Web Traps Mighty Foe
Environmental and labor groups...used the Internet
as a weapon, digging up information
and exchanging it instantly.
By William Lucy
A few years ago the Big Money people got together and rammed NAFTA down our throats. The North American Free Trade Agreement has proven to be everything we warned about: It’s a money tree for the few and misery for the many. When NAFTA was passed, our side didn’t have the power or the smarts to win. But, Sisters and Brothers, times change, and so do things at the grassroots.
A couple of columns back I wrote that Big Money was back at the free-trade trough for another pig-out. This time they were after something called the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), which one magazine described as "NAFTA on steroids." The whole thing personified Corporate America’s "I got mine — the public be damned" attitude that has resulted in increasing CEO pay 499 percent between 1980 and 1994 while workers had to settle for 9 percent.
The MAI pact was being negotiated in secret by the 29 nations of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, including the United States. Every major corporate interest you can think of was there to offer generous participation and support. By April 28 they were supposed to finish up, and then they were going to railroad MAI through the U.S. Senate.
Just in case you don’t remember, MAI was a wish list for billionaires. Its stated purpose was to pave the way for a global economy by giving capital greater freedom to buy, sell, locate or move anywhere, anytime. But leaked copies of the secret draft told another story: MAI’s real purpose was to enable Big Money to make the biggest possible profits at the lowest possible risk by just about totally ignoring worker rights, environmental regulations — and even the powers of sovereign governments.
When the negotiators’ deadline arrived, they had to vote to put MAI on the shelf for a later date. And that brings us to the really good part.
MAI was derailed by grassroots action. Environmental and labor groups around the world, including AFSCME, used the Internet as a weapon, digging up information and exchanging it instantly. For example, a few months ago someone managed to get their hands on a draft of the MAI and immediately posted it on a Web site for all the world to see. That generated a major public backlash.
Finally, hundreds of other advocacy groups were aroused by this information to galvanize opposition to the treaty all over the world — including here in the United States.
The moral of this tale is that the Internet represents an opportunity — a potential for impact — that no union can afford to ignore in these times. That’s why the International Union is working on a total makeover of AFSCME’s chief home page. The new site will be faster, easier to use, and more interactive, and is also being designed to serve as an organizing tool.
Every local in AFSCME should be thinking about the Internet. In fact, every local with a computer could develop its own home page without great trouble, as quite a few already have. Their sites include meeting notices, contracts, news, the local’s constitution, status of negotiations, etc. Perhaps even more important, they can open communication with millions of men and women up against the same problems: privatization, paycheck deception, cutbacks, displacement, you name it.
The Internet is the perfect grassroots tool: it’s cheap, easy to use, and — as the MAI case illustrates — it can be devastatingly effective. With it, each one of us has a new and better opportunity to make our voice heard, and God knows that we need that voice to be louder than ever before. Big Money and the right wing are determined to put unions out of business, and AFSCME — as one of the most active unions in the country — is at the top of their hit list.
