware that the campus decals on their sweatshirts were embroidered by people who worked in an exploitative environment. Moreover, the sweatshops, horrific as they are, existed not in some land far away, but here in the United States. Los Angeles, the manufacturing center of the nation, is home to the garment industry, and this industry employs thousands of people via contractors who provide unstable jobs with substandard wages and dreadful working conditions. In 1998, the number of enumerated workers in the garment industry in Los Angeles numbered 122,500 (Appelbaum and Bonacich 16).[73] Designers and manufacturers use contractors to increase profitability in a volatile industry. The use of contractors, moreover, allows those at the top of the industry to disclaim responsibility for the working conditions of the laborers who produce the good. The authors argue that the volatility is in part due to the manufacturers themselves creating new trends in order to sell more clothing. This represents just one of the vicious circles created in this industry. The authors draw a well-documented portrait of an industry that is “exploitative at its core (Appelbaum and Bonacich 22).” It takes just a small step to generalize from college wear to women’s wear, to T-shirts sewn for the GAP, a corporation known to pay as little as 11 cents an hour to workers in Siberia to produce the clothing it sells to the relatively affluent consumer here in the United States. United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), founded in response to the outrage of those dreadful institutions, has established methods for Universities to encourage suppliers to adhere to Codes of Conduct. Attendees at A16 spoke of the dynamic workshops presented by USAS at a labor education meeting during the protest.[74]

Bonacich, in an interview, expressed the view that revolution will come. The means, and the method are not known. However, she fully supports the need for gradual change that may help save lives and enrich lives now. That is why her work in “Behind the Label” holds so much importance in her life. She holds the view that academics should also be activists, leaving the ivory tower to make beneficial social change in the real world.[75]

This table shows the spectrum of political views of a sample taken for the GSS in 1996, in comparison to those of the survey respondents for this study.

Figure 1--Political Views of Survey Respondents

64A. We hear a lot of talk these days about liberals and conservatives. I'm going to show you a seven-point scale on which the political views that people might hold are arranged from extremely liberal--point 1--to extremely conservative-- point 7. Where would you place yourself on this scale?

POLVIEWS	GSS results			Study Sample
	1996			2000-2001
64A.*				MC		ENV		DNC
Liberal	361	11.28%		7	63.64%	4	44.44%	6	60.00%
Somewhat liberal	334	10.44%	21.72%	2	18.18%	4	44.44%	4	40.00%
Middle of the road	1045	32.66%		2	18.18%	1	11.11%	0	0.00%
Somewhat conservative	451	14.09%
Conservative	551	17.22%	31.31%
TOTAL	3200	100.00%		11	100.00%	9	100%	10	100%
Total of Study Sample
Liberal				17	57%
Somewhat Liberal				10	33%
Middle of the Road				3	10%
KEY: MC=Free Mumia Coalition DNC=the DNC affinity group ENV=Environmental group members

*Original GSS question used a 7 point scale. It was collapsed to 5 points for the survey. No answer and cannot choose responses were excluded for calculation purposes.

Column 1-- Extremely Liberal and Liberal Collapsed, Extremely Conservative and Conservative collapsed from GSS question

Column 2 --- Liberal, Somewhat Liberal collapsed, Somewhat Conservative and Conservative Collapsed

Only 21.72% of the GSS sample considers themselves liberal or somewhat liberal. In comparison to the GSS sample, 90% of the study survey respondents call themselves liberal or somewhat liberal. This figure alone indicates an extreme deviation from the GSS norm. This shows a remarkable degree of distance from the views of the norm, and explains part of the reason that this project is considered a deviant case study. The Free Mumia Coalition (MC) exhibits the strongest liberal trend, and also the broadest political spectrum of the group. Its focus on the illegitimacy of the criminal justice system may explain both the liberal trend and the broadness of the spread in comparison to the Environmental group (ENV) and the affinity group (DNC). The ENV group trends toward a more liberal view, perhaps reflecting their understanding of the justice system overall when they view the way laws are applied to corporations, but they are evenly split between liberal and somewhat liberal. The DNC group exhibits a 60% liberal/40% somewhat liberal split. Since the foci of this group is mixed no analysis makes sense. Affinity groups do not necessarily share an issue focus, and in this case the affinity group was geographically based. This seems to leads to a diversity of primary issue consideration in the group. Nevertheless, when an affinity group assembles for a specific action, the support mechanisms that the group is intended to provide remain in place.

