New wave of globalised resistance

The outpouring of anger over the bailing out of banks and other financial institutions at the expense of the world's poor was truly massive and virtually global. On October 14, at the call, amongst others, of New York's Occupy Wall Street movement, synchronous public protests were staged in over 900 cities worldwide.
In Europe, the response was very large in Italy and Spain. A reported one hundred thousand people marched through the city of Rome. In Madrid, the multitude gathered at the Puerto del Sol square was estimated at some half a million people. They were showing they were no longer willing to stand by as politicians single-mindedly struggled to keep the world's financial system afloat. Even in the Netherlands, the square next to the Beurs (Stock Exchange) in Amsterdam was packed with tents by the end of October.
It is worthwhile to recall briefly how the day of global resistance in mid-October got shaped. On September 19, several thousand activists had taken the unprecedented step of occupying a park opposite Wall Street's Stock Exchange in New York, the world's premier financial centre. The occupation's participants were motivated by a deep sense of outrage over Wall Street's unchecked power.
At first, President Obama's administration and its Wall Street friends may have believed the initiative would peter out. However, the extent of support for the occupation became quickly visible after US media showed images of 700 people being arrested on New York's Brooklyn bridge on October 1. Many American trade unions, including middle-of-the-road unions, voiced agreement with the action.
As polls indicate, well over half the US's population sympathises with the movement and its goals. And although Obama sought to sideline the movement by speaking about the public's pent-up frustration, nothing could prevent the further spread of the new movement. Indeed, the saying that a single spark can start a prairie fire seems to accurately express what happened last month.
However, the call to action did not come only from New York. In fact, the proposal to protest on October 14 originally came from Madrid, where activists set up an independent camp community on the capital's central square, the Puerta del Sol, in May. Both the Spanish and the American protestors expressed their indebtedness to the events that took place in Egypt, in January/February.
Clearly, the tent camp at Tahrir Square in Cairo did not function only as the centre of the uprising of the Egyptian people against Mubarak. It did not only inspire people throughout the Arab world to revolt against autocracy, but also helped break the stupor which many people in the Western world were in since the start of the financial crisis of 2008. Clearly, the tent camps in Cairo, Madrid and New York are part of the same chain, of a new surge of globalised resistance.
This wave of globalised resistance is somewhat different in nature from the waves the world witnessed before. To recall: the idea of globalised resistance was first shaped in Seattle in 1998, where thousands of people from all over the globe gathered to prevent the WTO from holding its conference. The previous wave was in Genoa, where 40,000 people in 2001 staged direct resistance hoping to shut down the meeting of the G-8. Focused protests around world conferences have never died down. Yet, with the mushrooming of this year's urban tent camps, and with the synchronised protests staged on October 14, globalised resistance appears to have become more rooted, nationally and internationally.
Still, from a European point of view, one critical point perhaps needs to be made: the apparent lack of a connection between the day of global protests and the people's actions in Greece. Whereas Greece is facing an outright economic disaster due to the policies its government is forced to pursue, activists who gathered to protest in Athens on October 14 were few in number. Instead, there was a near unanimous popular response to the two-day general strike which Greece's trade unions called on October 19-20.
The choice of the two dates for the general strike was logical, since the Greek Parliament was scheduled to vote on October 20 on new austerity measures aimed at securing continued international payments towards the country's external debt. On October 20, one of the unions linked to Greece's Communist Party (KKE) staged a symbolic encirclement at Athens' Syntagma square near the Parliament building, where voting was scheduled for that day. In contrast to the globalised protests staged on October 14, this movement was very poorly reported internationally.
How then to evaluate the significance of this new wave of globalised resistance? Two points stand out forcefully, even as events are still unfolding. First, the activists of Occupy Wall Street and their European counterparts have succeeded in communicating their outrage over what's arguably the biggest scandal in contemporary history. The research-based film Inside Job directed by Charles Ferguson makes the point well.
The deregulation of the world's financial sector implemented since the 1980s has basically had two results. On the one hand, banks and other financial institutions engaged in reckless speculation at the expense of small savers, pension-holders and banks' depositors, at the risk of a near-global financial collapse. On the other hand, those who devised these policies -- people like Allen Greenspan and Larry Summers, whom Obama appointed his chief economic chief advisor -- have not only gone scot-free but have also benefited from their dangerous policies.
Although big banks have been bailed out, and are continuing to be bailed out, very little has been done for the victims of the recklessness. Millions of people have lost their jobs worldwide, as many have sunk into indebtedness -- but not a single one of those bankers who pocketed millions of dollars has been legally charged.
There is yet a second point the Wall Street occupiers make that appears to hold much political significance. One of the slogans put forward by the activists says they represent the voice of 99% versus the interests of 1%. This slogan surely refers to the fact that a very small minority amassed ever more wealth during the era of globalisation, even as most people have not benefited. Wall Street occupiers also say that Western democracy increasingly lacks substance, i.e. that the decisions about the bailing out of the banks were made without any say from the public, or even from their formal representatives, the parliamentarians.
Trillions of dollars were handed out in 2008/2009 to leading Western banks in order to prevent a financial collapse. Yet, lawmakers were either not informed, or meekly registered their consent later. Where political leaders and public opinion builders project an image of Western societies as being highly democratic, the new wave of globalised resistance severely questions the quality of Western democracy.
Indeed, the urban tent camps erected from New York and Oakland to Amsterdam and beyond do endeavour to practice an alternative form of democracy -- one respecting everybody's voice and rights. This democracy, via plenary camp meetings held on a daily basis, does not necessarily result in clarity over the path towards social change. Yet, in challenging formal democracy, the activists are effectively challenging conventional views.

The writer is International Columnist for The Daily Star.