Genova and the Antiglobalization Movement

These are some reflections on what has taken place in Genova during the G-8 meetings and on the post-Genova debate. I was not in Genova on July 19-21, and was not involved in the process of preparing the anti-G-8 demo. Thus, there are aspects of this debate I cannot comment upon. I am responding, however, to the widespread realization that the July Genova days were a turning point for the movement, that a set of assumptions and tactics on which previous anti-globalization initiatives, at least in Europe, have been based is no longer possible, and that a collective effort is needed if the attack to which the anti-globalization movement has been subjected to strengthens it and does not result in demoralization, withdrawal, and, worse, self-flagellation.

Two things happened in Genova which signal the development of a new planetary political reality. First, 300,000 people from every part of Europe came together to oppose the illegitimate gathering of the G-8 and the politics of globalization. Many were activists, but many others were at their first demonstration, brought there by the realization that neo-liberal politics and economics are destroying life on the planet. This is a revolutionary development-- in the history of imperialist meetings by heads of state never anything like this has happened. The Berlin Conference of 1884-85, that carved Africa up was not contested by any mass movement on the streets, and the same was true for all the meetings held during the "Cold War" to map and divide the world.

What also happened in Genova is that in response to this challenge the Italian government and (more hiddenly) its G-8 accomplices declared and waged war on the European anti-globalization movement, first by massacring hundreds of peaceful demonstrators, who were often literally on their knees, with obvious intent to maim and kill, and then by staunchly defending these massacres as perfectly legitimate, thus _de facto_ backing a strategy of _terror_, and the abolition of all legal, civic, and human rights.

This, in fact, is what the behavior of the Italian police, army, and carabinieri amounted to, as for two days, every Italian armed corps--including the air force and the navy--mobilized and moved, as if in a state of war, against the demonstrators. And the massacres continued even after the demos were over, with the raid in the Diaz school complex, on the night of Saturday the 21st, and the tortures carried out in the Bolzaneto prison against the arrested.

Much has been done and said, in the days and weeks following the Genova events, by the Berlusconi government, with the assistance of the many TV channels and newspapers which it now controls, to blame on the anti-global protesters the violence unleashed on them. Scenes of stone-throwing demonstrators, confronting the police or methodically destroying shop-windows or putting cars on fire have been broadcast over and over, whereas the unprecedented sight of the hundreds of thousands who marched with antiglobalization chants and banners, have been made completely invisible. The hope is, of course, that a wave of moral indignation will be whipped up against the protesters high enough to make people forget the brutality and illegality of the treatment meted out to them.

Thus, it is very important for us, as we ask how the attacks could be possible and what might have prevented them, to be, at the very least, clear on this basic fact:

what happened in Genova reflects a pre-meditated institutional plan to repress and terrorize the demonstrators, convince them to never again participate in such protest, and this plan was not shaped by how activists behaved.

This is the only conclusion to be drawn, if we consider:

--the much reported evidence of police infiltration and provocation, showing a decision to make the demonstrations violent, no matter what, e.g., incidents of cops dressed as "Black Block," nazi youth trained in paramilitary tactics, police destroying telephone booths have been filmed, photographed and witnessed by many demonstrators; this is one reason for the raid on the info-center housed in the Diaz school complex and the special violence against journalists and other people with cameras;

--the results and context of the G-8 summit,

--the security measures that were adopted,

--the other EU governments' responses to the Italian polices' violations of human rights,

--the new repressive measures presently being devised against the anti-globalization movement at the highest EU levels.