V. MEDIA’S CHANGING ROLE IN TODAY’S mOVEMENTS Mobilization

The picture that emerges from the participant-observations, surveys, and interviews is a view of people who perceive the government and the media as illegitimate. In light of Tyler’s findings, one might expect to find that dissidents may consider procedure legitimate, while disagreeing with the legitimacy of outcome. Surprisingly, I found insignificant differences in the respondents’ views of procedure as opposed to outcomes. It appears that they view the processes as illegitimate as well. Nevertheless, degrees of belief in illegitimacy exist among the analyzed groups. Without access to Tyler’s raw data, it is impossible to lay the analysis of the respondents’ Likert scales alongside the earlier data. Following is an analysis of the questions in the interview that were presented on a Likert scale, with the mean answer for each question, distributed by groups of respondents.

The Role of the New Media in Today’s Movement

As in other societal structures, dissent and protest movements rely upon tradition. Tried-and-true systems retain their utility, yet human beings constantly invent new methods and technology to improve these systems. Cheap newspapers helped spread word of dissent during the nineteenth century. Augmenting that century’s strategies—petitions, marches, and conferences; the factory occupation, or “sit-down strike” became a popular and effective tool of labor during the management repression of the Depression. Telephones helped workers and dissidents retain summit-base communications inexpensively. Then, mimeograph machines aided the second wave of management-labor disputes that occurred after the end of World War II, as large numbers of flyers and other paper communiqués could be quickly printed and distributed.

The Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-War Movement during the 1960’s derived great benefit from television news. Citizens now could see the fire hoses and dogs unleashed upon the African-American population in the South with their own eyes and make their own judgment about the legitimacy of segregation. Footage from Vietnam brought that war into the living rooms of Americans, helping to change the sentiments of a nation from “hawkish” to “dovish.” Still, news remained filtered through the eyes of commercial media.

Now, over half of America has access to a home computer, with a high percentage of those machines connected to the Internet. Many social justice activists use commercial media now only as an indicator that “something is rotten” somewhere, and seek their own sources of news through independent or “alternative” media. Over 300 progressive online magazines (‘ezines) now exist in the English language, [76] and thousands of websites worldwide report on events occurring on a daily basis. At the anti-WTO protest in Seattle at the end of November 1999, a new form of journalism emerged, the “indymedia.org” site. Observers and participants of the protest could instantaneously upload their own camcorder footage and their own eyewitness accounts for the wired world to see. In May 2001, indymedia.org had affiliates in twenty-seven US cities and regions, and twenty-nine international locations.[77] Stories from these locations become available almost as soon as they happen, with no filters other than what the person uploading imposes upon the news product.

Further, the immense growth in commercial airline travel during the last half of this century has allowed Americans and affluent residents of other countries to visit international destinations and view the lives of inhabitants without government or media spin. Globalization cuts two ways, although anti-WTO activists believe that the power side of the cut resides with multinational corporations. The effects of the democratization of travel, along with the possible consciousness-raising effects of the democratization of education, seems to lead to a more informed and more activist-oriented population. Although these speculations lie outside the scope of this paper, one hopes that other scholars are engaged in research about these issues.

~~Tarrow, in~~ ~~Power in Movement~~~~, outlines the evolution of social movement theory.~~

According to Marx, people will “engage in collective action when the working class is in fully developed contradiction with its antagonists. However, as capitalism developed, divisions among workers and institutional mechanisms integrated them into capitalist society.” Lenin expanded upon marxian theory to “impose an intellectual vanguard on an unsophisticated working class.”

