COLUMN: What the press 'forgot'

From Ronald Kim's, "The Wretched of the Earth," Fall '00 From Ronald Kim's, "The Wretched of the Earth," Fall '00This past weekend, I participated in one of the largest recent demonstrations against globalization and socioeconomic injustice: the April 16 (A16) protests in Washington, D.C., against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Aside from ways to protect myself from tear gas, I learned a lot. But most of all, I've been reminded just how little independent media exists in the U.S., and exactly whose interests are served by the current system of reporting. The television and print media have done an outstanding job covering their version of the protests last weekend. They covered up what really happened, what A16's goals were and what was accomplished. To judge from their coverage, Sunday's rally and march were either a dangerous threat to civilization or a ludicrous gathering of bored, clueless, misguided dreamers with nothing better to do than rail against the Brave New World Order. The mainstream media failed to give any respect to the protests' message, or ask intelligent questions about the significance of the protest and its undeniable effect on the meetings. Instead, they belittled and patronized the protesters, made unsubstantiated claims about their political ignorance and flocked around the pseudo-"anarchist" posers who wrecked a police car. IMF spokesmen were given plenty of time to rebut the protesters, but there was little to no air time for the protesters to speak their own minds. Complete silence on the growing anti-IMF, anti-globalization struggles now sweeping across Latin America and Asia. No mention of the blatantly undemocratic nature of the IMF and the Bank, or the massive humanitarian and ecological disasters they have wrought upon the rest of the world. Consider The Philadelphia Inquirer's article from Monday. Rather than highlight a quote focusing on the World Bank and IMF, or on police-initiated confrontations, the paper singled out the slogan "Free love, not trade" -- implying that A16 was nothing more than a nostalgic re-enactment of '60s-style lovefests. The Inky went on to misquote Ralph Nader, the Green Party's presidential candidate and a popular figure among many protesters. According to the article, Nader elicited applause when he claimed that the IMF "was responsible for more deaths than Soviet communism." A-ha! Our carnival of free-love hippies has been unmasked, their links to "communism," "anarchy" and other U.S. ideological shibboleths revealed! There's just one problem: Nader said no such thing. At Sunday's rally, Nader blasted the IMF for its record in Russia and lamented that "the Russian people, having suffered under criminal communism, are now suffering under criminal capitalism." Philadelphia's top newspaper was not the only offender. The Washington Post ended its relatively sympathetic interviews of A16 participants by poking fun at a dehydrated protester who had to buy a bottle of Coca-Cola because nothing else was available. CNN and other news channels shamelessly repeated the outrageous lie that 90 percent of the protesters had no understanding of "the issues." Even worse was Time magazine's piece, "The New Radicals." In it, Time staffer Walter Kirn cracks one snide joke after another about A16's "connoisseurs of chaos," their lack of a single leader, their supposed nostalgia for Seattle. He derides the "Anarchist Soccer League" -- in reality nothing more than a few punks kicking around a soccer ball -- and questions whether these spoiled middle-class kids stand for "socialism" or "vegetarianism." In the end, Kirn concludes, socioeconomic justice is "a remote, confusing cause.? Globalization is a big word and an even bigger enemy. Maybe for people with everyday concerns like paying the rent and keeping the car gassed up, it's a little too big." Go home, kids. Let us run the world. This weekend, thousands of citizens said no. We said no to the system of global injustice that allows wealthy nations and multinational corporations to bleed the impoverished Third World to death in the name of "progress" and "development." We agreed that it is possible to end the exploitation of billions for the profit of a few. We were supported and cheered from Havana, where the Group of 77 meeting of the world's poorest countries joined us in denouncing Bank and IMF policies. We chanted "Whose world? Our world!" and "This is what democracy looks like!" And we faced police provocation and media manipulation without fear, knowing what one jailed World Bank delegate himself admitted -- that "poverty and suppression of liberty go hand in hand and lead to further social injustice."