No dictator is so strong that his power cannot be evaded. No dictator can give orders where the will to obey him does not exist. Concentration camps, Siberia, slave labor, tortures and death penalties have their narrow limits, because the will to non-obedience, to resist brute force, is, in the end, infinitely stronger than the will to attack or to exercise similar brute force.--B. Traven

It has become a widely repeated truism that the 21st century began on September 11, 2001--"the day everything changed."

It might be fair to say that the 20th century ended irrevocably on that day, but the 21st century arrived a little bit earlier, on November 30, 1999.

Unlike the trademarked War on Terrorism, and its nostalgia for a dying world order, the people that shut down the WTO's Seattle ministerial were responding to a query from the future. The New American Century turns out not to be, as both the neo-conservatives and neo-liberals alike envisioned it, unchallenged American economic and political rule, but instead, the century when Americans finally join the world community.

Donald Rumsfeld penned the farewell note to the 20th Century on 9-11, when he wrote, "sweep it all up, things related and not." It was to be the 20th century all over again, US supremacy with draconian powers, unending war, medals and contracts all around. The dream of men frightened of the future, hoping to turn back the clock through arrogance and brute force.

The message from the streets of Seattle was not to the past, but to another possible world. It was not only a shake up call in the centers of capital. The news of Seattle, beamed out to the streets, farms and factories of the wider world spread the word that the people of the USA had finally burst out of our consumer cocoon. And they saw the results.

An unnamed alliance was formed on that day, the alliance of the voiceless, more powerful than any "international coalition," against the "terrorists" of the week. Unlike the economic elite's yearning for a passing era, when the few benefit themselves at the expense of the many, the new alliance of the once isolated is forcing the few to give up their looted wealth and power. And it dreams of a world where these hierarchies of hunger and violence no longer exist.

In this imperfect world, with its imperfect humans, it's doubtful that this new world will be the end of all violence, corruption and greed, but that's the dream--and every noble endeavor begins with a dream. Just as every failed authoritarian project begins with a canned plan, insisting that the world return to a more manageable state.

Shortly after 9-11, the World Trade Organization held its first ministerial in the monarchy/dictatorship of Qatar, on of the few refuges it could find from the world's people. It became a common theme in the press that the movement born in Seattle had lost its momentum following 9-11. Problems with organizing in the new mood were cited, the world's concern with security, Americans terrified patriotism, the wave of good will toward America sweeping the planet. The anti-corporate globalization movement was counted as another bit of wreckage lying beneath the smoldering towers of the World Trade Center.

Wishful thinking on the part of those anxious to revive the 20th Century, if not the 19th. The movement against greed driven capitalism and its wars, both the ones in the headlines and the quieter ones carried out one village at a time is stronger than ever, while the empire of money has never looked so pale and lost.

The community that recognized itself in the winter of 1999 wasn't created in Seattle. It was born in the mountains of Chiapas, in the streets of Manilla, Johannesburg and Buenos Aries and the farms of the Nalanda Valley in India. It never depended on the attention of the Americans for its survival.

And even before the Cancun WTO ministerial laid to rest any doubts about the movement's good health, the planet wide march of millions on February 15, 2003 against the invasion of Iraq made it clear this newly discovered world community was going to continue to make its voice felt.

The marches didn't "shut down," the war. But they had an effect in the power centers of the globe, and an effect on possible wars to come.

Obsessed with their fantasy plan for retaining control, the architects of corporate state power can't respond to the challenges from below springing up all around them. They can hardly accurately identify the challenges before it is too late.

While the American Empire has gotten itself entangled in a losing battle in Iraq, non-violent people power in its Latin America backyard have been steadily ousting corrupt US puppet governments one by one.

The latest to go was in Bolivia, whose president hoped to save himself by having the army shoot several hundred protesters. The immediate and outraged backlash drove him out of office within a week. In other places, like Brazil and Venezuela, the changes came through the ballot box. While in Argentina, the regime that had been steadily selling off the country's infrastructure to the most well connected buyers collapsed under its own absurd logic.

These non-violent revolutions have been led by indigenous people, by the campesinos, the poor, the ones who have, for half a millennium, viewed as an obstacle to the proper ordering of the Americas.

The Bush Administration, responding to the situation n their characteristically obsolete fashion is trying to pin the blame on "hardline leftists," who have infiltrated the popular movements of South America. There is worried talk of the problem spreading to other countries in the region.

They needn't worry too much about Bolivia exporting its revolution. The revolution is welling up from the ground all over the world. It doesn't need to be exported. The unified world touted by the proponents of corporate globalization has brought the same misery to all of the people it has touched. And in the winter of 1999 the world saw that even within the heart of the labyrinth, the mythical overfed and uniformed Americans were standing up to the insatiable demands of the monster.

No one ever fought the struggle alone after that moment. What had before been determined attempts here and there to rescue some small shred of life was suddenly a planet wide movement, with its eye on victory. This didn't make the individual struggles themselves less dangerous, it didn't "shut down," the destruction in one day. But Toto had pulled aside the wizard's curtain to reveal a shaky and confused old man, desperately trying to hold together a shifting world with parlor tricks.

The horrors of the Patriot Act, extrajudicial detentions, the whiff of martial law, the futile violence of the authorities to rescue their own stupid dreams were all played out in the streets of "liberal," Seattle in the week of N30. It was then that anyone who cared to look could see for themselves how quickly power, whether Republican or Democrat would resort to illegal violence to maintain the world in its own cherished image. And it was that week that we all could see how useless those measures will be in the end.

Osama bin Laden, like Saddam Hussein and George Bush will fade into the mists of history like so many hungry ghosts. Hoping to hold onto a past order of absolute authority, the one correct answer to every problem, the tradition of sending others to kill and die to maintain their positions.

That world was shown vulnerable by puppets and dancing in the streets and people from one end of American society to the other standing with their sisters and brothers around the world up and saying "no!" Ya Basta!.

The policies of privatization and neoliberal loan sharking are foundering in the newly independent capitols of Latin America, The political leaders are determined to make the people swallow it, like Mexico's Vicente Fox are increasingly isolated and facing mounting opposition. Just as important, people are experimenting with new theories of commerce and politics. Cooperative, sustainable and Fair Trade projects are springing up from Seattle to Argentina to India, forming the new networks that will replace the failed policies of sweatshop globalization.

That old world hasn't accepted its defeat of course. Denial is the first stage of the grieving process. And that world will inflict more grief before it gurgles its last greedy breath. But the river of history keeps flowing toward the sea while tyrannies, one after the other, slip silently beneath the waters.