The Washington demonstration raises some important questions about
political organization. I was fascinated as affinity groups occupying
intersections in downtown Washington held on-the-spot meetings to
determine what they should do--hold this intersection, march to another
site, etc. By all appearances, the decision-making was consensual,
democratic, and on the ground at least, a far cry from every other
demonstration in which I have ever participated. They were also,
paradoxically, a reflection of new theories about how large
organizations--both business and NGOs--should be run, with cells, teams,
working groups etc, promoting brainstorming and fluidity. I was not
there on Saturday, when 600 people were arrested, but my impression on
Sunday was that while the demonstration was smaller than many hoped for,
it did keep the issue alive for what I assume will be many other
opportunities to press forward.
Inevitably, the affinity group structure raises a larger question about
whether it can ultimately build the requisite mass movement against
globalization. By the very nature of affinity groups, most were small.
Unlike Seattle, labor was missing, partly no doubt because unions see
the trade issues and the WTO as affecting them more directly than the
IMF & the World Bank. For the moment, though, we seem to have the
democratic participation and decision-making that the left has long
aspired to inside its grass root social movements. What we are missing
is an organizational form that retains these features while building,
and holding up the weight of, a larger structure.
Two final notes: for years, the left has complained about the
fragmentation of social movements into single-issue causes. I had a
sense on Sunday that globalization could be the rubric under which this
dilemma is at least partly resolved. If everything is to be commodified,
then it is all the same issue, and the globalizers have imposed a unity
on politics that twenty-five years of single issue organizing has never
succeeded in doing.
Finally, until you get really close to the Washington police with tear
gas masks and full riot gear, you'd never guess what slogan is on their
shoulder patch--designed, I assume, for tourists, not demonstrators. In
big clear letters, it says "The Washington Experience."
Joel Blau