As mentioned earlier, opportunities for travel may translate into political opportunity. In one case, an organization that developed around the Sandinista movement in El Salvador in the 1980’s led to a political analysis that fed directly into the anti-WTO movement, then into D2K.

Don White stated:

Actually my own involvement in D2K LA probably started quite a few years in the ‘80s when my own organization, CISPES, the Committee in solidarity with the People of El Salvador, began to do an analysis of corporate globalization, and the growing trend toward privatization, and the concept of what in El Salvador they called neoliberalism. But it is basically corporate laissez faire freedom without restrictions, and the attacks in El Salvador against the public sector, unions, by privatizing the telephone company… therefore eliminating public sector unions. So, because we were keenly aware of this analysis, the WTO demos in Seattle were a natural. [C]ISPES and other groups formed the Southern California Fair Trade Network. We began organizing to go to Seattle and were part of the organizing in Seattle.[80]

Following is a series of questions designed to ascertain the effects of the new communication technologies accessible during the last five years via the Internet. The inception of the WTO occurred at about the same time as the Internet became widely available to the American citizen. It may follow that critique of the WTO and similar institutions made its way into more homes than would have occurred for past social movements. This represents a fruitful area of future inquiry.

In the following two tables, the “Other” category was ~~never~~un used by respondents. It became a repository for numbers used to round the percentages up or down to achieve something close to 100%. The “Other” category will remain unanalyzed.

Figure 2--Modes of Communication

Question: How do you communicate outside of meetings?

What percentage of time communicating with group members is spent*

		D2K Mean	MC Mean	DNC Mean	Labor Mean	ENV Mean	Mean of Means
44	¨ on the phone	9	22.5	27.5	11.7	13.3	16.80
45	¨ writing letters	5	5.0	0.0	6.7	6.7	4.67
46	¨ email	39	40.0	45.0	46.7	53.3	44.80
47	¨ Personal Communication	36	26.3	27.5	30.0	26.7	29.28
48	¨ Internet	8	3.8	0.0	5.0	0.0	3.35
49	¨ Other	3	2.5	0.0	0.0	0.0	1.10

The respondents here indicate that nearly 45% of the contact that they have with other group members occurs via the Internet’s email programs. This allows efficiency, communication of messages from other sources instantaneously, rapid mobilization. News can be transmitted from anywhere in the world within minutes. The meaning of this more complete and rapid method of communication for social movements is significant in helping to overcome the barriers to news dissemination and communication that corporate media erects.

Strength in this new movement also comes from the diversity of the participants. In contrast to an earlier important social movement group, the divisiveness of race appears to be less of a problem. The biracial character of the organization became a critical issue that divided SNCC. Although whites held positions of responsibility in SNCC, they remained outside the core leadership group in order to minimize traditional patterns of racial dominance. Underlaying criticisms of black organizers against white counterparts was racial hostility, while whites often felt isolated within the organization (Carson 1981:144.) Although a major factor in assessing the composition of the network, race remained just one measure of many. The presence of the LBGT community was powerful. Activists for the homeless of all colors worked alongside advocates for the disabled. Members of the traditional left and New Left found common cause with “the black bloc,” as certain affinity groups who identify as anarchists call themselves. In meetings of D2K and the People’s Convention that were observed, the multiracial and multiethnic character of both leaders and participants is strong. Participants range in age from youth to 80. An assessment of the D2K leadership core provides a snapshot of the characteristics of the movement participants. The twelve people who played the most critical roles featured these approximate characteristics:

~~Figure~~ 10~~--Characteristics of D2K Leaders~~

~~Age Range~~		~~Race~~		~~Gender~~		~~Sexual~~ ~~Orientation~~		~~Class~~
~~21-30~~	3	~~Asian~~	1	~~Female~~	5	~~LGBT~~	3	~~Lower~~	2
~~31-40~~	4	~~Black~~	2	~~Male~~	7	~~Not LGBT~~	9	~~Working~~	5
~~41-50~~	2	~~Latino~~	1					~~Middle~~	3
~~51-60~~	2	~~White~~	8					~~Upper Middle~~	2
~~60+~~	1

~~This diversity creates another source of strength and moral vigor for the developing network.~~

It is not honest to imply that divisions did not occur. One important area of disagreement will be discussed regarding the strategy and tactics of street protest and movement formation that directly related to group ethnic composition and social class.

