43. Jason protests the Midwest Poultry Federation Convention at the Excel Energy Center in St Paul, Minnesota - March 14, 2001. Those protesting sought to raise awareness of the treatment of hens in industrialized agriculture and, in particular, the use of battery cages.

The action was organized by Minneapolis-based Compassionate Action for Animals (CAA), a group dedicated to "animal liberation through strategic nonviolence." The March 14 event involved the screening of video footage obtained from the group's investigations of local factory farms, the inviting of passerbys to try out a "human sized battery cage," the distribution of information, and the engagement of the public and conference attendees in conversation regarding the ethics of using animals in agriculture.

CAA notes that "There may be no experience of life more fraught with stress and pain than that of the battery caged hen. She does not live on a farm, but inside a gigantic metal factory . . . Such facilities hold literally millions of hens who are confined to row after row of tiny wire 'battery' cages. These cages are too small to allow hens to stand in a normal upright position, much less stretch, unfold their wings, or exercise. Throughout the course of her short life, the battery caged hen will be forced to endure beak mutilations, overcrowding, filfth, disease, and periodic starvation."

In response to such realities, CAA has instigated a Rescue Campaign--an ongoing effort to educate the public and save the lives of individual hens. The campaign involves entering factory farms to investigate the appalling conditions in which the birds are forced to live. As many as possible of the sick and injured hens are removed and cared for. Documented evidence of neglect and suffering is then released to the media.

44. Two masked advocates for fair trade stand with approximately 800 others on the steps of the Capitol building in St. Paul, Minnesota, to denounce the threats to democracy, workers' rights and the environment posed by so-called "free trade" agreements - April 21, 2001.

That same day saw the gathering of 34 Western hemisphere leaders, including U.S. President George W. Bush, in Quebec City to advance a trade deal known as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

The FTAA would be an extension of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which was first implemented in 1994. The main purpose of NAFTA is to remove tariffs between the United States, Canada and Mexico, which in turn allows corporations (predominately U.S.-based) to relocate their production away from their markets to Mexico. Such relocation allows them to take advantage of cheap labor and lax environmental law enforcement. NAFTA's removal of tariffs between the two countries ensures that goods produced in Mexico can return to markets in the U.S. free from scrutiny regarding the conditions under which these goods were produced in Mexico.

Such a framework for trade has had devastating social and environmental effects on Mexico. NAFTA has also had adverse effects on the labor market in the U.S., where it has led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, a downward pressure on wages, a chilling effect on trade union organizing, and erosion of environmental and food standards.

The FTAA would compound the numerous social and environmrntal problems brought about by NAFTA. Negotiators want to include provisions in the FTAA that would require all public services in the hemisphere to be put up for private bidding. This would include education (kindergarten through university), the postal service, social services, municipal water systems, and prisons. Thus fundamentally, what NAFTA does and what the proposed FTAA will seek to do, is to provide the means by which corporations can take control from governments and citizens.

45-46. Students from St. Olaf's College in Northfield, Minnesota, contribute color, noise and symbolism to the anti-FTAA protest in St. Paul - April 21, 2001.

As well as students, the protest drew a large contingent of union members, environmentalists, immigrants, farmers, and religious people to Union Hall in downtown St. Paul. United in their call for "fair trade not free trade," this diverse crowd then marched to the State Capitol.

In response to such protests, some groups have argued that the influx of U.S. corporations to Mexico under NAFTA and to all other Central and South American countries (except Cuba) under FTAA, will serve to revitalize these countries' economies. Yet, while it is true that Mexico's economy has grown since NAFTA, the living standard (or purchasing power) of nearly all Mexicans has fallen by 20-30%. Furthermore, the number of sweatshops (maquiladoras), mainly U.S.-owned, has doubled.

47. Students from St. Olaf's College carry "death puppets" to express the devastating impact of "free" trade on many countries in Central and South America.

