The People's Strike - Sept 2002 - Corporate News Coverage
Alternative Voices Say 'I Told You So' on Corporate Greed
Gannett News Services
By Derrick DePledge
Copyright 2002
Monday, August 19, 2002
WASHINGTON -- Zein El-Amine, an organizer with the Anti- Capitalist Convergence, doesn't usually have much love for the corporate news media, but the story lines these days seem ghost- written by revolutionaries.
Record bankruptcies. Crooked accountants. Handcuffed corporate executives. Even the most jaded activist would have a hard time selling these images a year ago.
"We were thought to be naive," El-Amine said. "Now, we can draft our posters straight out of Forbes and Newsweek."
A string of corporate failures and executive shenanigans has undermined the stock market and rattled public confidence in big business just as the nation's economy appeared to escape from recession.
This unexpected brush fire against corporate America could provide a rare opening for the protest movement and the Green Party. Street rants against corporate greed and the unchecked spread of global capitalism, which seemed strangely out of step a few years ago, may have more resonance now as people lose their jobs or watch their retirement savings shrink with the stock market.
"It is the greatest opportunity in the last 50 years," said Ralph Nader, a consumer advocate and corporate watchdog who earned about 3 percent of the vote in his Green Party presidential campaign in 2000.
Nader, whose stature and reputation gives him an audience, has been on the "I Told You So" tour this summer, shaming President Bush and Republicans and Democrats for being too close to the corporations they now are desperate to tame.
He predicts the public's anger will rise as people grasp the full impact of corporate wrongdoing.
"It's only going to get worse," Nader said. "It has a delayed reaction in people's plight."
Sideshow or main event?
Other alternative voices have not been nearly as visible, either in the mainstream media or mass street demonstrations. Some activists complain the protest movement has been treated as a sideshow, but experts on alternative politics question whether it has the right leadership and organizational skill to seize the moment.
Ronald Rapoport, a government professor at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., said protest movements are usually better at raising issues the major parties later absorb than doing the day-to-day work of building a competitive alternative.
"The difficulty is linking these lower-level candidates to the corporate greed issue," he said. "The stars have lined up for them, but I just don't see a big breakthrough."
Asked to rate the reasons for the poor economy, 77 percent of those the Gallup Organization interviewed in late July blamed corporate greed and corruption as the major or most important reason, 72 percent faulted the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and 66 percent pointed at the stock market. Just more than half, or 54 percent, believed the downturn was part of a normal business cycle.
"This is our core issue," said Steve Kretzmann, an organizer with the Mobilization for Global Justice. "There is no doubt in my mind that the movement is winning."
Activists are planning September demonstrations against economic policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and themes of corporate greed will dominate. Organizers caution they do not want to be judged by how these protests compare, in numbers or ferocity, to previous demonstrations in Washington, in Seattle in 1999, or outside the major-party political conventions in 2000.
Kretzmann said they want to build a global movement measured by rising health, environmental and income standards rather than short- term political gains.
"I think we're going to be holding everybody's feet to the fire," he said. "The endgame is justice."
Entering mainstream
One strong current within the movement has been its open disdain for mainstream politics, so much that some protest leaders refrained from publicly backing Nader's 2000 presidential campaign even though many wound up voting for him.
But slivers of pragmatism are showing. Michael Morrill, a consumer advocate who organized protests outside the Republican
National Convention in Philadelphia in 2000, is the Green Party's candidate for governor in Pennsylvania.
Morrill's decision to run as a Green has cost him professionally and personally: Fund raising dropped for his Pennsylvania Citizen Action Network, and some of his Democratic allies turned sour.
"We had to change our home phone number, and we've gotten all kinds of nasty letters and threats," he said. The reward is a place in the debate.
"My ideas are now on the same footing as the Republicans and Democrats," Morrill said. "I think we're going to surprise a lot of people."
Adam Eidinger, who has organized World Bank protests, is the DC Statehood Green Party candidate for non-paid "shadow" representative in the House. He said his friends in the movement have supported him.
"I think it's very clear that the Green Party is not part of the corrupt system," he said. "They know I'm not going to sell them out."
The Green Party has 440 candidates for office this year, up from 283 in 2000. Greens hold 152 local and county offices but have yet to crack a statewide or federal election, where they are viewed mostly as potential spoilers in close races.
Some Democrats never will forgive Nader and the Greens for their role in the 2000 presidential election when former Vice President Al Gore narrowly won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College to Republican George W. Bush.
In the Minnesota Senate race, Democrats worry that Green candidate Ed McGaa could strip votes from Sen. Paul Wellstone, among the most liberal Democrats in the Senate, who is in a tight race
against Republican Norm Coleman. A concerned Nader even has volunteered to appear on behalf of Wellstone. In the Massachusetts governor's race, Green candidate Jill Stein could pare votes from the Democrat chosen to challenge popular Republican Mitt Romney.
The most interesting Green campaign might be the governor's race in Maine, where Green candidate Jonathan Carter will receive nearly $1 million in public campaign financing. Political analysts are curious to see how Carter fares against the major party candidates. A recent poll for the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram had Carter at 2 percent.
Activists like El-Amine already sense a shift in public attitude since the corporate scandals, which for the movement, represents progress separate and distinct from how Greens or other candidates who share similar values perform at the polls in November.
"There are people who were waiting for this public anger to materialize," he said.
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