G20 Summit in Pittsburgh - Irony in Steeltown

On Thursday, September 24th, the New York Times reported on the preparations anti-globalization protesters in Pittsburgh were making to ensure their protestations were as effective as possible.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/getting-out-the-anti-globalization-message/?nl=us&emc=politicsemailema4

Pittsburgh became famous as a steel town. Its National Football League team is the Pittsburgh Steelers. It has more recently become a capital in the United States Rust Belt as the iron industries have fallen on hard times, notwithstanding the firms making steel from iron ore were global giants.

Ironically, the protesters have marshalled the resources provided by other global giants in information and communications technology to make sure their efforts were carefully coordinated and their message was instantly communicated around the globe. Does that make the protesters themselves globalizers?

Don't get me wrong, the protesters have great points to make. The world is steadily becoming a culturally poorer place because of the globalization being protested. An example of this is the great number of indigenous languages that promise to become extinct within a few generations.

Languages are not commodities. Languages present the world in unique perspectives. Many facets of our global reality are better understood because because different peoples talk to each other about what they see and learn.

Of course, globalization has exposed us to others' cultures and points of view. The dictates of efficiency in commerce within corporate bodies tend to argue in favour of sameness however.

Interestingly, people supposedly speaking the same first language use the same words and phrases differently, to the point of not being able to communicate with each other effectively at all.

I see the protesters focussing on corporate power as the dangerous levelling device destroying cultures around the globe. I suspect I am in the majority. I suspect that most of us see the protest being about corporate power.

What I don't see is a meaningful explanation as to what that means to you and me in our daily lives. What's the impact of the insidious or blatant exercise of this power?

Without those explanations and in the context of the setting of a much reduced Pittsburgh with a nearly extinct corporate wealth creator, job creator and carbon polluter, corporate power doesn't seem so permanent and therefore not so frightening.

It seems to me that irony makes selling of an ideal difficult as another idea than the one intended may be the one learned. Accidental irony, as in this case, I think has a high likelihood of disabling the protesters educational process completely.