In recent years colleges and religious institutions have been increasingly vocal in denouncing so-called "free trade" agreements. Two days after the hemisphere-wide protests and actions of April 21, the United Church of Christ's Justice and Peace Ministry issued the following statement: "Thousands of protesters, including many from around the United Church of Christ, gathered in Quebec City this past week to oppose 'fast track' government negotiations to create a free trade zone that encompasses all of the western hemisphere. [The FTAA] would intensify the 'race to the bottom' that has already enhanced corporate profits at the expence of the world's poorest workers. The General Synod of the United Church of Christ passes a resolution opposing NAFTA and has called for fair trade policies that do not exploit the poor and endanger the environment."

The United Church of Christ's statement goes on to state that "The FTAA would allow products made in poor Central and South American countries to be sold tariff-free in the United States and Canada, This makes it easier for corporations to move or threaten to move operations to areas with lower wages and weaker enforcement of environmental laws. The result of such tariff-free sales is that businesses will compete to relocate where they can pay the lowest possible wage. Under the FTAA, for example, workers in Mexico would be pitted against even more desperate workers in Haiti, Guatemala, or Brazil. This would further depress wages and degrade the environment throughout the Americas. Like NAFTA, the FTAA elevates free trade and profit generation above all other values. Trade policy is no longer a global issue of nation versus nation, but a moral issue of rich against poor."

48. Gary North (left) and Llew Montgomery at the anti-FTAA rally in St. Paul, Minnesota - April 21, 2001.

Commenting on the message of his sign, Gary stated: "I consider as self-evident truth the premise that the sovereignty of the people is inherently higher in an absolute sense than the privileges and prerogatives that are exercised by people who are acting as corporate owners and managers. CEOs and members of corporate boards of directors--our would-be corporate masters--are, after all, granted their privileges and prerogatives by us, the sovereign people. Note, of course, that I say 'privileges and prerogatives,' not rights. It is no coincidence that the type of language on my sign is similar to that which describes the struggle of the American colonists to become free of the British crown and its corporations in the mid-to-late 1700s. They were asserting their rights as a people, that their sovereignty was over and above that of their would-be royal masters. I hope the same spirit that was demonstrated by the American colonists will be increasingly instilled in the people of North America today. We will need that revolutionary spirit to stand up and subordinate corporations to us, the sovereign people.

49. Llew Montgomery - April 21, 2001.

50. Christine Ziebold - April 21, 2001.

51. Brian Levy protests the visit of George W. Bush to St. Paul, Minnesota - April 2001.

52. An advocate for a world free of corporate domination holds up a placad commemorating Carlo Giuliani, shot dead by police in Genoa during the Group of Eight (G8) conference in July 2001.

Days before the death of 23-year-old Carlo, Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation on Economic Trends and author of The Age of Access, wrote an insightful article entitled "Culture vs. Commerce".

"Protests are becoming a familiar part of world political and economic forums," wrote Jeremy. "But, although the attention often goes to the relatively few violent protesters, there is a bigger message worth listening to. The fact is, we are witnessing the first stirrings of a cultural backlash to globalization whose effects are likely to be significant and far-reaching.

"Local cultures are reawakening everywhere in the world. In India, consumers recently trashed McDonald's restaurants for violating Hindu dietary laws. In Germany, there is a heated debate over what is German culture in the era of globalization. In France, angry farmers uprooted Monsanto's genetically engineered crops, claiming that they are a threat to French cultural sovereignty over food production. In Canada, local communities are fighting to keep out the giant Wal-Mart retail chain for fear it will replace traditional smalltown culture with surburban super malls.

". . . The advocates of globalization would argue that free and open trade and an expansion of commercial relationships and activities of all kinds are the keys to a brighter future for all. The flaw in this premise lies in the misguided assumption that commerce spurs culture when, in fact, the exact opposite is more often the case.

"The new cultural activities would argue that there is not an example in history where people first create commercial relations and then establish a culture. Commerce and government are secondary, not primary, institutions. They are derivative of the culture, not the progenitors of it. People first establish a common language, agreed-upon codes of behavior and a shared sense of purpose--to wit, social capital. Only when cultures are well developed is there enough social trust to support commercial and governmental institutions.

