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Activists protest policies of the World Bank in Washington, DC

The Global Justice Movement is the broad globalized social movement opposing what is often known as –corporate globalization– and promoting equal distribution of economic resources. Its unifying theme is opposition to its view of what tyranny is. A number of organizations and groups using this term have emerged at the beginning of this century - see links and references.

[edit] Movement of movements

The Global Justice Movement describes the loose collection of individuals and groups–often referred to as a –movement of movements––who advocate "fair trade" rules and are negative to current institutions of global economics such as the World Trade Organization.^[1][2]

The movement is often labeled the anti-globalization movement by the mainstream media. Those involved, however, frequently deny that they are –anti-globalization,– insisting that they support the globalization of communication and people and oppose only the global expansion of corporate power.^[3] The term further indicates an anti-capitalist and universalist perspective on globalization, distinguishing the movement from those opponents of globalization whose politics are based on a conservative defence of national sovereignty.

Important organizational pillars of the movement are Via Campesina, the family farmers' international; Peoples' Global Action, a loose collection of often youthful groups; Jubilee 2000, the Christian-based movement for relieving international debt; Friends of the Earth, the environmentalist international; and some think-tanks like Focus on the Global South and Third World Network ^[4]. Participants include student groups, NGOs, trade unions, faith-based and peace groups throughout the world. A loose coordination of the movement is taking place on the Social Forums. However, although formal power is often situated in the global South, the resources of North-based NGOs give these disproportionate power to often informally marginalize popular organizations from the South ^[5].

[edit] Massive protests

The movement is characterized by the massive citizen protests and alternative summits which have, for the last decade, accompanied most meetings of the G8, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank. The movement came to the attention of many in the US when activists successfully used protests to shut down the 1999 WTO Ministerial in Seattle. This represented, however, just one of a series of massive Global Justice protests that have included protests at the 1988 World Bank/IMF meetings in Germany,^[6] "IMF riots" beginning in Lima in 1975, over cuts in the social safety-net presided over by IMF and other international organizations, and spreading through the world,^[7][8] and "water wars" in Bolivia and South Africa.^[9]

[edit] International solidarity

The Global Justice Movement claims to place a significant emphasis on transnational solidarity uniting activists in the global South and global North. Some have argued that the World Social Forum is one excellent example of this emphasis, bringing activists together from around the world to focus on shared philosophy and campaigning. However others see the World Social Forum as dominated by Northern NGOs, donors and activists and argue that Southern representation is largely organized via Northern donors and their NGOs and that popular organizations in the global South are systematically marginalized or included in a deeply subordinated manner.^[10]For this reason many grassroots movements in the South boycott the forum and the NGOs that gate-keep representation at the forum or, in some instance, actively oppose it as just one more space of domination.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

[edit] Further reading

• Alex Callinicos, An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto. London: Polity, 2003.
• Notes from Nowhere, We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-Capitalism. London: Verso, 2003.
• Gelder, Melinda, Meeting the Enemy, Becoming a Friend. Boulder: Bauu Press, 2006.
• Hadden, J. Tarrow, S., Spillover or Spillout? The Global Justice Movement in the United States after 9/11, Mobilization, 2007, VOL 12; NUMB 4, pages 359-376 , online
• David Solnit, Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World'.' San Francisco: City Lights, 2003.
• Donatella della Porta, The Global Justice Movement: Cross-national And Transnational Perspectives. New York: Paradigm, 2006.
• Global Justice: Education for Action

[edit] External links

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[edit] Articles

• Seven Steps to Justice by Rodney Shakespeare & Peter Challen.
• Summary of the Just Third Way.
• Origins of the Global Justice Movement, (n.d.: November, 2002?).
• Turning the Trolls to Stone: Strategy for the Global Justice Movement - by Starhawk, July 2003
• What is the global justice movement?, (n.d.).
• Conform or Reform? Social Movements and the Mass Media by Michael Barker at Fifth-Estate-Online - International Journal of Radical Mass Media Criticism. February 2007
• David Graeber's article on Infoshopnews, October 12, 2007