GLOBALISING RESISTANCE/257countries in May 19 9 7 showed that this divide-and-rule strategy has
its limits.
The tremors of rebellion can be felt the world over. Wherever one
goes one can find people angered in the face of premeditated
indignity, urged on by aspirations toward a better life, up in arms over
the injustice and violence of a system portrayed as the be all and end
all celebration of the 'end of history'. In many places around the
world, the warlords of neo-liberalism have not gone unchallenged.
Spread the word.THE PLANET'S OTHER VOICES'
Activists and academics have organised international networks to
take on their common enemy: specifically, the G 7 and the Bretton
Woods institutions; more generally, capital and multinational cor
porations. Progressive movements in Germany set the tone in 1982,
on the occasion of the yearly G 7 summit. Seven years later in France,
a number of social movements, cultural groups and radical left-wing
organisations followed in their footsteps. Indeed, hundreds of
thousands of people protested against the holding of the G 7 summit
just a stone's throw away from the symbolic Bastille on the occasion
of the bicentenary of the French Revolution. They chanted the slogan
'Enough is enough!' Since then, counter-summits have
mushroomed. No major gathering held in the spirit of 'globalisation'
has gone unnoticed. Not Rio in 1992, nor Cairo in 1994, nor the
incongruously extravagant celebrations in Madrid in 1994 for the
50th anniversary of the Bretton Woods institutions. 'Fifty years are
enough!' was the slogan raised by the 'Planet's Other Voices'. This
became the rallying cry for a wide array of movements the world
over, in the US, Canada, South Africa, India and elsewhere. Their
presence was felt at the Copenhagen summit and in Brussels in
March 1995, when the UN ceremoniously turned its attentions to the
question of social development. And again at the G7 summit in
Halifax in June 1995; at the UN meeting on women's future in Beijing
in 1995; in Geneva in November 1995 at a CETIM-organised inter
national symposium on the WTO. At Lille and Lyons in 19 9 6 against
the G7 summit; at Chiapas in 1996 at the first intercontinental
gathering against neo-liberalism and for humanity organised by the
Zapatistas. In Manila in November 19 9 6 on the occasion of the APEC
summit of 18 Asian-Pacific heads of state; at Port Louis (Mauritius)