What exactly is globalization? Globalization is a new movement whose protagonists are powerful suits pitted against scruffy protesters prone to catapulting teddy-bears over barricades. No, globalization is actually the movement accidentally set off by Spanish Queen Isabella when she defeated the last of the Moors, expelled the Jews and sent Christopher Columbus -of disputed nationality- on a wild goose chase that culminated in the discovery of a goose that to this day lays the golden eggs that the ever growing appetites of €uro and U$ citizens salivate over. But in fact, globalization is even older than that. It all began when a globe started gyrating and churning a potent brew that solidified into mountains and melted into oceans and gave rise to interdependent life systems. The ancient Greeks understood the power behind this globe and called it Gaia or Earth Goddess. British geochemist James Lovelock and American microbiologist Lynn Margulis went a step further and concluded that Gaia is indeed a self-regulating life system, which makes gentle or violent corrections concomitant with the force of a given threat.

So what's globalization again? It is all of the above and much more. Much has been said about corporate globalization and institutions like WTO, the World Bank, the IMF and other oversized predators, but it is time to start paying attention to “the mosquito cloud” which, according to Manfred Max-Neef, spokesperson for alternative social movements, “is more powerful that the rhinoceros. It grows and grows, buzzes and buzzes”.

Where do these mosquitoes breed? They breed where there are stagnant economies, they buzz around industrial stink-holes, they procreate in the heat of conflict, they pullulate in urban misery and they adapt and transform themselves in the face of adversity. These mosquitoes, like the DDT resistant Anopheles, will continue to resist the onslaught of a toxic species that has not yet understood that Darwin was all wrong. Life on this planet is not about the survival of the fittest, but about the survival of all. Even parasites understand that when they overwhelm their host organism, they themselves will perish.

And who are these mosquitoes anyway? They have names like El Barzón, an organization of Mexican debtors defending themselves against the usury of banks. They have grey hair like Medha Patkar, of the Narmada Bachao Andolan movement in India trying to stem the irreversible damaged caused by the Narmada Valley megadam project. They have eloquent voices like Subcomandante Marcos, who speaks for the silenced indigenous populations of Mexico. They have academic prestige like German economist Gunder Frank, who explains that corporate globalization is at least five thousand years old. They are anonymous like the graffiti artist who scratched the following message on a wall in Bogotá: “Let's leave pessimism for better times”.

Indeed, we cannot afford to be pessimistic. We, the people, have numbers working in our favour. We have hands. We have our own unique mind. We have a heart.

Which is why Montreal Serai dedicates this issue to the globalization of people power.