We can also consider that for many years now in Italy, every Sunday, during the soccer season, masses of 'soccer hooligans' have attacked peaceful spectators, or have waited for them at the exit with iron bars, or destroyed the cars they would find outside the stadiums when their team did not win; indeed, knifings, at times resulting in deaths, and soccer riots have been and are a common reality of Italian football life, but never has the police attacked every spectator or closed the stadiums down because of it. On the contrary, stadium violence has been somewhat condoned (or used --some have argued--as safety valve for an increasingly alienated and unemployed youth)--it certainly did not stop Berlusconi from naming his party "Forza Italia," a soccer shibboleth. Not surprisingly, immediately after Genoa the government has rushed to introduce new penalties against it, likely concerned that the contrast in its handling of the anti-G8 demonstrators and the "soccer hooligans" would be too glaring.

Most important, out of a demonstration that in its last day numbered 300, 000 people, one month later, "only" 15 remain in prison awaiting trial as the charges against hundreds of others arrested were thrown out by the magistrates, in many cases a few days after the arrests.

_Three Theses on State Violence in Genova_

It would be a mistake to read the police violence unleashed in Genova as the instinctive reaction of a fascistic government as Berlusconi's undoubtedly is. True, Berlusconi's political history (see his past connection with the P2) and the presence in his government of Alleanza Nationale, the modern reincarnation of the once openly fascist party, easily raise the spectre of "golpism" in all its consequences. But it can be demonstrated that the repression carried out in Genova was concerted among the G8 leaders who were all present with their security forces during the matanza, and well aware of it.

In this context, the first thesis is: the attacks on demonstrators in Genoa were not the "excesses" of a fascist government, but a well-calculated strategy, discussed and approved at the highest European and international levels.

First, the government, while pretending to dialogue and expressing concern for the safety of the demonstrator, declared war on the demonstrators. No effort was spared to discourage people from coming to Genova and harrass the first who tried. Railway stations were closed, airports were closed, hundreds were rejected at the border and some were arrested. All meticulously screened. The city itself was militarized. Iron gates erected to divide the demonstrators as if the protesters were wild animals. Walls of containers were used to block the streets to pre-empt the possibility of escape, and the list can go on.

Second, the plan for Genova was quite similar to that implemented in Quebec, and partly in Prague: force the local population to leave, isolate the demonstrators, fence off the meeting's zone, terrorize future demonstrators with pre-emptive raids, torture the arrested in the jail, scare everyone with heavy sentences and draconian laws. The government created the conditions for confrontation by treating the demonstrators as literal "plague-bearers" and transforming Genova from the lively city that it is into a military zone where police could operate with impunity. It pre-emptively defined political protest as a battle, hence it is little surprise that battle it became.

Third, the complicity of the EU police services and US police has also been documented. We know now that the members of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department went to Italy to give a hand in planning the police response in Genova months in advance (special Italian police forces were trained by them for four months). Also documented is the collaboration between the police of the EU countries and the Italian police. Lists of names were sent to Italy by other EU governments signaling the arrival of certain activists, destined, it seems, to a special treatment; Greek activists believe that the Greek police informed their Italian colleagues about the bus where the Greek Genova organizing committee was traveling so that it could be prevented from landing in Ancona.

Most important, the diplomatic protests that have been presented to the Italian government by other governments members of the EU have been totally inadequate considering the gravity of the violations of international law of which Italy has made itself responsible. The behavior of the Italian police and authorities towards foreign nationals has been so abominable that, in other times, it would have been a casus belli. Not only were hundreds and hundreds of peaceful demonstrators brutally beaten in the streets, often in ways that will maim them for life‹but, in violation of the Geneva convention on prisoners and the EU convention on human rights, the following occurred:

(a) demonstrators were mercilessly beaten by groups of policemen even when of the ground, in no condition to inflict any harm or defend themselves, despite. (We now know that the Los Angeles' Police Department's attack on Rodney King was not incidentally the model of police behavior in Genova). It also seems that cesium was added to the tear-gas compound used against the demonstrators. Newspapers have also reported of children being tear-gassed and of people physically challenged thrown off their wheel chairs by the police.

