[pf] Dissent [against neoliberalism] is in the air: take to the streets

[Note: neoliberalism is an economics term like free trade: "let commerce be
unfettered by regulations".
   The Guardian (UK) article by George Monbiot below contains:

 "While corporations have acquired the legal status of human beings (but
without most of the accompanying criminal liability), jury trials are being
denied to those who protest against them. The government, which granted
passports to the billionaire businessmen accused of involvement in the
biggest arms corruption scandal in modern times, has just announced new
restrictions on asylum seekers. The world has been wrested from our hands. 
  In seeking to wrest it back, we have yet to develop a coherent political
programme to which all of us can subscribe. While the greens support small
business, trades unionists find workers within big corporations easier to
mobilise. The anarchists want to smash the state, while the socialists want
to rebuild it. 
  But the unprecedented solidarity between these disparate groups is
beginning, I feel, to develop into a programme in its own right: a
grassroots reorganisation of the political process, propelling democratic
renewal from below."
  "The new political movements have rediscovered in the public meeting an
effective forum for dissent. We were promised that television and the
internet would promote participation; instead they have provided our
representatives with new screens to hide behind. As radical movements
struggle to escape from an enclosed and virtual politics, public speaking
has become the new rock and roll."    D.]

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http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,434935,00.html
  is:

Dissent is in the air: take to the streets 
Public meetings are the new rock'n'roll as unlikely groups unite

George Monbiot

The Guardian, Thursday February 8, 2001

At last it's happening. Just as the neo-liberals on both sides of the
Atlantic proclaim universal victory, a composite radical opposition
movement is beginning to emerge. It's confused, it's contradictory and it
looks like nothing we've ever seen before. But for the first time in 14
years of campaigning, I feel that I've witnessed something unstoppable. 

I've spent this week touring the country with a ragged coalition of greens,
anarchists and socialists. Everywhere we've been so far, I've picked up a
sense of excitement I've never felt in Britain before. In Glasgow we drew
500 people: according to the locals I met it was the biggest political
meeting in the city for 15 years. In London, 1,300 turned up. 

But the numbers, unprecedented though they may be, are less impressive than
the unity of purpose. In London, green activists stood and cheered an RMT
official as he left the stage to join the Tube strike. In Coventry, car
workers demanded an end to global warming. No one denies that there are
issues which divide us, but in contesting the neoliberalism to which almost
every major political party on earth has now subscribed, we have discovered
an oppositional accord which overrides our differences. 

Neoliberalism demands the privatisation of everything. While the general
agreement on trade in services, due to be negotiated next month, would
force governments gradually to transfer their mandate to the corporations,
Britain has anticipated it with the universal application of the private
finance initiative. 

PFI serves companies better than overt privatisation, as the government
guarantees their income stream. For the same reason it serves us worse: we
lose both public control and public funds. 

Neoliberalism also insists that companies be permitted to dump their costs
on to people and the environment. As deregulation allows firms both to
pollute the planet and to sack their staff without consultation,
steelworkers and global warming campaigners have discovered, to their
surprise, that they're on the same side. 

New corporate freedoms, moreover, can be sustained only by denying freedom
to everyone else. While the companies seizing our public services are
permitted to use "commercial confidentiality" to disguise their intentions,
our emails, even our computers can now be monitored and raided by the
security services without a warrant. 

While corporations have acquired the legal status of human beings, but
without most of the accompanying criminal liability, jury trials are being
denied to those who protest against them. The government, which granted
passports to the billionaire businessmen accused of involvement in the
biggest arms corruption scandal in modern times, has just announced new
restrictions on asylum seekers. The world has been wrested from our hands. 

In seeking to wrest it back, we have yet to develop a coherent political
programme to which all of us can subscribe. While the greens support small
business, trades unionists find workers within big corporations easier to
mobilise. The anarchists want to smash the state, while the socialists want
to rebuild it. 

But the unprecedented solidarity between these disparate groups is
beginning, I feel, to develop into a programme in its own right: a
grassroots reorganisation of the political process, propelling democratic
renewal from below. 

We must, of course, be careful not to mistake the affirmation expressed at
these meetings for wider public consent. But the public support for the
strikers contesting the privatisation of the London Underground and the
West Midlands hospitals suggests that some, at least, of our demands are
beginning to resonate with Britain's biggest political movement: the
disillusionment party. The extraordinary numbers promising to attend the
protests at Faslane, the Scottish nuclear base, on Monday and the G8 summit
in Genoa in July, suggest that this is the beginning of something big. 

The new political movements have rediscovered in the public meeting an
effective forum for dissent. We were promised that television and the
internet would promote participation; instead they have provided our
representatives with new screens to hide behind. As radical movements
struggle to escape from an enclosed and virtual politics, public speaking
has become the new rock and roll. 

The enclosure of power will not be easily reversed. But had any New Labour
ministers attended the meetings we have held so far, they would have
scurried back to Westminster very worried indeed. 

This is not the end of neoliberalism. But it is the beginning of the end. 

g.monbiot@zetnet.co.uk 


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001

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sent to Positive Futures by David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
http://www.geocities.com/davdd.geo/index.html#top
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