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NEWS & LETTERS, April 2002
Column: Our Life
and Times by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes
300,000
march in Barcelona demo Hundreds
of thousands of anti-globalization and anti-capitalist activists marched in
Barcelona, Spain on March 17, in order to protest the capitalist agenda at a
gathering of European Union heads of state.
According to France's Le Monde, more than 300,000 participated, a 50%
larger turnout than in Genoa, Italy last year. This was a truly international
gathering, with huge contingents from all over Europe as well as elsewhere. The
march was organized into three big and diverse contingents. First came the
Movement Against Capitalist Europe, which included Attac and other large
anti-globalization groups; second were European "nations without a
state," from Catalans to Scots; third were socialist groups and labor
unions. The
most prominent slogan was "A Festival to Show That a Different World Is
Possible." While a few slogans and floats supported Afghan women's rights,
concerning war and terrorism the most common slogan was "Terror U$A,"
true enough, but more than a bit one-sided. The
London Financial Times, hardly an organ of the anti-globalization movement,
wrote that the turnout showed "that their movement did not die with the
September 11 attacks on the U.S." In time-honored fashion, the U.S.
establishment media tried to refute the aims of the demonstrators by refusing to
report on the event at all. |
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