Naomi Klein
On Fire
The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal
- Special Announcements:
- *Naomi's new book On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal will be released in the US, UK and Canada on September 17, 2019.
- * Naomi has been appointed the Inaugural Gloria Steinem Chair for Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ)
- * The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists is available in bookstores and to order now
- * PARA LA EDICIÓN ESPAÑOL
- * All royalties from the sale of The Battle for Paradise in English and Spanish go directly to JunteGente, a gathering of Puerto Rican organizations resisting disaster capitalism and advancing a fair and healthy recovery for their island. For more information, visit juntegente.org.
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Learning From Globalization Protests
Published in The New York Times.
Naomi was asked by the New York Times to contribute to an edition of "Room for Debate" about Occupy Wall Street: "The protesters are getting more attention and expanding outside New York. What are they doing right, and what are they missing?" Here is her response.
I can’t help but compare the Occupy Wall Street protests to the movements that sprang up against corporate globalization at the end of 1990s, most visibly at the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle. Like today’s protests, those demonstrations were also marked by innovative coalitions among students, trade unions and environmentalists.
Here are the things I think today’s activists are doing better than we did back then. We chose summits as our targets: the W.T.O., the International Monetary Fund, the G-8. Summits are transient by nature, and that made us transient too. We’d appear, grab world headlines, then disappear. After the 9/11 attacks, it was easy to sweep us away completely, at least in North America.
Today’s protesters have chosen a fixed target: Wall Street, a symbol of the corporate takeover of democracy. And they have put no end date on their presence. This gives them time to put down roots, which is going to make it a lot harder to sweep them away, even if they get kicked out of one physical space.
Something else they are doing right: they have committed themselves to nonviolence and to being good neighbors to local businesses. That means broken windows and street fights aren’t upstaging the message in the media. And when police attack peaceful occupiers (and the protesters catch it on camera), it generates tremendous sympathy for the cause.
A lot of people seem very agitated about the fact that this movement doesn’t have a list of soundbite-ready demands and media-ready spokespeople. Personally I’m delighted that Occupy Wall Street hasn’t given in to the hectoring for a list of “demands.” This is a young movement still in the process of determining just how powerful it is, and that power will determine what demands are possible. Small movements have to settle for small reforms: big ones have the freedom to dream.
Naomi was asked by the New York Times to contribute to an edition of "Room for Debate" about Occupy Wall Street: "The protesters are getting more attention and expanding outside New York. What are they doing right, and what are they missing?" Here is her response.
I can’t help but compare the Occupy Wall Street protests to the movements that sprang up against corporate globalization at the end of 1990s, most visibly at the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle. Like today’s protests, those demonstrations were also marked by innovative coalitions among students, trade unions and environmentalists.
Here are the things I think today’s activists are doing better than we did back then. We chose summits as our targets: the W.T.O., the International Monetary Fund, the G-8. Summits are transient by nature, and that made us transient too. We’d appear, grab world headlines, then disappear. After the 9/11 attacks, it was easy to sweep us away completely, at least in North America.
Today’s protesters have chosen a fixed target: Wall Street, a symbol of the corporate takeover of democracy. And they have put no end date on their presence. This gives them time to put down roots, which is going to make it a lot harder to sweep them away, even if they get kicked out of one physical space.
Something else they are doing right: they have committed themselves to nonviolence and to being good neighbors to local businesses. That means broken windows and street fights aren’t upstaging the message in the media. And when police attack peaceful occupiers (and the protesters catch it on camera), it generates tremendous sympathy for the cause.
A lot of people seem very agitated about the fact that this movement doesn’t have a list of soundbite-ready demands and media-ready spokespeople. Personally I’m delighted that Occupy Wall Street hasn’t given in to the hectoring for a list of “demands.” This is a young movement still in the process of determining just how powerful it is, and that power will determine what demands are possible. Small movements have to settle for small reforms: big ones have the freedom to dream.