(b) on Saturday evening, July 21, when the demos were over, hundreds of policemen conducted a punitive expedition, Chilean style, in a school where participants to the demos were sleeping and massacred them. Of the 93 present, 66 exited on stretchers. Wounds inflicted included broken jaws--a young woman lost 14 teeth-- broken ribs and punctured lungs. The reason given for the expedition is that a policemen was allegedly attacked in the vicinity of the school; but neither the name of the policemen has been made public, nor have the circumstances been explained. It should be noted that several among the highest police authorities present in Genova were at Diaz school during the raid.

(c) dozens of arrested protesters, including many foreign nationals were tortured in jail physically and psychologically. After having made to sit in police vans many hours, though often severely wounded, they were brought for booking to a now infamous jail--Bolzaneto--where they were to stand for hours, again ferociously beaten, and subjected to humiliating procedure, including the singing of fascist slogans. Especially sadistic was the treatment to which women were subjected, foreign women above all. For them, in addition to the beatings, there was the threat of rape which in several cases must have been realized, as released Italian women report seeing others stripped from the waist down. In Bolzaneto women were forced to go to the bathroom bent, while cops beat their backs with stick yelling "you like it, don't you?, and once there they had to go to the bathroom with the doors open.

(d) arrested protesters, again including foreign nationals, were kept in incommunicado up to 96 hours--they were literally kidnapped by the Italian state--despite the efforts to contact them made by lawyers representing the Genova Social Forum (GSF), the families, consular representatives, and even foreign parliamentarians (like the German Green Hans Stroebel); if we consider that Italy is a EU member and is bound to EU conventions this is a breach of incredible gravity, in fact, inexplicable except on the basis of a collusion;

(e) the foreign nationals arrested were made to sign statements in Italian (a language many could not read) and beaten when they asked for translators;

(f) once released, even when cleared from all charges, foreign nationals were still forbidden from remaining in Italy; in fact, they were taken directly to the airport and put on a plane without documents and their belongings--despite the fact that lawyers and families were waiting for them outside the prisons. They were also informed that (in violation of the Schengen Treaty) they would not be allowed to return to Italy for another five years.

How could the European Parliament and the other government members of the EU have accepted this situation unless they had given it their dispensation? The G-8 meeting was not some internal Italian affair; it was the meeting of a club of government leaders and each of them must be held responsible for what happened there, both inside the Palazzo Ducale and outside. Schroeder, Jospin, Bush, and Blair cannot treat the hundreds of false arrests, the torture of hundreds of others and the thousands of beatings as something that happened on Mars. Their security services were in Genova and must have given them first-hand reports, if at all equipped for their jobs, as to what was unfolding. We cannot, then, assume they were pure bystanders.

Presently, some of the foreign governments are protesting and asking for explanations. But how could all of this have happened to begin with? Why is Italy not being expelled, or at least suspended from the EU? Why is Berlusconi not being brought before the Hague as a violator of human rights? And is it imaginable that the Italian government, that rarely acts in an independent fashion and always bends to the powerful, dared so openly to challenge the international agreements it has signed and threaten the lives of hundreds of EU nationals without a prior assenting nod by their governments?

Again, the answer must be "NO," and we must make sure that the fact that the Berlusconi government is a right-wing government does not provide an alibi for the other EU countries that are equally responsible but glad perhaps to have the dirty work done by an already tainted partner. Blair publicly signaled his approval of Berlusconi's tactics before Genoa by calling for a "robust" repressive response to the demonstrators, while Schroeder called for a vigorous attack on "political hooligans" in the anti-globalization movement in the days after Genova. Indeed, the focus of the post-Genoa intergovernmental discussion among EU members was of the creation of a EU-wide police body that would specialize in responding to the anti-globalization movement, and/or the creation of a special EU investigative corps, again concentrating on the anti-globalization movement‹with a site in every country.

There are, of course, limits to the EU governmental complicity. The appearances must be saved, some lip service to human rights must be given. The very use of the human rights strategy as a way of speeding up the globalization process has now created a certain degree of inhibition (at least in Europe) in the use of force. Even the Berlusconi government, after several days of undiluted praise to the police has had to make some concessions. This is why it has been discovered that some "excesses" occurred, and some heads in the police force have rolled. But, all in all, we are witnessing a great political white-wash.

