MUMIA TO ANTI-FTAA ACTIVISTS: POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
I think that we must pay strict attention to the Seattle experience. On the front lines of the popular rebellion against the WTO, this anti-globalist fervor showed the common interests of students, of anti-imperialists, of human rights activists, and labor. What the movement demonstrated is the power of mass mobilization--and the ability of the people to derail something that was previously seen and feared as inevitable: the globalist domination of Western capital.
What mass humanist movements teach us all is that nothing is inevitable. That the power of the people can indeed build obstacles to the selfish interests of the rich. And that globalism can and indeed must be opposed by forms of globalist resistance. That nationalities are usually false illusions, that what we have in common is humanity, crosses national borders.
Globalism as a form of imperial economic domination knows no borders. When you look at vast multi-national corporations, like Mobil or Exxon or General Motors, these aren't American corporations anymore. They are global entities that may have been formed in the U.S. or created or even born, but may have outgrown the cradle and operate in a plethora of languages, using many various currencies, on most continents.
They fund government repression and environmental degradation and devastation in Nigeria, industrial pollution in Russia and political corruption in Peru. They are masters of governments, not citizens. Let us learn from them and build global networks of resistance--global resistance units- -that speak in all tongues, and build on all fronts.
For the future of the globe will belong to the people, or it will be a lifeless poisoned sponge for the privileged few. There is no other alternative. Let us learn how to grow, how to expand, and then how to win.
On a move, Long Live John Africa
Text © copyright 2001 by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
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