Look beyond the name

The "anti-globalization" movement, constrained by the limits of language, is somewhat mislabeled. \nFirst of all, the Left moved too slowly on crafting a name to mark the combatants of free trade which are terribly misnamed as well. In "Spaces of Hope," social theorist David Harvey first locates the term "globalization" in an American Express ad, describing the international reach of its card. The big financial newspapers quickly coined "globalization" to refer to the public relations fantasy that actually stands in for the production of international slums and cosmopolitan gold coasts. The Left was at a discursive loss. \nThe loss would play itself out on a communications level. Shocked financial gurus and state leaders would express confusion and dismay over the rejection of global exchange. Who doesn't want the nations of the world to act cooperatively? Why are these people against developed countries assisting underdeveloped countries? With big-eyed looks of bewilderment and sadness, the poppa daddies of transnational business and overdeveloped nations sold the international presses the story that anti-globalization activists were little more than bored, angry teenagers who just wanted to break things. As a result, "anti-globalization" was quickly translated into a whole litany of "anti's" that the Left held near and dear to its collective and multifaceted heart. \nAs the fights against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank took to the streets of Seattle and Quebec City, unassuming citizens read about senseless hooligans who rioted through peaceful financial districts. Mainstream media supplied the correct images of black-clad men hurling bricks through the windows of Starbucks, burning properties and fighting back when riot police started beating and tear gassing them. \nThe battle for Seattle was violent. Canadian news source The Globe and Mail reported grandmothers and college-aged protestors alike being pepper sprayed by police for peacefully marching down the street. Others were hit by rubber bullets, beaten into the sidewalk, and hauled off with more than 400 other people for exercising their constitutional right to peaceful assembly. And never mind that the protests are against human exploitation at home and abroad.\nTo do so would require us to notice the human element, the great unspoken of pro-globalization arguments. Actual people who live in the shantytowns of free trade zones, as well as people who reside in the penthouses of cosmopolitan cities. The economic data supporting much globalization logic speaks of rates of per capita income growth, domestic production and market expansion, but rarely of individuals living and working in these spaces of economic development. The mobility of capital and of select individuals, most pronouncedly the globe-trotting leaders in transnational business, supplants the mobility of people, effectively trapping workers in Bloomington and in Jakarta, Indonesia, and mobilizing factories to the cheapest regions of the world. \nAnti-globalization activists are indeed pro-globalization, if it is human rights and environmental protection that we seek to extend to all peoples of the world. We want to globalize freedom, empowerment and democracy -- and we have hope that "globalization" will someday mean the mobility of human and environmental preservation.