the NYC demos: a report

Liza Featherstone lfeather32 at erols.com
Tue Feb 5 09:53:53 PST 2002


Thanks John! it was indeed a very young protest. lots of teenagers and people in their twenties. very few middle-aged folks (many more geriatrics -- 70s, 80s -- than baby boomers, actually).


> The great majority of the signs and all the chants were
> explicitly anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist.

that's absolutely true and I noticed the same thing. even more so than at past similar demos. one of my thoughts on that was that at some level the WEF is inherently a more radical target, e.g. the only real reason to protest it is that it is a meeting of the global ruling class, one hates the ruling class with passion and doesn't think it should exist. whereas you can protest the WTO/World Bank's specific policies, and radicals and reformers can disagree about whether the institutions should be reformed or abolished.

there were, however, as always, plenty of people there who I talked to whose politics were less choate or less radical or less linguistically confrontational than the term "anticapitalist" would suggest. as there are throughout the movement (or "movements" as Chuck0 suggests) which is why I still defend my failure to use the term to describe the whole carnival.



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