Media Framing and Radicalization

The concept of media framing will be examined against the reality of occurrences in Los Angeles during D2K. Some respondents reported that when they laid the reality of what they witnessed alongside news reports, they would never trust corporate media again. Some said that they only use corporate media reporting as a flag to investigate the event that is the source of the report. Often, they find information that contradicts the original report. This choice is reflected in the means by which respondents receive news.

Sources of News

The group as a whole uses mainstream media for only 24% of its newsgathering. Online alternative news sources account for 41% of the total, while specialty publications and face-to-face communication accounts for another 18%.

Question: How do you obtain your news?

~~By percentage~~

Figure 4--News Sources for Movement Participants

		D2K	MC	DNC	Labor	ENV	Total
		Mean	Mean	Mean	Mean	Mean	Mean
50	¨ Mainstream media	25	27	27	28	15	24
51	¨ Specialty publications	8	18	13	15	12	13
52	¨ Internet publications (ezines)	9	3	12	10	17	10
53	¨ Listservs	24	30	15	23	38	26
54	¨ Personal communication	28	13	18	17	13	18
55	¨ General Internet	6	6	7	3	5	5
56	· Other	0	4	8	3	0
		100	100	100	100	100

Corporate media’s fixation with criminalizing dissent became obvious to those who participated in organizing D2K. Before the convention, articles and letters to the editor seemed geared to inflame opinion against the dissidents. Mayor Richard Riordan of Los Angeles, smarting from a defeat by the City Council, wrote a letter considered by the dissidents to be ill informed and provocative in the extreme. It will be analyzed further on. Letters in the Opinion section of the LAT demonstrated a lack of understanding of the protestors’ issues and goals, stereotyping them as criminals and malcontents. [81] Articulate and cogent replies to these letters went unpublished, while five letters expressing dismay at an article that stereotyped needlecrafters as little old ladies appeared within the same time. The D2K organizers, intensely aware of the effects of media framing, worked to counteract it with framing of their own. The efforts were largely unsuccessful. As a member of the D2K letter writing team, I reviewed printed letters daily, and solicited replies or kept records of replies sent to me to track for publication date.

The maneuvers of representatives of the City of Los Angeles may provide some insight to the dilemmas posed by the juxtaposition of the DNC and D2K. The Los Angeles City Council agreed to provide Pershing Square as a gathering place for the marchers downtown as part of a negotiation with the Mayor, then went back on its word.

A day after an ad hoc committee of the Los Angeles City Council voted to

abandon permission for protesters to convene in downtown's Pershing Square, a

coalition of activists detailed plans Thursday to demonstrate at both

presidential nominating conventions as part of a campaign against social and

economic injustices worldwide.[82]

The Democratic National Convention Committee came to LA to request additional funds, a request met with hostility. The DNC had stated earlier that no additional funds would be needed.[i] This created an atmosphere of dissension in the City Council. Businesses in the city expected additional revenue from the additional tourism they expected from the DNC Convention, creating a division between merchants and average citizens’ interest in the Convention. Citizens did not seem to agree about the benefits to be gained by hosting the convention and expressed resistance to funding this partisan event. Mayor Richard Riordan was compelled to add $1 million from his personal funds to induce the City Council to authorize more funding. Council member Jackie Goldberg, the swing voter, agreed to vote the funds only if the City would designate Pershing Square as an official gathering place for the marchers. The Council agreed to Goldberg’s provision. Then, it reneged on the Pershing Square agreement a few days later, under pressure from downtown business.[83], [84],[85]

The city’s financial stake in the Democratic National Convention and the increased revenues it projected for businesses served as a further justification to create a climate wherein protestors could be marginalized and criminalized by the LAPD’s paramilitary strategy. Mayor Richard Riordan, smarting from the equivocal support he received from the City Council, wrote the following letter a few days after he had to pledge $1 million of his own money to bring the Democratic National Convention to town. It is littered with inaccuracies and misstatements. Perhaps his staff did not have an opportunity to review it before it went to press. As a participant-observer who worked with the primary D2K organizers in the media and messaging committees, as well as a Legal Observer on the streets, I can testify to the distorted nature of the coverage in both the Los Angeles Times and other print and electronic media sources. In particular, the Riordan letter is self-indulgent and wildly inaccurate, and well as self-contradictory.

