Globalization critics say the World Economic Forum is a nerve center for neoliberal economics. Its members are the “top decision makers” of the political and business worlds. In an attempt to offset its image of a global establishment, the World Economic Forum has brought religious leaders, academics and experts, news media representatives and union leaders to join business leaders. WEF organizers also say that a quarter of the almost 3,000 participants have come from developing countries.

The pledge from the New York Police Department is that protesters at the World Economic Forum can expect a huge police presence, with zero tolerance for any violations of the law. While the police lockdown midtown Manhattan to protect conference delegates, delegates prepare to party at the stock exchange and the Four Seasons Restaurant. Other companies have booked landmarks like Le Cirque 2000 and Goldman & Sachs has reserved the Rainbow Room for a Super Bowl party on Sunday. But meanwhile, at puppet warehouses and organizing spaces across the city activists, artists, writers, and labor leaders are making their own preparations for the street festival of resistance outside the Waldorf in New York.

Today we are joined by to two anti-globalization activists who are working to plan demonstrations in New York.

Guests:

• Starhawk, author, Pagan Cluster organizer and anti-globalization activist
• Seydina Senghor, cofounder, Jubilee 2000, an organization working to cancel the debt in the global South

Related links:

• Starhawk
• NY Independent Media Center
• Students For Global Justice
• Another World Possible
• Anti-Capitalist Convergence
• Public Eye On Davos
• NYC People’s Law Collective