Never heard of Peoples' Global Action (PGA)? Our impassioned chronicler presents a review of the history, inspirations and manifestations of the PGA network; with a nod to the revolutionarypossibilities beginning to (re)emerge...
Capitalism had won; many had declared it was the end of history -it was November 1989, the Berlin wall had just fallen. Travel amere ten years forward in history... it's November 1999, theWorld Trade Organisation (WTO), legislators of global capitalism, tryto meet in a city reeking of tear gas and paralysed by tens ofthousands of demonstrators. A piece of graffiti is painted allover Seattle: "Don't Forget - We are Winning". It wasclear that history had a lot further to go.
Whether you were on the streets of Seattle that day dodging the rubber bullets, or followingthe hundreds of bullock carts converging on the Narmada dam in India,or marching with trade unionists in Manila, or in London trapped bythe £3m police operation, or mocking the stock exchange in BuenosAires, or even occupying a McDonalds in Milan... one thing was clearto everyone: at the end of the 20th century resistance hadbecome as transnational as capital.
As the state, transnational corporations and their puppets the International Monetary Fund and WTO impose"free market" policies on every country on the planet,putting profit and economic growth above all else, they areunwittingly creating a situation where diverse social movements areable to recognise each others struggles as related and are beginningto work together in new ways. But where did this extraordinary showof international solidarity spring from?
It wasn't in the acrid mist of Seattle's tear gas that this global movement was born, but inthe humid mist of the Chiapas jungle, in Southern Mexico on New YearsDay 1994 the day. This was the day the North American Free TradeAgreement (NAFTA) came into effect, a day when two thousandindigenous peoples from several groups came out from the mountainsand forests. Masked, armed and calling themselves Zapatistas, theirbattle cry was "Ya Basta" - "Enough is Enough".An extraordinary popular uprising, which was to help change the landscape of global resistance, had begun. Using a jungle batteredlaptop computer and intermediaries to get the discs to an internetconnected computer, the Zapatistas were able to bypass the mediacensorship of the Mexican state and communicate directly. Peopleeverywhere soon heard of the uprising.
These masked rebels, from poverty stricken communities, were not only demanding that their own land andlives be given back, neither were they just asking forinternational support and solidarity; they were talking aboutneoliberalism, about the "death sentence" that NAFTA and other free trade agreements would impose on indigenouspeople. They were demanding the dissolution of power whileencouraging others all over the world to take on the fight againstthe enclosure of our lives by capital. "Don't join us - do it yourself" was their message.
The sense of possibility that this uprising gave to millions of people across the globe was extraordinary. In 1996, the Zapatistas, withtrepidation as they thought no-one might come, sent out anemail calling for a gathering, called an "encuentro"(encounter), of international activists and intellectuals to meet inspecially constructed arenas in the Chiapas jungle to discuss commontactics, problems and solutions. Six thousand people attended,and spent days talking and sharing their stories of struggle against the common enemy: capitalism.
This was followed a year later by a gathering in Spain, where the idea for the construction of a more action focused network, to benamed Peoples' Global Action (PGA), was hatched by a group made up ofactivists from ten of the largest and most innovative socialmovements. They included the Zapatistas, Movimento Sem Terra,(the Brazilian Landless Peasants Movement who occupy and liveon large tracts of unproductive land) and the Karnataka StateFarmers Union (KRRS), renowned for their "cremate Monsanto" campaign which involved burning fields of Genetically Modifiedcrops.
The group (who became the PGA convenors committee, a role that rotates every year) drafted a documentoutlining some of the primary objectives and organisationalprinciples of the emerging network. It outlined a firm rejection ofappeals to those in power for reforms to the present world order. Asupport for direct action as a means of communities reclaimingcontrol over their lives, and an organisational philosophy based onautonomy and decentralisation. In February 1998, Peoples'Global Action was born. For the first time ever the world's grassroots movements were beginning to talk and share experienceswithout the mediation of the media or Non Governmental Organisations(NGO's).
