No Logo

Klein discusses the ragtag Reclaim the Streets (RTS) movement as an example of the attempt to seize street culture back from its commodification by advertising and its criminalization by the police (311).

RTS began in 1993 as a spontaneous protest movement to prevent the destruction of 350 houses in order to create a new expressway at Claremont Road in London (313-14). A combination of occupation, street blockade, and performance art, the protest initiative was ultimately unsuccessful. However, the Claremont Road experience gave rise to coordinated public actions with like-minded individuals in the rave and cycling communities (314-16). By 1997, RTS was able to draw 20,000 people to a street party at Trafalgar Square in London.

According to Klein, this “act of civil disobedience that is also a festival” has not been without drawbacks, such as the risk of spontaneous violence and the destruction of property (317-18). Still, the success of the first-ever Global Street Party, organized in May 1998 to protest the gathering of the G8 leaders in Birmingham, England, showed that RTS can be a form of focused political engagement (319-22). Parallel events took place across the globe, from Sydney, Australia, to Berkeley, California. The “immediate international response provoked by nothing more than a few E-mail notices,” Klein writes, “proved that there is both the potential and the desire for a truly global protest against the loss of public space” (321).  

In this chapter, Klein offers a broad overview of the rise in anticorporate activism and awareness in the 1990s.

According to Klein, two distinct but related stages of opposition to major brands and multinational companies emerged in the mid-1990s. The first was the “Year of the Sweatshop” (327-29). In 1995-96, a series of journalist investigations exposed the reliance of corporations such as the Gap, Nike, Disney, and Walmart on sweatshop labor, both in the United States and abroad. This increase in negative coverage and the attendant public outrage precipitated a second phase, the “The Year of the Brand Attack” (330-39). Klein cites the creation of the anti-GMO (genetically modified organics) movement, the outrage generated by the execution of Nigerian anti-oil activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, and the boycott against businesses dealing with the military dictatorship in Myanmar as events that catalyzed public consciousness about the abuses of corporate power across the globe.

The spike in anticorporate opposition in the 1990s raises an important question: Why now? As Klein notes, the 1970s and 1980s had similar campaigns, like the Nestle boycott and the anti-apartheid movement directed against South Africa (336-38). Moreover, she argues, one of the most horrific examples of the costs of modern globalization, the 1993 Kader toy factory fire in Thailand that claimed the lives of 188 sweatshop workers, went largely unnoticed at the time (332). “What happened in 1995,” she writes, “was a kind of ‘“click’“ on the part of both the media and the public” (334). This critical mass of anticorporate awareness led to the widespread recognition that multinational brands are “the most powerful political forces of our time,” wielding a degree of economic might that outstrips the GDP of entire nations (339-40).

Modern corporations’ rapacious quest for public visibility and integration with every facet of life thus brought about increased scrutiny of labor and environmental practices all over the world. Klein argues that the brand, once the ubiquitous insignia of corporate power and influence, has become a point of vulnerability (343).

Chapter 15 continues Klein’s focus on anticorporate activism and consciousness-raising. The central theme here is the use of branding messaging and imagery to expose the contradiction between a company’s carefully constructed identity and its dependence on unsavory labor and/or environmental policies. 

Klein uses science fiction author Neal Stevenson’s term “loglo” to designate the universal power and recognition that attaches to globalized marketing and branding (349). Because certain brands are so well known all over the world, a kind of common language develops within which activists can articulate critical claims about corporate practices.

For instance, Lora Jo Foo, president of Sweatshop Watch, pins clothing labels on a map to visualize the origins of branded merchandise in developing nations (347-48). Similarly, the National Labor Committee (NLC), headed by Charles Kernaghan, has staged numerous sensational events designed to highlight the dubious labor practices of major corporations (350-54). Examples include extravagant, costumed demonstrations outside the Disney store in Manhattan as well as filming the reactions of Haitian sweatshop workers when informed of the true retail value of their products in North America.

For Klein, these efforts to bring forth and publicize the global production process behind the sale of branded consumer goods acts as an important educational initiative against corporate malfeasance. “Now that the corporations have spun their own global rainbow of logos and labels,” she writes, “the infrastructure for genuine international solidarity is there for everyone to see and use” (357). When factory workers in far-flung EPZs and FTZs learn about the actual sale price of their wares, struggles for better pay and working conditions become clearer and more urgent. Likewise, when Western consumers understand the implications of their purchases for exploited populations in other countries, resistance to the corporate status quo becomes a pressing matter. Even shareholders at major companies like Disney have begun to question the ethics of the economic relations that buttress bloated CEO salaries and performance bonuses (361-63).

According to Klein, the “fiber-optic cables and shared cultural references” created by globalization thus lay “the foundations for the first truly international people’s movement” (357). No one is unaffected; everyone is called on to respond.