Carlo Giuliani, the young man killed by police at the recent Group of Eight meeting in Genoa, has been called the “first person to die in anti-globalization protests,” but this is untrue. Any number of people have already be killed by police in developing nations – Indonesia and India, to name two.
It’s easy to see the journalists’ dilemma: there lies the corpse of Mr. Giuliani, shot in the head, run over, blood pooling in the street of the ancient port city. He’s dead; the fact must be reported. A sharp-eyed editor points out that, no, Mr. Giuliani was not the first person to be killed while protesting the world-sweeping grasp of the multinational corporations, but those other poor peoples’ deaths were never reported. If we want to be accurate, we’ll have to insert three awkward parenthetical paragraphs, or worse, run a sidebar on all those people whose massacres we never reported in the first place. What a waste of news space, plus we give ourselves a black eye in the process. “Oh hell,” the managing editor barks, “just call him the ‘first person to die in anti-globalization protests’ and be done with it.”
That in itself is an appropriate comment on globalization. People, out there, somewhere, killed by police in a battle over economic theory, but their deaths don’t count, because of their poverty, their skin color and their unfortunate geography, because they lived and died in countries beyond the primary media markets of Rupert Murdoch and AOL-Time Warner. Carlo Giuliani may have been a despised protester, but he was one of us, a habitant of a buying and consuming nation, so his death had to be acknowledged – the “first person to die in anti-globalization protests.”
If the deaths of the poor do not matter, do their lives matter? Does it matter that their lives are spent gluing our sneakers and stitching our chinos?
A lawsuit unfolding now in Miami provides a reasonable glimpse into what a future of unchecked globalization might look like. The United Steelworkers Union is suing the Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia on behalf of a union in Colombia. Papers filed in connection with the suit accuse Coca-Cola of responsibility for the “systematic intimidation, kidnapping, detention and murder” of workers in Colombian Coca-Cola bottling plants.
In the past seven years, five men involved in efforts to unionize the Coke plants have been killed. The most recent was gunned down in the street in June as he walked with his daughter. Right-wing paramilitary death squads, like those that became infamous in Central America in the 1980s, are accused of doing the dirty work for the bottlers.
Coca-Cola denies the charges. The murders are not denied; like Carlo Giuliani, these bodies in the street are facts that must be reported, as the blood is washed away. No, Coke only denies responsibility for the violence. Coca-Cola bottlers in Colombia, like everywhere else, are independent contractors, there is no liability trail leading back to Atlanta, Coke’s lawyers say.
Globalization may be the way of the future, but Coca-Cola perfected the strategy years ago. Atlanta owns the secret formula, the patents, trademarks and copyrights. The local bottlers are cut in for a share of the action, but they take all the risks, deal with all the headaches and, when necessary, call in the death squads.
You’ve heard about problems concerning coke and Colombia, but it wasn’t this problem, or this brand of Coke. Add five more nameless, faceless deaths to the tally of those who have died fighting against globalization and ask yourself what it was they were fighting for – not much, a little dignity, a little opportunity and the chance to control their own destiny.
The Real Thing
Carlo Giuliani, the young man killed by police at the recent Group of Eight meeting in Genoa, has been called the “first person to die in anti-globalization protests,” but this is untrue. Any number of people have already be killed by police in developing nations – Indonesia and India, to name two.
It’s easy to see the journalists’ dilemma: there lies the corpse of Mr. Giuliani, shot in the head, run over, blood pooling in the street of the ancient port city. He’s dead; the fact must be reported. A sharp-eyed editor points out that, no, Mr. Giuliani was not the first person to be killed while protesting the world-sweeping grasp of the multinational corporations, but those other poor peoples’ deaths were never reported. If we want to be accurate, we’ll have to insert three awkward parenthetical paragraphs, or worse, run a sidebar on all those people whose massacres we never reported in the first place. What a waste of news space, plus we give ourselves a black eye in the process. “Oh hell,” the managing editor barks, “just call him the ‘first person to die in anti-globalization protests’ and be done with it.”
That in itself is an appropriate comment on globalization. People, out there, somewhere, killed by police in a battle over economic theory, but their deaths don’t count, because of their poverty, their skin color and their unfortunate geography, because they lived and died in countries beyond the primary media markets of Rupert Murdoch and AOL-Time Warner. Carlo Giuliani may have been a despised protester, but he was one of us, a habitant of a buying and consuming nation, so his death had to be acknowledged – the “first person to die in anti-globalization protests.”
If the deaths of the poor do not matter, do their lives matter? Does it matter that their lives are spent gluing our sneakers and stitching our chinos?
A lawsuit unfolding now in Miami provides a reasonable glimpse into what a future of unchecked globalization might look like. The United Steelworkers Union is suing the Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia on behalf of a union in Colombia. Papers filed in connection with the suit accuse Coca-Cola of responsibility for the “systematic intimidation, kidnapping, detention and murder” of workers in Colombian Coca-Cola bottling plants.
In the past seven years, five men involved in efforts to unionize the Coke plants have been killed. The most recent was gunned down in the street in June as he walked with his daughter. Right-wing paramilitary death squads, like those that became infamous in Central America in the 1980s, are accused of doing the dirty work for the bottlers.
Coca-Cola denies the charges. The murders are not denied; like Carlo Giuliani, these bodies in the street are facts that must be reported, as the blood is washed away. No, Coke only denies responsibility for the violence. Coca-Cola bottlers in Colombia, like everywhere else, are independent contractors, there is no liability trail leading back to Atlanta, Coke’s lawyers say.
Globalization may be the way of the future, but Coca-Cola perfected the strategy years ago. Atlanta owns the secret formula, the patents, trademarks and copyrights. The local bottlers are cut in for a share of the action, but they take all the risks, deal with all the headaches and, when necessary, call in the death squads.
You’ve heard about problems concerning coke and Colombia, but it wasn’t this problem, or this brand of Coke. Add five more nameless, faceless deaths to the tally of those who have died fighting against globalization and ask yourself what it was they were fighting for – not much, a little dignity, a little opportunity and the chance to control their own destiny.