And it could not be otherwise, given the context in which Genova has occurred.

The second thesis is: the Italian state's reaction in Genoa was so violent and indiscriminate with the blessing of the G-8 because the G-8 and other globalization planners have nothing to give to the protest movement--they have nothing to negotiate and can only respond with repression.

That the peaceful were treated as violently as the belligerent is a telling sign that just being against globalization makes criminals of us. The global leaders cannot afford such protest; they cannot respond to it, they cannot differentiate, and make concessions because they have nothing to give, nothing to concede. The only language they can speak now is that of the tear gas canisters, the batons, the kicks in the groins and cigarette burns because the anti-globalization protest is a serious political challenge to their plans on many levels. It disrupts their meetings, gives new confidence to Third World politicians who understand that globalization is a re-colonization process, undermines the New International Division of Labor, and, just a decade after the collapse of communism, it re-proposes the question of an alternative to capitalism as a matter of life and death for the majority of the world population.

There is a further aspect here to consider. This is the fact that the Genova G8 meeting occurred under the cloud of a pan-capitalist economic crisis--that is, a crisis occurring not just in Asia, Russia, Brazil, as in previous times, but in the heartland of advanced capitalism starting with the US.

This is why, among other things, despite the prayers of the Pope and Bono, and despite the condescending invitation to three African leaders, the issue of the Third World debt was not even put on the table--replaced by the question of a fund for AIDS in Africa, which is nothing else than a big donation to the pharmaceutical companies to be administered by the World Bank.

Instead, the main topic of discussion for the G8 was certainly the "economic crisis" in the US, Japan, and Europe. Less than five months before the introduction of monetary unification, few countries in Europe have fulfilled the conditionalities stipulated at Mastricht--few have reduced public spending, or managed to grow within the prescribed limits.

Italy in particular has been the object of much deprecation by EU and IMF officers because of its large public debt and its population's resistance to pension and healthcare cuts. Thus, barely three months after the elections, the new government has already "discovered" the public deficit far larger than expected, and in the very days of the demonstration, as the police and the carabinieri were beating and torturing the demonstrators, the government was preparing a legislative packet which is guaranteed to generate much protest and resistance in the Fall--a packet which not only decimates healthcare and re-proposes the question of reducing pensions, but also delegates public service spending to the regions, a move that will practically deprive a large section of the Italian population living in the poorer areas of the country of public benefits. This plan paraded under the mystifying name of "Devolution" (mystifying because most Italians don't understand what this term means) will be a disaster for many working class Italians--so we can well surmise that the ferocity of the repression in the streets of Genova and the sadistic behavior displayed by the police were also meant to be a warning for the Fall when the truth concerning the price of "European unity" is going to be revealed.

The third thesis then is: the state violence in Genova is an essential part of the devaluation of European labor that is required by globalization.

When demonstrators in Genova spontaneously said that they felt like they were in Chile or Argentina or they were being beaten like Rodney King in LA they expressed a deep intuition: they were being treated by the police as if they were poor people in the Third World or blacks in the US., i.e., people whose labor has been so systematically devalued the police have no inhibitions in killing and maiming them. This devaluation has taken place in the US and the Third World already (in the US with the quarter-century decline in real wages and the mass incarceration of black and Hispanic youth), but European capital has been hesitant to apply the same "Third World" and "American" methods to their own citizens. At best, this treatment has been reserved for the immigrants from Africa and the Middle East who have found themselves in the clutches of "Fortress Europe." European capital is now being told, however, by the IMF and its own planners that, if European unification is to overcome its economic crisis, globalization "with a human face" must end. The European working class must be dramatically devalued, and a short-cut to devaluation is to treat anyone who resists the new economic policies not as a legitimate protester but as a criminal. In fact, the closest contemporary comparison to the way the Italian police responded to the protesters in Genova is the violent and unprovoked police behavior against anti-IMF/World Bank demonstrations in Third World nations like Nigeria, Jamaica or Bolivia.

