#53: “Anti-Globalization” Walking Tour of Washington, D.C.

The Ex-Worker

Our first walking tour! Protesters descending on Washington, D.C. to #DisruptJ20 are stepping into a long history of resistance in the belly of the beast. One of the most innovative and powerful cycles of protest in the nation’s capital was the movement against corporate globalization in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Most tours of D.C. take you around the monuments and museums downtown, but we want to show you another side of the city—the neighborhoods and DIY spaces from which anarchists launched attacks on capital and where seeds were planted for a new world to take its place. Through historic sites, interviews, and a scrapbook of anti-capitalist mementos, we hope to pass on some of the lessons and inspiration that the anti-globalization movement can offer, especially as a new wave of struggle begins under Trump. {January 9, 2017}

-------SHOW NOTES------

• We’ve put together a YouTube version of the walking tour with the photos included at our YouTube channel
• Anarchist history is not for books you can close and set away on a shelf. Use the lessons and inspiration from this episode to get active. You can start next week with the #DisruptJ20 anti-inaugural activities in DC on January 20th.
• We discuss and sample multiple documentaries about the mass anti-corporate globalization protests that took place during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Many of these can be found online, like This Is What Democracy Looks Like, Breaking the Spell, Breaking the Bank, The Miami Model, and the highly recommended Crowd Bites Wolf.
• The excerpt from the A16 Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc statement came from The Black Bloc Papers, which is a great resource for understanding that part of early 2000s anarchism.
• We discuss a bunch of different groups in this episode, including the DC Anti-Capitalist Convergence, Positive Force, APOC, Profane Existence, and Indymedia.
• Upcoming prisoner birthdays:

  Sundiata Acoli 39794–066 FCI Cumberland Post Office Box 1000 Cumberland, MD 21501 {January 14th}

  Herman Bell 79-C–0262 Great Meadow Correctional Facility 11739 State Route 22 Post Office Box 51 Comstock, NY 12821–0051 {January 14th}

  Joseph “Joe Joe” Bowen AM–4272 1 Kelley Drive Coal Township, PA 17866–1021 {January 15th}

  Marius Mason #04672–061 FMC Carswell Federal Medical Center Post Office Box 27137 Forth Worth, TX 76127 {January 26th}

• January 24th is the International Day of Solidarity with Trans Prisoners. Do something in your community