A partial copy of the letter follows, with Riordan’s text highlighted in bold type and my comments interspersed to highlight errors, exaggerations, and inconsistencies. [ii]

When delegates converge on Los Angeles in August for the Democratic National Convention, their job will be to define the party's platform and choose their presidential and vice presidential candidates. Our job will be to ensure the safety and well-being of our city and the visitors and demonstrators who want to peaceably exercise their free speech rights during this convention.

But fair warning to all: The police will get tough when confronted with lawlessness. They will protect against any group intent on shutting down our city.

The D2K networkers never seriously contemplated trying to shut down the city or the DNC, let alone attempt it. All actions proposed by D2K had by that time received permits and thus were legal.

The vast majority of demonstrators will be orderly and responsible. They have demonstrated their conscientiousness by working closely with the Los Angeles Police Department and the Democratic National Convention Committee to determine the times and routes of their demonstrations. Unfortunately, there will be other types of demonstrators--a small but significant number of rogue demonstrators, anarchists whose sole intent is violent disruption.

Riordan here characterizes anarchists erroneously. Anarchists advocate living without formal government in an open democratic structure. According to Webster’s, “anarchism is a doctrine urging the abolition of government or government restraint as the indispensible condition for full social and political liberty.” Any large group is subject to some outliers who use the opportunity to create disruption. Any schoolchild remembers the people who sat in the back of the classroom and threw spitballs.

They will try to make the police look unnecessarily brutal in counteracting them.

The police were not made to look any particular way by the protestors; they most always “swung first.” Police who, without provocation, shot people in the back with rubber bullets and beanbags took care of the brutality issue. No officers were injured.[86],[87])

These international anarchists have attended training camps where they have learned strategies of destruction and guerrilla tactics.

Some of the organizers belong to the Direct Action Network, a non-violence direct action and civil disobedience training group. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi engaged in non-violent civil disobedience. No one at D2K seemed interested in strategies of destruction of property or people. Some went to the Ruckus Training Campus in the Santa Monica Mountains to learn about non-violent direct action. The reference to international anarchists directly feeds public fears based the countersubversion perspective mentioned earlier. Most people who participated came from the greater Los Angeles area.

And they communicate their methods of malice over the Internet. Log on to http://www.D2kla.org to see just how determined and organized these anarchists are.

Where one would find a call to action against discrimination, police brutality and other types of state violence. Also, the statement of non-violent conduct that was not malicious sounding at all.

If you watch the videos on the Seattle riots, you will see that the rioters were not angry unionists or environmentalists.

They were first, not rioters and second they were indeed unionists and environmentalists. The AFL-CIO put hundreds of thousands of dollars into organizing for Seattle. According to most observers, even mainstream observers, the police instigated the riots.

They were white, middle-class young adults who coldly and methodically destroyed property with various types of weapon[s].

The “international anarchists” are now white middle class young adults in Riordan’s construction. One looking at videos of these actions will see a spectrum of humanity ranging from white grandmothers to dread-locked youth of all colors. Property destruction did not occur in Seattle until protestors were gassed and beaten, according to the National Lawyers Guild. A fifty-three page report is available for review. In the introduction, Paul Richmond asserts, “A Disaster Waiting to Happen. Most of the reports, written about the WTO Ministerial in Seattle have a few things in common. They are written by administrators in law enforcement. They paint a picture of uncontrolled rioters, hooligans and anarchists taking over the streets of a serene, well-managed town. Their regrets are that the use of force could not have been greater. There's little or no mention of the fact that only a few dozen of the 50,000 or more of the demonstrators took [p]art in any property destruction whatsoever. There's no mention of the fact that two-thirds of the delegates found the process at the Ministerial to be undemocratic and refused to go along. And there's no mention that potentially lethal force was used on literally thousands of people throughout the Ministerial - some of it hours before any of the famous window breaking had taken place.[88]