". . . Unfortunately, today, the cultural sector exists in a kind of neo-colonial limbo between the market and government sectors. Only by making local culture a coherent, self-aware political force will it be possible to re-establish its crucial role in the scheme of human society once again. Indeed, it may be time to establish a World Cultural Organization to represent diverse cultures around the globe, and give the 'WCO' an equal footing with the WTO (World Trade Organization) in international affairs."

Speaking at his son's funeral, Giuliano Giuliani said, "In the end, we all want the same thing: A better world, or, at least a less disgusting one." Thousands of Italians attended the funeral of Carlo Giuliani. Some of those who came to pay their respects wore t-shirts expressing their anger over the killing. One featured the words: "The killer's car: CC AE 217"--a reference to the license plate of the police vehicle that ran over Giuliani's dead body after he was shot. The victim's father, Giuliano, appealed for the government to answer for the death of his son. "That clash, [Carlo] certainly didn't seek it," said the elder Giuliani. "And the state should answer for this murder. I want an explanation."

In the days after Carlo's murder, the U.S.-based news magazine, The Nation reported that "Calls for a more aggressive investigation of the killing have grown louder following a report in the mass-circulation Corriere della Sera newspaper, which quoted an unnamed senior police officer as saying that the officials managing the response to the Genoa protests had deployed inexperienced and inadequately trained officers. 'There was no need to shoot to kill," the officer told the newspaper. "He could have fired in the air or at the boy's legs.'

"Leaders of the coalition of center-left opposition parties in the Italian parliament have called for the resignation of Interior Minister Claudio Scajola, a major player in the conservative Forza Italia party led by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Scajola has been the chief defender of police actions in Genoa. But the opposition is now charging that the police employed brutality protesters in Genoa.

"International voices have joined the chorus of Italians questioning Scajola's quick defense of the police and demanding a thorough investigation of what happened in Genoa . . . From the United States came a letter, addressed to Prime Minister Berlusconi, by U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga. An outspoken critic of police brutality in the U.S., McKinney expressed her concern that if justice is not done in the Genoa case 'doubts may arise about the existence of democracy within developed nations'."

The text of McKinney's letter read:

Dear Prime Minister Berlusconi:

During the recent G-8 Summit your nation hosted in Genoa, Italy, activists and protesters from a myriad of backgrounds and with a multitude of interests gathered to share their concerns about globalization, trade and the perceived threats to the global environment, indigenous communities and developing nations' economies.

I share many of their concerns, and appreciate their efforts to increase the profile of the inequality and exploitation involved in globalization. Unfortunately, their protest was marred by the murder of one young activist, Carlo Giuliani, who was shot twice in the head and then apparently run over by a Carabinieri vehicle. I would like you to know that I support the investigation and prosecution of police officers who are found to be responsible for this atrocity. As this is the first death to occur at a recent, large protest accompanying an international summit, I believe that care must be taken to insure that justice is correctly administered in this case. Otherwise, doubts may arise about the existence of democracy within developed nations - a parallel theme often voiced at such protests.

Further, like many in your nation, I oppose the death penalty in practice and in theory, and feel that the events surrounding the death of Mr. Giuliani resemble too closely a death sentence meted out by over-zealous law enforcement agents.

As is too often the case in the United States, it is my hope that those responsible for this death will not be excused. Please see to it that a full investigation pursues justice in the name of Carlo Giuliani, and for the sake of freedom and democracy in our global community.

Sincerely,
Cynthia McKinney
Member of Congress

Off-site Link: Carlo Giuliani.

53-54. Amy Goodman and a supporter of the radio show she hosts, Democracy Now! - June 2001.

One of the United States' leading journalists, Amy Goodman visited Minneapolis on June 9, 2001, to share her views of the corporate-owned news industry and the bitter nationwide struggle over the future of the 55-year-old non-profit Pacifica radio network.

Shortly after its debut in 1996, Democracy Now! became the flagship show of Pacifica, which owns stations in five cities and provides programming to dozens of listener-sponsored affiliates nationwide. Calling itself "the exception to the rulers," Democracy Now! is known for groundbreaking documentaries and incisive interviews. In 1998, Amy and Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill earned the George Polk Memorial Award for their documentary, "Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Miltary Dictatorship".

