------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Feb. 8, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- DAVOS, SWITZERLAND: CLASS STRUGGLE COMES TO THE MOUNTAIN TOP By Leslie Feinberg The determined and developing anti-capitalist movement that first emerged at the Battle of Seattle in 1999 appears irrepressible. Recent protests in and around Davos, Switzerland, prove it. The world's leading tycoons, corporate executives and political leaders hoped this year's World Economic Forum would avoid protests like those that rocked the event last year. Davos--the highest city in Europe--is a tactical nightmare for protesters. One single road leads to the posh, picturesque ski resort perched atop the Swiss Alps. Police cut off access to it with a roadblock. All incoming vehicles were inspected. Immigration officials at Switzerland's borders and airports were armed with a list of activists to be barred from entering the country. Police officials announced that 104 from that list had been refused entry; another 14 were deported after they were inside Switzerland. Police and soldiers reportedly roamed through trains headed toward Davos. They stopped, searched and detained people wearing jeans, a young woman with dreadlocks and males with long hair. Pamphlets, megaphones and computers were reportedly confiscated, mug shots snapped. Authorities in Davos and nearby cantons halted all train service on Jan. 27, the day of the slated protest. Early on Jan. 26, Swiss cops had used big steel gates to block the roads near the Davos Dorf railway station. Swiss authorities denied permits for any Davos demonstrations. On Jan. 26 four members of Friends of the Earth International dressed as tycoons were arrested and whisked away merely for handing out anti-globalization leaflets in town. Some 3,000 police and army troops were deployed at an estimated cost of $5.5 million. Cops were armed with riot gear and shields. Water cannons and helicopters sat readied. Police prepared to spray tons of liquid cow manure mixed with freezing water on demonstrators. Beefed-up security forces guarded entrances to the upscale hotels. The Congress Center--site of the five-day WEF--was as tightly guarded as a fortress, and encircled with coils of barbed wire. WEF participants wore computer-coded badges to track their access. Everything was in place to suppress the activists' right to denounce the WEF for what it is: a forum to promote globalized corporate economic interests at the expense of the world's impoverished and working people. PROTESTS ERUPT But all the king's horses and men--and a heavy snowstorm-- could not stop anti-capitalist activists from making their voices heard. Protests erupted in Davos and in towns where protesters were stranded. Hundreds managed to make their way into Davos through the supposedly airtight police cordon. Some got in disguised as skiers on vacation. Demonstrators tried to march on the WEF meeting. They managed to get within 500 yards of the Congress Center. Many held signs read: "Justice, not profits!" Cops dragged steel barriers from the train station to surround the protest. They blasted activists with water cannons in freezing temperatures. Protesters, some with snowballs, fought back against police. Many demonstrators never made it to Davos. In a Jan. 27 report, Reuters quoted a police spokesperson who said hundreds of people had been turned back, "creating a traffic jam at the bottom of the road leading up to Davos." Students and journalists also complained of being barred entry by cops. Landquart is a city in the flatlands below Davos where rail passengers transfer to the train to Davos. There, police fired teargas into the crowd of hundreds of protesters barred from travel to Davos. Some reports said police used rubber bullets. Activists blocked train tracks. Others held a sit-down strike on a local highway. The same day, demonstrators fought pitched battles with police 90 miles away in Zurich. Cops fired tear gas and water cannons into the crowd to disperse activists trying to reach Davos. Police, who officially estimated the demonstration at 1,000, reported 121 arrests--mostly Swiss and German activists. Protesters fought back in this heart of the Swiss financial capital. Stones reportedly injured two police officers. One soldier was knocked to the ground and disarmed by activists. Demonstrators tried to take over Zurich's main railway station. Hundreds of railway passengers were trapped as police filled the station with teargas. Activists then took to the streets of the nearby Bahnhofstrasse, one of the world's most opulent shopping districts. They reportedly set fire to cars, smashed windows of exclusive stores and spray-painted political slogans on buildings. THIS IS WHAT CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE The next day, the Associated Press reported, "Swiss Sunday newspapers largely blamed the authorities." And the Swiss Trade Union Federation charged authorities with "violating basic principles of democracy." Inside the WEF, at a late-night soiree on Jan. 27, the tony crowd in black tie nervously sipped Moet-Chandon Champagne, nibbled sushi and watched tango dancers and synchronized swimmers. The real topic of the WEF, according to an indymedia.org report, was "widening the corporate social agenda." The power players included Microsoft mogul Bill Gates, Goldman Sachs Managing Director Abby Joseph Cohen and Accel Partners managing partner Jim Breyer. Discussions included whether the U.S. economy is headed for a soft or a hard landing. The Bush-Pentagon "National Missile Defense" system was a point of controversy in hallways. So were Bush's anticipated positions on trade, his attitude to Europe and Asia, and his reputation as an executioner of prisoners. Representatives of developing countries were invited to discuss a subject near and dear to the hearts of imperialist bankers and industrialists: how to best privatize state- owned factories. WEF organizers tried to mute what they termed "globalization backlash" by inviting some 40 non-governmental agencies and 36 organizations like Greenpeace and Amnesty International this year. U.S. Sen. John Kerry tried to take the steam out of scheduled protests by suggesting a multi-billion-dollar environmental fund. Lip service was paid to bridging the divide between the imperialist Goliath and the countries it has kept technologically underdeveloped. "Touchy-feely" Davos--that's how one senior World Bank official described this year's WEF. But few were taken in. An "anti-Davos" forum was held concurrently in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This "World Social Forum" was organized by the Public Media Center, a U.S. research organization, and joined by the Institute for Policy Studies and the Green Party. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, a Davos participant, sent a sympathetic message to the WSF. The French sent two government ministers to Porto Alegre and two others to Davos. On the opening day of the World Social Forum, some 10,000 protesters marched in Porto Alegre. One contingent of students carried a banner reading "Scrap Plan Colombia, Yankees out of Latin America" to denounce U.S. intervention against the Colombian popular insurgencies. A counter-WEF event was also held just a few hundred yards away from the Davos proceedings. "Public Eye on Davos," sponsored by the World Development Movement, was created by those who eschewed the protests at the barricades. However, many who planned to participate never got through the police checkpoints. Swiss police deported one speaker scheduled to deliver a keynote address to the event, according to organizers. Many who addressed the Public Eye forum stressed that corporations left to their own designs harm the environment and human rights. Speakers called for government regulation to police global corporations. Douglas McLarren, of the worldwide BGO Friends of the Earth, said that he and other members of non-governmental organizations had drafted a report spelling out requirements for corporate accountability. As if to illustrate the limitations of this idea that governments will advance the interests of the people against the corporations, copies of that report never arrived in Davos. Swiss authorities confiscated them. Jessica Woodroffe of the World Development Movement, an NGO based in England, said the transnational corporations at the WEF across the road were "making a mockery of democracy and plotting with governments to figure out rules to regulate themselves." But riot-clad cops and army troops, bales of barbed wire, and fumes of teargas and manure wafting through the air is what democracy looks like--democracy of, by and for the wealthy and powerful. - END - (Copyleft Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