This first gathering of the PGA was held in Geneva - HQ of the much hated WTO. More than 300delegates from 71 countries came to Geneva to share their anger overthe current phase of the capitalist project. From the CanadianPostal Workers, and Earth First! to anti-nuclear campaigners, toFrench farmers, to the indigenous from the Maori, U'wa and Ogonipeoples, to Korean Trade Unionists, to Reclaim the Streets, to theIndigenous Women's Network of North America, to Ukrainian radicalecologists... all were there to form, "a global instrument for communication and co-ordination for all those fighting against the destruction of humanity and the planet by the global market, whilebuilding up local alternatives and people power." One ofthe participants spoke of this inspiring event: "It is difficultto describe the warmth and the depth of the encounters we had here.The global enemy is relatively well known, but the global resistancethat it meets rarely passes through the filter of the media. And here we met the people who had shut down whole cities in Canadawith general strikes, risked their lives to seize lands in LatinAmerica, destroyed the seat of Cargill in India or Novartis'stransgenic maize in France. The discussions, the concrete planningfor action, the stories of struggle, the personalities, the enthusiastic hospitality of the Genevan squatters, the impassionedaccents of the women and men facing the police outside the WTObuilding, all sealed an alliance between us. Scattered around theworld again, we will not forget. We remain together. This is ourcommon struggle." One of the concrete aims of thisgathering was to co-ordinate actions against two events of globalimportance that were coming up in May of that year, the G8 meeting(an annual event) of the leaders of the eight most industrialisednations, which was to take place in Birmingham and the secondministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation which was beingheld a day later in Geneva. The outcome of the gathering was thatthree months later in May 1998 for four consecutive days, acts ofresistance echoed around the planet.
In Hyderabad India, 200,000 peasant farmers called for the death of the WTO, in Brasilia landless peasants andunemployed workers joined forces and 50,000 of them took to thestreets, while over thirty Reclaim the Streets parties took place inmany countries, ranging from Finland, to Sydney, to San Francisco, toToronto, to Lyon and Berlin. In Prague, the biggest singlemobilisation since the Velvet Revolution in '89 brought thousandsinto the streets for a mobile street party which ended with several McDonalds being "redesigned" and running battles with the police. Meanwhile in the UK 6,000 reclaimed the streets blockingcentral Birmingham as the G8 leaders fled the city to a local manor,to continue their meeting in a more tranquil location. In Geneva thestreets exploded: world leaders had congregated there for the WTOministerial, and to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the GeneralAgreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), the forerunner of the WTO.Over 15,000 people from all over Europe and many from othercontinents demonstrated against the tyranny of the WTO, banks hadtheir windows smashed, the WTO Director General's Mercedes was overturned. Three days of the heaviest rioting ever seen in Genevafollowed.
It was clear something was happening, something big, and the momentum was becoming unstoppable. A year later anintercontinental caravan of 500 people from the global South touredEurope, directly confronting governments, corporations andbanks. On June the 18th the caravan ended in Koln where the G8was holding its annual meeting. That day carnivals against capitalismtook place in financial centres on every continent. The term"anti capitalist " became common currency in many mediareports. Five months later on November the 30th the World Trade Organisation is brought to its knees... the rest is history...
At over 100 years old, activist Hazel Wolf has lived through a Russian Revolution, a Chinese Revolution and the fall of the BerlinWall. "the thing about all of them is, nobody knew they weregoing to happen." she says. A revolution, by its nature, hardlyseems possible before it takes place; but it may seem obvious andeven inevitable in hindsight. But one thing is sure, revolutionaryepochs are periods where tyrannical institutions lose their legitimacy. They are eras of convergence, when apparently separate processes collect to form a socially explosive crisis. They aremoments when hope is ignited, the hope that everything can betransformed, and transformed quickly. They are times when historyspeeds up >> >>
Ecology has influenced many movements today and that is perhaps why their model of organisation and co-ordination resembles an ecologicalmodel, why it works like an ecosystem. Highly interconnected, itthrives on diversity, works best when embedded in its own localityand context and develops most creatively at the edges, the overlappoints, the in-between spaces. Those spaces are where differentcultures meet, such as the coming together of the American EarthFirst! and Logging Unions or London tube workers and Reclaim the Streets. The societies that they dream of creating will also be likeecosystems, diversified, balanced and harmonious.
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