Despite its success, Democracy Now! has struggled to stay on the air. Pacifica's national board, controlled by corporate attorneys and Democratic Party insiders, has censored news coverage repeatedly and tried to force the crew of Democracy Now! to water down their work.

"Democracy Now! is quite simply, one of the most important shows on the radio today," says Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting senior analyst Steve Rendall. "Goodman's journalism is exemplary. Pacifica has rewarded her for years of dedicated work with threats, daily harassment and intimidation."

Outraged over the pressure on Amy, New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez resigned as her part-time co-host on January 31, 2001, so so to organize openly in her defense. Since then, he has led the Pacifica Campaign, whose peaceful protests and boycott activities aim to restore the network as a progressive alternative to both corporate-owned media and elite-serving National Public Radio (NPR).

For another photograph of Amy Goodman see Image 11 in Gallery 1.

Off-site Links: savepacifica.net and Democracy Now!

55. Marjorie Kelly, founder and publisher of Business Ethics magazine and author of The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy speaks at ReVisioning: Building Community for a Sustainable Future, a conference organized by grassroots activits in the Twin Cities and held at Macalaster College, St. Paul, April 26-28, 2002.

56. David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World and The Post-Corpoarte World: Life After Capitalism, at the ReVisioning conference in St. Paul, Minnesota, April 26-28, 2002.

"Humanity has reached the end of an era of empire and domination characterized by coercive hierarchy, competition, violence, the exploitation of people and nature, and a division of humanity into haves and have nots," said David.

"The human future depends on living into being a new era of community in which life is the defining cultural value, co-operation and partnership are society's organizing principles, and networking is the predominant organizational form. It will require replacing the culture and institutions of the global suicide economy with the culture and institutions of a planetary system of living economies that mirror the behavior of healthy living organisms and ecosystems."

Off-site Link: The People-Centered Development Forum.

57. Michael Albert (left), co-founder of South End Press, Z Magazine, Z Media Institure, and various online projects including Zmag.org, at the ReVisioning conference in St. Paul, April 2002. Author of over a dozen books, Michael works to create and nurture alternative media institutions, and develop and popularize alternative economic visions and strategies.

Off-site Link: Zmag.org.

58. John Karvel of the "democratic action circle" in Minnesota seeking to enact a Code for Corporate Responsibility (C4CR)--October 27, 2002.

C4CR is a grassroots movement that has the mission of transforming the legal purpose of corporations to include responsibility to employees, communities, and the environment. "Every corporation is created within state corporate charter laws," notes John. "By simply transforming this 'birth certificate,' corporations can be directed and permitted to do no harm."

John is relatively new to social activism and says he is motivated by his desire to "pass on a sustainable global society to my 10-year-old daughter and the idea that changing the very prupose of corporations will go a long way in achieving such a society."

Off-site Link: Code for Corporate Responsibility.

59. Rev. Robert Jeffrey, member of the Seattle-based Peoples' Coalition for Justice and executive director of the Black Dollar Days Task Force--Minneapolis, October 27, 2002.

After the shooting death of an unarmed African American man by police in Seattle in May of 2001, Rev. Jeffrey was instrumental in organizing a unique coalition that boycotted Starbucks and other corporations in downtown Seattle in an effort to make these corporations denounce police brutality and stand in solidarity with the community. Corporations were targeted as Rev. Jeffrey and others believe that corporate money fuels public policy and dictates public safety issues in ways that are not advantageous or safe for the the communities these same corporations say they serve.

Instead, corporate power pushes for police crackdown on inner cities and for the gentrification of inner city areas. In doing so they jeopardize the civil rights and the lives of many who are already disenfranchised because of their socio-economic status and/or skin color. This type of corporate influence over government is both undemocratic and unethical says Rev. Jeffrey. Accordingly, it must be challenged.

60. Face of Resistance - Washington, DC, April 24, 2004.

63. Naomi Klein, award-winning journalist and author of No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, an international best-seller which has been translated into more that 27 languages - Minneapolis, April 16, 2005.

