Here are a couple of great articles by lefty author Naomi Klein about the anti-corporate movement of movements which converged in Seattle in 1999 at the shutdown of the World Trade Organization are re-converging around climate change in Copenhagen.
In both, Klein talks about how anti-establishment direct action movement are preparing to “throw down” around climate change and climate justice. And that political winds are shifting towards more progressive positions on the role of capitalism, which values short-term profit and perpetual growth above all else.
Revisiting No Logo, Ten Years Later
Published in the Huffington Post
By Naomi Klein – November 16th, 2009
Almost ten years ago, on November 30, 1999, tens of thousands of protestors shut down a meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle. The activists were not against trade or globalization, despite the many misleading claims in the mainstream media. They were against a system of deregulated capitalism that was spreading around the world.
At the time of the Seattle protests, my first book, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, was at the printer. The book looked as the war being waged on public space by a new breed of corporate “superbrands,” as well as the first signs of a fight back against corporate power. It was good timing for an author-activist: I had the rare privilege of watching my book become useful to a movement I believed could change the world. More here…..
Copenhagen: Seattle Grows Up
Published in the Nation
By Naomi Klein – November 12th, 2009
The other day I received a pre-publication copy of The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle, by David Solnit and Rebecca Solnit. It’s set to come out ten years after a historic coalition of activists shut down the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, the spark that ignited a global anti-corporate movement.
The book is a fascinating account of what really happened in Seattle, but when I spoke to David Solnit, the direct-action guru who helped engineer the shutdown, I found him less interested in reminiscing about 1999 than in talking about the upcoming United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen and the “climate justice” actions he is helping to organize across the United States on November 30. “This is definitely a Seattle-type moment,” Solnit told me. “People are ready to throw down.” More here…..