The killing of Carlo Guiliani in the streets of Genoa must then be seen as the beginning of a blitz intended to degrade and devalue European workers. This, however, has still escaped the Italian unions and the institutional Left (the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) which constitutes the majority heir of the former Italian Communist Party) who have all along behaved as if (in the words of a left-wing labor leader) "globalization were negotiable." (The exception was Rifondazione Communista [the minority heir of the Italian Communist Party], whose parliamentarians not surprisingly were beaten by the police while standing under the party's banner). Instead of going in force to the demonstration the day after the killing of Guiliani, the largest left-wing party, the PDS, and its allied organizations, formally pulled out of the demo they had previously planned to join, amidst the protests of many members, claiming that "the conditions for their participation no longer existed." This move further exposed the youth on the street and later in the Diaz school complex to the police batons. One month later, however, the PDS is now facing in Parliament a self-confident Berlusconi determined to ram through, above their cries, new legislation incentivizing work "flexibilization" intended especially for the youth--a youth institutional lefts are now unable to defend as they were unable to defend it in the streets of Genova.

_Genoa and the crises of the antiglobalization movement_

Against this scenario, what lessons are to be learned? And before anything else, could the movement have been better prepared to face what was being organized against it? Were mistakes made by it, and if so which mistakes ?

These questions were raised by the debates and disputes that have characterized the post-Genova period in Italy. Many activists have criticized the leadership of the Genova Social Forum (GSF) and the Tute Bianche and held them in part responsible for the ability of the government to trap the demonstrators in the streets, arguing that the GSF trusted the government too much and pretended to represent and negotiate the behavior of the demonstrators when it was plain that they could not do so. This criticism does have a point, although hindsight is all too easy. It seems to me that it would be a serious problem if these criticisms were addressed as a matter of individual shortcomings rather than as a crisis that invests the entire movement, including the critics. The truth is that we have a movement that, on the one side, aims to bring together the demands and struggles of billions of people across the planet, and, on the other or perhaps for the very same reason, finds it difficult to give itself precise objectives and rules of behavior.

Clearly, the GSF and the Tute Bianche did not represent all the marchers. Some of the young people in the demonstration were connected to "the Black Block"--the term is used partly because of the Seattle tradition where the people involved in the physical attacks on Starbucks and other multinational storefronts there were referred to that way, partly because this was the color code given to them in Genoa, and because of the black clothing many of them wore--and did not agree to limit their protest to civil disobedience. Many obviously thought that damaging the property of financial institutions, multinational corporations, and rich individuals was acceptable as was aggressive behavior towards the police.

Sociological reasons could be given for why this may be the case. It can be said that the "black block" groups express the anger felt by the frustrated youth of Europe who are told of the great economic and social advances the EU has made, but find themselves surrounded by a No Future situation, and a chemically, environmentally, and genetically toxic world, in which they will be forced at best to accept low-waged work without any social assistance. They are, then, arguably, the part of the anti-globalization movement that cannot wait and does not see the point of playing by the rules, with the result that they find themselves at odds not only with their governments but with many elements of the anti-globalization movement itself. However, what is more important than their sociological description is the political issue that is raised by their presence in the movement, keeping in mind all the same that the label "Black Block" is to a great extent a fiction, since many who were described by this term were either provocateurs or demonstrators who upon being violently attacked by the police began to defend themselves.

