After Seattle: A NEW INTERNATIONALISM?

Monthly Review, July, 2000

One of the heartening developments in Washington was the further evolution of independent media (that began in Seattle in 1999) to provide coverage of that which the corporate media ignore or distort. Currently, this coverage only reaches a fraction of the population, so it is imperative for the movement to struggle to extend and deepen the role of nonprofit, noncommercial media in our society. Monthly Review and the other left periodicals have much to contribute as well. At MR, we see our role as explaining how the world economy works in plain language and illustrating that we can only understand how social problems are interconnected by understanding the nature of capitalism. In our view, the evidence is overwhelming that any humane and democratic solution to these problems ultimately will necessitate eliminating capitalism, the basic cause of the economic, social, and environmental problems of our era.

Young organizations are reflecting on the past few months and making decisions about the future. In New York, for example, the Direct Action Network (DAN) has been negotiating the global/local question (deciding how to connect its anticorporate, global-justice focus to pressing local and national issues like police brutality and the prison-industrial complex); discussing its role in the conventions, given many people's utter lack of faith in electoral politics; and figuring out how to root out internal racism. As we said, these are becoming extraordinary times. We will be paying attention as this new movement develops, so stay tuned.