Wall Street Journal - November 18, 1999
AS PERSONAL INCOME INCREASES, SO DO THE CRIES OF SOCIAL DISSENT
By Bob Davis Staff Reporter Of The Wall Street Journal
Late this month in Seattle, thousands of protesters organized by area churches plan to ring a World Trade Organization conference and make a plea for rich nations to forgive the debts of poor ones. "We need to correct the imbalances," says the Rev. John Boonstra, who heads the Washington Association of Churches.
The protest reflects the most contemporary of concerns: whether the poor benefit from the global economy. But it also taps a tradition that runs deeply through U.S. history. During times of prosperity, social movements focusing on moral issues come to the fore.
Abolitionism gained momentum during the gold rush and railroad booms of the 1840s and 1850s, prohibition during the Gilded Age at the turn of the century, and civil rights during the post-World War II era. Some of the movements seem deplorable today; during the Roaring '20s, blacks, Asians and other ethnic groups were repressed because they didn't seem sufficiently "American."
"Prosperity gives people who want to start movements a sense that they can get the resources together," says Michael Kazin, a Georgetown University historian. "Movements aren't usually made up of people who are desperate."
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- Prosperity and Protest
During times of prosperity, social movements focusing on moral issues come to the fore.
ERA ECONOMY SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
1846-1857 Gold rush, railroad boom Abolitionism, communal living
experiments
1896-1907 Gilded Age Progressive era, prohibitionism
1922-1929 Consumer buying spree, Nativism, anti-immigration
stock-market boom measures
1950s Post-World War II boom Civil-rights movement
1960s Boom continues Vietnam War protests, youth
rebellion Late 1990s Information-age economy ???
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
'Values Trump Economics'
Social movements don't appear merely because a society is wealthy, of course. But economic growth is an important element. When personal income rises and individuals become increasingly confident about their future, economic worries begin to fade, and social issues are spotlighted. "Values trump economics in economic good times," says David King, a Harvard University political scientist.
For the past few years, personal incomes have been rising, inflation is down and unemployment is at a decades-long low. That is hardly enough time for '60s-style mass movements to develop. But historians say that a number of activist causes today have the potential to capture national attention.
Churches and other religious organizations are often involved -- institutions that the largely secular mass media tend to overlook. For instance, many conservative and evangelical churches have made commitments to help women once on welfare to find and hold jobs. The Christian Women's Job Corps in Birmingham, Ala., recruits and trains volunteers in about 110 locations around the country. They serve as "mentors" for at least one year to help former welfare recipients find child care, arrange transportation and navigate the other problems that crop up in the job world.
Role of Religious Instruction
Religious instruction plays an important role. "When someone is introduced to Bible study, they find a support system they never had before," says Trudy Johnson, director of Job Corps.
Although the mixture of social counseling and religious instruction makes some secular advocates of the poor uncomfortable, Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush have courted the activist groups. Appearing at a Salvation Army adult-rehabilitation center in Atlanta, Mr. Gore talked of a "dramatic transformation in America," which he identified as "a newly vigorous grass-roots movement tied to nonprofit institutions, many of them faith-based and values-based organizations."
Church members' welfare activism makes them aware of other political issues -- politicizing them, in the lingo of the '60s. Many of the new issues involve the global economy. "There is an overlap," says Ms. Johnson, ticking off issues such as debt relief and sweatshop conditions abroad. "We have had to learn a lot about fair trade."
On U.S. campuses, improving working conditions in foreign sweatshops is a burgeoning cause. Organized under the banner of United Students Against Sweatshop, activists are pressuring college administrators to guarantee that T-shirts and other goods printed with college logos aren't imported from factories that violate basic labor rights. The effort is led by several student activists who learned organizing techniques during summer internships in 1997 with Unite, the textile-workers union. As part of their campaign, students at the University of Michigan held a sit-in at an administrator's office.
Eric Brakken, the group's national organizer, says the students want universities to disclose the names and locations of the factories and dismiss a Clinton administration-led effort to get clothing makers to agree on codes of conduct as a "whitewash." But Terry Collingsworth, general counsel of the International Labor Rights Fund, a church-backed group, says that the student activities could backfire by prompting importers to switch factories -- and leave poor workers jobless.
Echo of the 1960s
Todd Gitlin, a New York University sociologist who studies social protest, says the sweatshop movement echoes '60s student causes because both made a link between "moral passion and the university environment."
Starting Nov. 29, globalization issues will be at the forefront of protests, as the WTO, the international body that sets trade rules, meets in Seattle to launch a new round of global trade negotiations. Thousands of activists are expected, with the bulk consisting of union members who worry about a classic pocketbook issue: Expanded imports could threaten their jobs.
But many of the others expected in Seattle will focus on predominantly moral issues: Do rules crafted to expand trade internationally conflict with environmental laws in different countries? Will worker protections become obsolete if companies find it even easier to invest abroad? Do nations themselves become outmoded if capital and goods controlled by private investors determine a nation's economic prospects?
Mike Dolan, who is coordinating the protests, says he relies on local churches to help organize teach-ins and seminars on the subjects. "It's not coincidental that the principal venues we have organized for our parallel critique of the WTO are all churches," he says.
During another period of prosperity, the Gilded Age, another group of reformers asked similar questions about the role of big business in the economy. The Progressives successfully pushed for stiff enforcement of laws to break up monopolies and to regulate food and drugs.
But the protesters in Seattle face a more difficult challenge. The Progressives could argue that government ought to contain corporate power. But now that corporate power is transnational, few are arguing for transnational bodies to regulate them. Indeed one of the themes of the antiglobalization protesters is that international bodies, such as the WTO, already have too much power.
But the dilemma hasn't dimmed the enthusiasm of protesters. "Economic justice is strongly biblical," says the Rev. Boonstra. "It's a uniting point and brings together people of faith."