Politically, these "no future" young people typify in some respect the situation of the billions worldwide, who are presently looking forward to a nasty, brutish, and short life in the Hobbesian neoliberal eco-catastrophic world fostered by globalization. For instance, tens of millions of African youth have been written off as dead by AIDS by the institutions that promote globalization, including the G-8 (if the trifling sum the G-8 promised for fighting AIDS in Africa is any indication). Millions of others have died or live as cripples because of the many and multiplying wars that the globalization of the economy has required. Are their voices to be heard in the anti-globalization movement? And when their voices will be heard, will they agree with the "rules of the game" set down by those who today try to represent this movement?

These are very serious questions, because they point to a crisis of representation which must be taken into account by a movement aiming to be the voice of the immense number of people left out of the globalization consensus. In other words, the political issue posed by "the Black Block" is not simply the question of right and wrong concerning belligerence in political life. Nevertheless, the post-Genoa criticism directed at the "black block's" does make an important point: the fact that the "casseurs" exposed other marchers to the danger of police attack, and often choose to destroy property rather than protecting the demonstration from police assault was a mistake of major proportions.

Along with a crisis of representation, the post-Genova debates have pin-pointed a crisis of tactics as well. The criticism here is that the organizers of the three demonstration days believed that if it gave the government guarantees on the behavior of the participants, the government would reciprocate. They believed that in a large march of at least 300,000-people the participants could choose how to demonstrate. Some would be peaceful, others would confront the police, others would try to enter the Red Zone by peaceful means, etc. This was a program intended to be respectful of the diversities expressed in the march but, as it turned out, it gave a false sense of security to many demonstrators, most of whom were unprepared for the fact that the government did not keep its word and emptied the city out, erected iron fences, blocked the borders, closed the railway stations, conducted preliminary raids and arrests and planned a reign of terror in the streets.

This crisis concerning the form which the anti-global demonstrations must take is important. Demonstrations are the manifestation in the streets of a movement's long-term perspective, its utopia, and the alternative future it proposes. In this context, the pluralistic-style of organizing adopted in Genova seems a promising, but increasingly problematic way of implementing the movement slogan, "One No, Many Yeses," i.e., we can agree on rejecting globalization, without agreeing before hand on our alternative ways of fighting it and on our post-capitalist ways of living. Along this line, in Seattle there were simultaneously nonviolent blockaders, "black block" assaulters on Starbucks and Nike stores, AFL-CIO members marching in a huge parade far from the confrontation zone. This model has been refined since then. In Prague it was formalized, with the choice of three colors (pink, yellow and blue) reflecting different ways of participating in the demonstration, in Genoa there were five. This "choice" seemed to imply that there many different ways to confront Power and they could co-exist and even potentiate each other, as they did in Seattle.

This model assumes that (a) the opposition will accept the rules of the game and modulate its response with respect to individual demonstrators according to the choice s/he made, and (b) that the demonstrators will also play by the rules under any circumstances. But neither assumption worked in Genoa. The police, it appears, clubbed NGOers, feminists, enviromentalists, Tute Bianche... more than they did "black blockers," who, after trashing a bank, would, according to reports, sail off to a new adventure leaving the unprepared facing a police charge. Demonstrators were also unable to "honor" their colors and moved from one to another according to the situation. For example, many who had come to participate in a nonviolent demonstration physically confronted the police when attacked.

There was also a crisis of the blockade tactic. By the mid-1990s the police had learned how to deal with mass peaceful demonstrations, with symbolic nonviolent resistance, and with the "casseurs" of any movement. But at Seattle 1999 a new tactic made its appearance: the flexible blockade intended to disrupt the WTO meeting rather than offering symbolic resistance. After Goteborg and Quebec, however, it was clear that this tactic too had run its course and no symbolic occupation of the "Red Zone," the zone where the Genova summit would be held, was possible on this basis.

