Rachael

The Anti-globalization Protest at the Academy of Management meetings in Washington D.C. - I think it is very important that we as faculty encourage peaceful, non-violent protest, and protect free speech rights.

Outside the August, 2001Academy of Management meetings, there was a pacifist, completely non-violent protest happening. Each morning a young university student named "Rachel" put up artistic 'anti-globalization' protest signs on the base of the street lamps along Connecticut Avenue where all the conference attendees went to eat. And each day some pro-globalization team of terror operatives systematically destroyed her sign work.

See Online Video of Sign Pasting in D.C. All Your Paste Are Belong To Us", Real Video, 56K/isdn, 10 mins, 32 secs.

I counted about eight different signs, each with a message about global injustice such as the Big Oil companies' violent appropriation of indigenous land. A local artist in D.C., Mike Flugennock, contributed the art on each poster, and each had some interesting statistics, and a call for peaceful action, such as a community bike ride. Yet, some art-terrorists set out to protect the Academy of Management attendees from ever seeing Rachel's signs and reading their messages. Posters are applied with wheat-paste (a mix of sugar, flour, and water) so its toxic, and completely removable with water. And in D.C. affixing posters to lamp post is part of the scene.

"Any sign, advertisement, or poster that does not relate to the sale of goods or services may be affixed on public lampposts or appurtenances of a lamppost, subject to the restrictions set forth in this section." D.C. Municipal Regulations section 24-108.4. ("a 'public lamppost' is any public post erected for the purpose of supporting electrical wires.")

You may not post more than 3 on a block

More info

Zachary Wolfe

staff attorney, Partnership for Civil Justice

National Vice President, National Lawyers Guild

202-530-5630

Each day her signs were defaced. First the phone numbers and meeting places were scratched out. Then during the day, the secret agent team would tear at the corners of each of the posters. They had a big job to do, since Rachel put up no less than 100 signs each night along Connecticut avenue. By dinner time, not a single sign remained (Signs were not unlike these).

When I took a colleague to see the posters on the final day of the conference, by late afternoon, all the posters on Connecticut Avenue had been completely removed. We turned a corner and half a block away, there was one left, at the base of a lamp post. We approached the sign, and saw that it was about the Oil Industry, announcing a bike outing, but the time and place had been scratched off. Still, I was able to show my friend and colleague this last remaining poster. As we knelt to read the poster, Rachel approached us. She was in her early twenties, wearing a backpack. "We like these posters. But, this is the last one. Who is going around destroying this art?" She replied, "she did not know: and told us how every night she puts up new ones, only to see them removed. It was clear she thought my friend and I might be the ones destroying her work. I explained, "I am an academic activist, researching issues of corporate predators, in particular the anti-sweatshop campaign." We gave her our business cards, and asked if we might be put in contact with the artist.

The point of this story is to present an example of non-violent direct action and a prayer for Rachel that she will bring her art and pacifism to Denver, to the 2002 meeting of the Academy of Management. My studies of the anti-globalization movement suggest that the vast majority of protest is non-violent action, but the media, by and large replays the acts of a few, who by the way seem to be posers and imposters, sent in by the opposition.

Civil disobedience, non-violent direct action includes charm offensives, street theater, mass marches, costumes, puppets, music troupes, human chains, and the Naked Feet campaign.

From Seattle to Quebec, Prague, Gotesburg, most recently Genoa, and in September Washington, the media does not focus coverage of the peaceful protest.

Who tears down the posters as soon as they are put up? - Last night (August 30th, 2001), the poster-activists were confronted with the most blatant from of repression yet by a Poster Nazi, then ticketed the D.C. police -

See Sinkers.org Video. - Still imagery, audio and video recording by Mike Flugennock.

The activists are confronted by a Poster Nazi who is slashing, trashing and ripping down their posters. A stalker is confronted "keep your hands off of me and my posters." The D.C. Police are also tearing down protest signs being put up in advance of the September D.C. protest of World Bank and IMF. It appears that the Police are trying to cut off an avenue of free speech, just in time, for the D.C. trade meetings. If they cut off peaceful protest, are they not provoking an escalation?

We have a choice, to encourage pacifist protest and speech, or see the escalation, into its opposite. In WTO, and since, for example, the anti-sweatshop campaign, with its focus on Nike Corporation, has seen examples of peaceful protest in the Sydney and Melbourne NikeTown blockades and street theater action, however, there is another movement which believes transnational-predatory-corporate-property damage, such as smashing a NikeTown window is also an act of free speech and civil disobedience..

References

See Boje, D. M. (2001) Global Theatrics and Capitalism presentation to 2001 Academy of Management meeting for more on this topic.