[A]fter the Lakers' victory, Los Angeles suffered relatively minor disturbances compared to other cities whose teams have won national championships. About 200 demonstrators…

These were not demonstrators, they were celebrants with no political agenda or message who did indeed riot and burn several automobiles. First, why did he call rioters demonstrators? In order to facilitate the process of criminalizing legal and permitted First Amendment activities? Why does he seem so intent upon minimizing the Lakers riot violence? Could it hurt tourism?

Could it have to do with the $1 million he had to pay to get the additional $4 million for the convention?

…seemed hell-bent on causing mass disruption and violent confrontation. The police countered by using a strategy of restraint and containment. They did not want to escalate the mayhem into riot. They did not want to fuel a small crowd's anger by putting out minor fires and arresting people for drinking in public and other minor legal violations. This was an unhappy choice, but it worked. There were only 11 or so minor injuries, most of them demonstrators. Regrettably, the images the public saw were of two police cars and a TV van on fire.

Commentary from “Osfavelados,” a D2K listserv participant who was there, “When I left the Staples Center after Monday's game a group of youngsters were destroying a news van and torching an SUV. Trying to get away from the fire as fast as possible I headed toward Figueroa Street where a line of officers in riot gear did not allow me (and hundreds of others) to cross the street and get out of harm's way”.[89] There was more than restraint, there was incompetence.

The police surely will face larger crowd control and other challenges during the convention. They and other law enforcement agencies will be confronted with demonstrators trained in violence,…

No one I knew was trained in violence or planned on participating in violence. On the contrary, for months ahead of time, participants engaged in NON-VIOLENCE training. Most did not want to get arrested and none wanted to get injured.

…and the police will have to be tough. [I]t is important that city leaders not play into the hands of anarchists. We must not handcuff police in their use of nonlethal weapons, such as rubber bullets and pepper spray, when necessary. Moreover, we must not allow Pershing Square to be used for demonstrations. To anyone with common sense, it is a venue where violence-seeking demonstrators cannot be contained.[90]

Again, Riordan uses pejorative terms for the protestors that have no relevance to the situation. The term anarchist has become a trope for anyone who disagrees with the government and engages in street protest. Further, it should have been clear to anyone who took Riordan’s suggestion to view the d2kla website that non-violence was intended to be the sole means of expression of dissent. How many people had time or access to the Internet to look at the non-violence guidelines, one wonders. How many people took Riordan at his word? The letter that a D2K organizer wrote in reply and sent to the Times the next day went unpublished.[iii]

In response to Osfavelados’ comments on the listserv regarding the unusually mild conduct of the LAPD during the Lakers riot, another source was sought to give an opinion on the actions of that June night during which police cars and TV vans were set afire near the Staples Center. An attorney in the San Fernando Valley, Robert M. Myers, trains and supervises volunteer Legal Observers for the Los Angeles chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. Before he became an associate of the San Fernando Valley firm, he served as the City Attorney for Santa Monica from 1981 to 1992. Santa Monica’s city borders lay alongside those of the City of Los Angeles. He had many opportunities to observe the LAPD in action, discuss the LAPD with Santa Monica City police officers, as well as gaining a detailed working knowledge of the many cases brought against the Department over the years. During a background interview for this thesis, he commented on the LAPD’s behavior during the Lakers’ riot in July 2000. “I thought that the LAPD was too passive. Members of the public were in serious danger. I do not know if their passivity was inept or intentional.”[91]

A fascinating glimpse of a reporter’s framing methods occurred during a media training for activists, held during the month of May 2000. The training, designed by Shawn MacDougal of D2K and Jenn Joos of the Independent Media Center (IMC), occurred at the American Friends Service Organization office in Pa

Abstract

List of Acronyms