This was a crisis for the "Disobbedienti" of the Tute Bianche, an organization that emerged from the Zapatista/Ya Basta support network and has modeled its politics on Zapatismo, in prizing transparency in their confrontation with the authorities and specializing in non-violent disobedience. Long before the G-8 summit, the Tute Bianche publicly issued a declaration of war on the G-8 and, along with displaying their defensive tools‹helmets, mattresses, gas masks--announced that they would enter the "Red Zone." They continued to hold this position even after it was clear that this would be materially impossible. This stand now raises a number of Zapatista-type questions. Why had entering the Red Zone became such a key goal‹the one that stood out in the Tute Bianche¹s public declarations concerning their objectives for the day? Was this truly the only or the better way to delegitimize the meeting? Can such tactics have any hope of success in today¹s highly repressive climate, in the absence of a massive involvement by the population?

It is to be hoped that once the trauma of Genova and the heat it has generated among activists subside, these questions can be discussed in a political way‹not to find culprits, but to construct a new understanding and means of protest. Let us again remember here that, given the evidence of police and nazi-skin infiltration and their provocations, even if demonstrators had been behaved in an optimal pacific way on all counts, a similar outcome may have been likely. Many people who had gone to the demonstration with peaceful intents were provoked into belligerence and physical confrontation in order to defend themselves. In the night of July 19th, the police blocked off escape routes from tear gas and beatings by building in the agreed upon sites of the demos walls of containers so that running and panicked people were suddenly confronted by charging policemen, banging on their shields for maximum terror effect, with nowhere to go, and ended up fighting the police out of anger, despair, self-defense, and in the effort to give other people a chance to escape. In this sense, we have to be careful in accepting the idea that the confrontations were due to a "black block" with an indiscriminate will to cause "destruction and plunder," and attributing to it the responsibility for the massacres that have followed. Obviously, in a demonstration of 300,000 there will be a number of "casseurs" who are there to fight just to discharge their frustration or in the belief that this is the best tactics. But many activists report of having had no choice but to fight the police, simply in struggling to save their and other people¹s lives and freedom after the police attacked the demo.

_Conclusions_

This essay is not a piece of prophesy nor do I claim to have resolutions to the crisis the anti-globalization movement is facing. What I wish to offer are suggestions and questions to discuss in preparing for the next demonstrations, on the basis of our understanding of the problems the movement faced in Genoa.

First, the aim of the demonstrations have to be further clarified. There was perhaps not enough clarity concerning the objectives to be reached by such demonstrations as that in Genova, so that confusion could arise between means and ends. Too much stress was placed on entering the Red Zone, even after it was certain that nothing could be gained by such effort, and not enough attention was paid to the lessons to be drawn from previous demonstrations, possibly showing that the tactics used at Seattle could be effective only under very specific conditions (for instance, that demonstrators could reach the vicinity of the site of the meeting and the "vertices" had to cross their path to get to the meeting).

Second, the problem of representation and negotiation. In any place where tens or hundreds of thousands of people are to gather, there have to be negotiations with the authorities. But in Genoa, it seems, there was too much trust in the government's ability to respect the movement's agenda, especially in a period when globalization is itself in crisis. Can the local bailiffs of a global institution we have so convincingly defined as illegitimate be trusted?

We must also measure the limits of representation. This is a planetary movement, but in most of the demonstrations in the First World, Third World people and groups are not involved in their planning. How is their presence to be integrated? Under what conditions can people who have less access to resources such as means of communication, traveling, etc. have an equal voice in the shaping of the anti-global agenda, so that the anti-globalization movement does not reproduce within itself the unequal power relations that characterized capitalist society? And, in this context, how can people who have socially less power (e.g. immigrants in Europe) participate in such demonstrations? What considerations are in order here to guarantee they can do so, in not simply in separate days of action. This issue is becoming very crucial in the United States, where black and Latino people, for instance, can be sure to receive a different treatment by the police if they join antiglobalization demonstrations. Can the movement guarantee that this will not happen?

