Debates focus social protest
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Howard Brick, Ph.D. History of social theory |
While trends in social protest are difficult to explain and especially difficult to predict, Howard Brick says, "The resurgence of protest in the past year is not entirely surprising."
In many respects, the actions of the last year, since the dramatic confrontations and parades at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, come from a protest tradition that is rooted in the '60s and '70s but has developed new forms and concerns over the last 20 years, says Brick, a history professor at Washington University in St. Louis, with expertise in modern U.S. history, American intellectual history, and the history of social protest movements.
"The latest protests," Brick says, "bring together criticism of American foreign policy and domestic racism -- the watchwords of the 1960s -- with renewed attention to economic inequality and the struggles of organized labor, especially where labor is most exploited, in low-paid work and in sweatshops at home and abroad."
Add concerns over protection of the environment and a style of decentralized protest by small, "direct-action" groups that became popular during protests of the early '80s against the nuclear arms race -- and you have all the ingredients of the current movement.
The reasons that this movement has emerged into public view just over the past year are hard to determine exactly, Brick allows. In the '90s, he notes, "Everyone's attention has been focused on the global sway of market forces and corporate strategy, and protesters have appeared to challenge the conventional view that these trends work to everyone's benefit. The traditional concerns of radical protest -- against inequality and injustice -- now take on an international cast. Reliance on low-paid and super-exploited labor abroad, where rights to organize unions are often denied, combines with the lack of job security and the stagnant wages American workers have had to endure even in a period of economic growth."
The Seattle protests thus brought together organized labor, which has become bolder in recent years, with environmentalists (long a very active group in the Northwest) who were also concerned about the ecological consequences of careless development practices around the world. "A new alliance seemed in the making there," Brick says, "giving an enormous boost to the movement's morale."
Following Seattle's example, protests have continued, especially in this election year because of the narrow limits of debate permitted by the two major parties. Protests around the nominating conventions and the debates have emphasized the big issues that have not been broached -- poverty amidst plenty, decayed cities, lack of universal health care, the scandal of the death penalty when it's been shown evidence for conviction is often weak and implementation often racially biased, and the power of big corporations in making public policy.
"For the protest movement," Brick notes, "the debates symbolize the restrictions on political life enforced by two parties closely wedded to powerful, self-interested donors." The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) -- a private organization constructed by the two parties themselves -- have taken over these public events since the more disinterested League of Women Voters withdrew in protest in 1988. This year the CPD set unreasonably high thresholds (15 percent support registered in polls of voting preference) to keep third-party candidates out of the debates, even though large majorities have told pollsters they would like to see Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan at least join the discussion. (Ross Perot had less than 10 percent when he joined the 1992 debates, and Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura had only 10 percent when he gained entrance to gubernatorial debates in that state.)
"No one knows whether the protest movement of the last year will continue or grow, but it has shown great success in welding together a wide coalition of groups concerned with labor, environment, racial and economic inequality," Brick notes. "The difficulty of accomplishing just this was one of the major shortcomings of protest movements in the 1960s and 1970s. In that respect alone, this might be the beginning of a new period, when political discussion opens up despite the resistance of the political establishment."
