.Posted on 4/24/2002, 3:31:22 PM by Dallas
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I DON'T KNOW JIM ROBINSON!!!
Guy looks like he was born in Britain...just has 'the look.' He gets around quite a bit. Anyway, here is an article this little squirt penned:
Guy Taylor: This hysteria shows we are winning the arguments against globalisation
'The experience of Seattle proves that we can make our voices heard and we can take a stand'
01 May 2001
The Metropolitan Police, sections of the media, and politicians have united in a campaign to criminalise anyone who joins the anticapitalist protests today. Papers tell us of demonstrators trained at US boot- camps and carrying samurai swords and machetes. The police warn that they will be deploying marksmen and using rubber bullets.
London's Evening Standard printed 24 photos of people that Detective Chief Inspector Jim Dickie suspected of involvement in last year's May Day protest, although they have not been charged with anything. Ken Livingstone has publicly supported the police policy of "zero tolerance" for protesters. The tabloids wept for Phoenix the calf, and Blair moved swiftly to save her life, but the prospect of people handing out vegeburgers outside McDonald's at King's Cross provokes hostility. This hysteria would be laughable if it was not so sinister.
They all agree that there can be no repeat of last year's May Day violence but no one seems very sure exactly what happened. Press reports have varied wildly from numbers turning up (anywhere between 15,000 and 150,000) to damage caused (from Winston Churchill's symbolic mohican to millions of pounds' worth of damage). The Sun blamed "mindless thugs", while many witnesses reported that the police began to get violent when the "guerrilla gardeners" in Whitehall tried to link up with the trade union march in Trafalgar Square. If a sinister horde of thousands floods into the capital today, bent on violence, carrying weapons, guns and shields, they will be easy to spot they will be ones in the blue uniforms.
There needs to be a sense of proportion in the violence feeding- frenzy. The fact is, if you walked down Whitehall on 10 May last year, you would have seen no evidence of these supposed riots; it had been washed down and scrubbed off. In those same 10 days, almost 200,000 children lost their lives as a direct result of World Bank- and IMF-held debt.
Last year's May Day in London was not exactly Brixton '81 or LA '92. McDonald's can open a new burger bar in days, there were no burning buildings, very few injuries and a lot of good humour poked its nose through the hysterical news coverage. And it all served a purpose there is a debate about May Day this year.
The whole debate about May Day 2001 is not really about violence and lawlessness there is far more violence after an average England international match than after the May Day protests last year. When Ken Livingstone appeals to peaceful protesters to stay at home, he is making a political intervention. The establishment, which Ken has joined, has a policy to deter those who want to protest against globalisation.
The campaigns we are supporting are popular ones stopping the degradation of the environment caused by multinationals, ending homelessness and Third World debt, and highlighting issues concerning the treatment of refugees and animal welfare. These concerns are not restricted to a hard core of activists they are shared by millions of people across Britain.
But the politicians and the tabloids are not interested in debating the real issues because we are winning the argument against globalisation. The fantastic defeat of the drug companies over enforcing the patents on Aids drugs for South Africa shows how mass campaigns can beat the multinationals. It is we who are in touch with the public mood and the politicians who are out of touch. And don't forget, one generation's mindless thugs and hooligans are the next's heroes.
Tony Blair shared an afternoon of celebration with Nelson Mandela on Sunday, yet what would his attitude to anti-apartheid campaigners have been when they disrupted the South African rugby team's tour and many, including minister Peter Hain, were arrested? What advice would Blair have given to the activists imprisoned for fighting for women's suffrage, transported for organising trade unions or vilified for opposing war stay at home and don't cause trouble? Like it or not, and New Labour definitely doesn't, our society would be less civilised if ordinary people had not asserted their own priorities.
We are protesting because we need to take action against the destruction of our planet, and of human life on a massive scale, due to IMF/World Bank policies in developing countries. These concerns are rarely raised in Parliament, where debates and policies are framed by a consensus of support for the neo-liberal agenda. Environmentalist and socialist candidates are standing in the general election, and it's important we vote for them as well as taking to the streets.
Globalise Resistance came together precisely to organise such protests, involving as many different people as possible. Like most of the other groups involved in today's protest, Globalise Resistance stands for non-violent direct action. We believe that the priorities of the system are wrong, that at the beginning of the 21st century, no child should starve to death, no one should be poisoned by agribusiness, or be enslaved in sweatshops by multinationals; and that it would be nice if the next generation had a planet capable of sustaining life.
The experience of Seattle shows that we can make our voices heard and we can take a stand. Traditional ways of political protest have left us high and dry. The idea of voting for the next government leaves us cold: whoever wins, there will be a pro-market, neo-liberal bunch in the Cabinet.
Petitions get ignored last year, 14 million people signed the Jubilee coalition's petition on debt. What did we get? Inadequate promises that haven't been carried out. So it's no surprise that activists are taking a more direct approach. We are proud to be protesting on May Day.
We will be giving out Monopoly money outside the World Bank HQ on Haymarket, symbolically redistributing the enormous and misused wealth. We will also be encouraging people to join us in Genoa in July to protest against the G8 meeting of our world leaders and demand the abolition of Third World debt. On protests we hear the refrain from the cops, "Move along, you've made your point". That's exactly the problem we're sick of just making our points, and we're starting to make a difference.
office@resist.org.uk
(apologies to Senior Wences)
Shouldn't that be changed to:
"Guy Taylor, head of the "Resistance against Globalization" movement is carried away by police......(snip)" ?
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