Third, the problem of communicating the aim of the demonstration. If the experience of Genova is any indication, more work needs to be done to explain to the population what globalization means‹what are the issues in the demonstrations-- and how globalization effects their lives. In the case of Italy, this would mean to connect globalization with the package of economically devastating policies which the government has been preparing for the Fall, which have been demanded by the IMF and the EU and are now being legislated (e.g. work "mobility" and "flexibilization," as the power to lay-off is euphemistically called). The anti-G8 demo should have been seen as a massive teach-ins making people aware of the connection between their struggles and problems and the struggles of people in Africa, or other parts of Europe. It should have taught that the European economic unity is part and parcel of the globalization project which demands cuts to pensions, and other social benefits, more GM food, more industrialized agriculture and therefore more cancers and other diseases.

In Italy, instead, the media discussion on globalization focused almost exclusively on Third World poverty, the Tobin Tax, and other international themes, but it barely confronted the European and Italian politics that were being decided during the days of the demo. Thus, most Italians who just watched or read about the debates concerning globalization before Genoa were not led to connect globalization with their own fate, i.e., their pensions, health care, food quality, jobs, etc. This may not have been a shortcoming in the way the demos were organized, but it certainly does point to what is needed next, and where the organizers' energies should be focused in the case of anti-global demonstrations.

Fourth, the relation of the movement with the city in which the demonstrations take place. Capitalist politicians treat the cities they meet in and their populations totally instrumentally. Their officials take them over, use them for their purposes and move on. The occasional perks are some scrubbed buildings or a new paint job on the city hall. But the anti-globalization movement cannot do the same. Whatever else can be said about the Black Block, it would seem that often their behavior in the streets of Genoa was similarly instrumental and disconnected from the needs of the city¹s inhabitants.

Clearly, the Berlusconi government was concerned that the people of Genoa did not come together with the demonstrators, to make available to them the defense system that only those who know the city well can provide, especially since Berlusconi knew that Genova has traditionally been a working class, communist city and could be expected to sympathize with the demonstrators. In fact this did happened to some extent. Despite the heavy efforts and even intimidating tactics used by the government to empty the city, isolate the demonstrators, and remove witnesses from what had clearly been planned as a massacre‹e.g., workers were forced to take their vacations during the time of the G8 meetings, shopkeepers were told to close because vandals were coming, in same areas it seems the gas was cut, gas stations were closed, etc.--those who remained gave a major contribution to the safety and morale of the protesters. They cheered the demonstrators, gave them food and water, helped them find escape routes, opened the doors of their buildings, apartments, cafes, restaurants to them, shielding them from the police. Indeed, many demonstrators have attested to the fact if the Genovese had not opened their homes to them, they would have been wounded, jailed or would now be dead.

Still, the exodus of one third of the Genovesi living in the center city, according to current estimates, was a major defeat for the movement. It was also a defeat that months before the G-8 meetings, the police conducted a meticulous police screening in the course of which thousands of students, other youth, and immigrants were checked, resulting in severe harassment and arrests. This "clean up" that was crucial for the emptying of the city was protested by the movement, but not very effectively it seems, showing that a tighter relation with the local population is of the essence.

Future anti-globalization city-wide demonstrations, planned over long period of time, offer protesters an opportunity to show concretely, what the alternatives to globalization can be. They can be and should be a prefiguration of the society we wish to build. For this is the most powerful "weapon," the most powerful consciousness raising means the anti-globalization movement has, the one that would concretely show not only that this movement is capable of moving an immovable rock, but can build a new world.

Finally, we should remember that though demonstrations like those in Seattle, Washington, Quebec and now Genova are important, the fate of the movement does not hinge on their success alone. This movement has far deeper and stronger roots in the daily confrontations of billions of people in Africa, Asia and the Americas against the globalization agenda and its enforcers. These people today, just as five hundred years ago, have no choice but to fight globalization, since their very survival depends on its defeat.

August 23, 2001

(This piece was written to stimulate discussion about the impact of the Genova days on the antiglobalization movement. Please send your comments and criticisms to me at (gcaffentz@aol.com). It was written with the assistance of Silvia Federici and many other comrades in Italy.)