Globalisation: A view from 2002
By bG ~ March 28th, 2009. Filed under: Society.
With the G20 protests starting today I was reminded of the last time this happened back in 1999. I’ve had to look it up on wikipedia and it was the J18: Carnival Against Capitalism. I was working in the Financial Services industry back then, but we were based in Hammersmith so although people we dealt with on a daily basis were affected, we weren’t directly. I remember that our office was split down the middle; some dissapproved, but others, myself included, really wanted to take the day off and join the protests. That might sound strange, but our company reported on the perfomance of the industry rather than taking part directly.
This was a flash video I made a few years later in my final year at uni. We were given the song and told to make a video to accompany it. I don’t agree with all of the song, but the tone does resonate with me.
The imagery at the end was taken from the protests at the G8 summit in Geneva 2001 - and I decided to dedicate it to Carol Giuliani who was killed during them.
Back in 1999 the greatest fear in the zeitgesit was that unfettered capitalism would turn into a monster. Naomi Klein’s No Logo (2001) explained how we were right to be worried - but just when it seemed that world governments would be forced to respond to the growing clamour for an ethical form of capitalism, 9/11 happened. Since late 2001 the “War on Terror” has had centre stage in our imaginations (something that probably won’t affect you, but would be terrible if it did, gets more mindshare than something that will definitely affect you, but probably in a subtle way - that’s just the way our brains deal with risk). But now that the recession is starting to affect people directly (myself included) the workings of the global economy are back in the spotlight. One thing that has changed in the intervening years is that our right to protest has been heavily eroded; the chances that police will use their new “terror” powers to discourage protest against the government seem pretty high.
My friend Benji is photographing the protests today so I’m hoping to be able to put up some links to them when he gets back.