Notes Nancy Sartor in the independent newspaper Pulse of the Twin Cities, "Looking at her lineage, it's no wonder that Naomi Klein found her calling in political activism. Her grandparents were radicals and her parents ditched the United States for Canada during the Vietnam War. Her mother was active in the anti-pornography movement . . . releasing the seminal anti-porn film This Is Not A Love Story. While still in her 20s, Klein published No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, a bestseller that challenged the growing power of international corporations. The book was dubbed the "movement Bible" by the New York Times, and Klein gained notoriety as a journalist and activist.

"She has traveled extensively throughout North America, Latin America, Asia, and Europe, tracking the rise of anti-corporate activism. She spent a year in Argentina, researching the plight of factory workers in Buenos Aires after the country's economy collapsed in 2001. The resulting documentary, Take That, written by Klein and directed by fellow Canadian and journalist Avi Lewis, was released in 2004."

Interviewd by Sartor in April 2005, Naomi Klien was asked to reflect on the anti-corporate movement five years after the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle.

"I think [the movement's] changed a lot," said Klein, "The significance of the Seattle protest was not that the movement was beginning, but that it was landing very decisively in North America because of opposition to the policies of [corporate-led] globalization, or what most of the world calls neo-liberalism, which is a package of policies that is based on privatizing essential central services. It's a belief that the role of government is essentially to facilitate investment for transnational corporations and create new investment opportunities - which is where privatization comes in - but also deregulation and downsizing of the state. There was certainly opposition to those policies in many forms pre-Seattle."

"In many parts of the world that opposition has gotten much stronger in recent years and has translated into political change, which you can see most clearly in Latin America. In the five years since Seattle, there has been a wave of electoral victories for progressive candidates and political parties who run on election campaigns that opposed this particylar development model - standing up to the International Monetary Fund, standing up to the World Bank, standing up to the United States."

64. Vandana Shiva - Minneapolis, April 16, 2005.

64. Internationally-renowned physicist Vandana Shiva founded and directs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, an independent research center based in Dehra Dun, India, and dedicated to addressing significant ecological and social issues.

In 1991, Vandana founded Navdanya, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seeds. She has worked extensively in the areas of intellectual property rights and bio-diversity. Biotechnology and genetic engineering comprise another dimension of Dr. Shiva's campaigning internationally, and she has helped movements in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Ireland, Switzerland and Austria with their campaigns against genetic engineering.

Her work has contributed in fundamental ways to changing the practice and paradigms of agriculture and food. Her books, The Violence of Green Revolution and Monocultures of the Mind have become basic challenges to the dominant paradigm of non-sustainable, reductionist Green Revolution Agriculture. Other works she has had published include the books India Divided: Diversity and Democracy Under Attack (2005), Protect or Plunder?: Understanding Intellectual Property Rights (2002), and Water Wars (2001).

65. Dennis Brutus, poet, activist and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh -- Washington, DC, April 24, 2004.

In apartheid South Africa of the 1960s, Dennis Brutus was an outspoken activist against the racist state. He was instrumental in securing South Africa's suspension from the Olympics, eventually forcing the country to be expelled from the games in 1970. He was arrested in 1963 and sentenced to 18 months of hard labor on Robben Island off Capetown, with Nelson Mandela. Brutus was banned from teaching, writing, and publishing in South Africa. His first collection of poetry, Sirens, Knuckles and Boots was published in Nigeria while he was in prison.

After he was released, Brutus fled South Africa on a Rhodesian passport. In 1983, after a protracted legal struggle,Brutus won the right to stay in the United States as a political refugee. He is now a professor of African Studiesand African Literature, and is Chair of the Department of Black Community Education Research and Development at the University of Pittsburgh. He was the first non-African American to receive the Langston Hughes Award in 1987 and was received the first Paul Robeson Award in 1989, for "artistic excellence, political consciousness and integrity."

Recently, Brutus's activism has focused on the economic and environmental impact of the IMF and World Bank policies in developing countries, and the connection of such policies to militarism and in particular, the so-called "War on Terror."