It has its roots in a dizzying variety of political traditions including revolutionaries (including amongst others various flavours of marxism and anarchism), religious fellowships (from radical christians to Ghandian Hindus), unionists (from national federations to rebellious locals), anti-neoliberals (from huge Aid NGOs like Oxfam to grassroots solidarity groups) and single-issue campaigners (enviromentalists, vegan militants, human rights groups).

I believe that its emergence as a unified movement can be traced by following two distinct threads. The encuentros against neoliberalism held in the Chiapas jungle by the Zapatistas that founded People's Global Action (PGA) and a small campaign by London Greenpeace against a fast food empire that turned into the 10 year Mclibel trial and the www.McSpotlight.org website.

It was PGA that launched a global campaign against the Multilateral Agreement on investment (MAI) which eventually saw it sink in a mire of corporate infighting. It was the PGA which distributed the callout for 'J18', a global day of action against the G8 on June 18 1999, the precursor to the infamous 'Battle of Seattle', N30.

On the other hand it was the grassroots London Greenpeace group and their "What's Wrong With Mcdonalds" leaflet that started first-world activists joining the dots between their different specializied campaigns and realizing that their shared enemies were the global business empires that were benefiting from the 'free trade' acronyms NAFTA, GATT, IMF, WTO, WEF etc that the Zapatistas and other third world movements were resisting.

The huge global campaign against Mcdonalds spurred by the infamous Mclibel trial provided a complementary network to the one being forged by the PGA. Much of the loose Mclibel network's communication and resource-sharing was done through the internet, especially the Mcspotlight website which became a rogues gallery of enviroment-wrecking, animal slaughtering, indigenous people-oppressing corporations.

As these two streams gradually converged over the course of the MAI campaign and J18 it became clear that the mainstream media, owend as it is by the same corporation interests the movement challenges, was never going to fairly represent the movement or its tactics. Thus the concept of Indymedia was born and the first Independent Media Centre was set up to cover N30, using free software written for a Sydney-based interactive website called Active.

During the series of global days of action that followed (J18, N30, A16, M1, S11, S26 etc) www.indymedia.org became an oasis of eyewitness reports, images and films covering not only the protests outside the summits AND the solidarity demos around the world but increasingly the day-to-day struggles of the grassroots groups against the corporate dictators whose interests the summits were representing.

The political ground shifted suddenly and radically on September 11 2001, the day known as 9/11. The movement was thrown onto the back foot as dissent was suppressed as terrorism and the focus of political demonstration shifted from anti-corporate to anti-war. As neo-conservativism replaces neoliberalism it is likely that 9/11 was the final nail in the coffin of multilateral trade supremacy. But this is not a defeat for global corporate power, just a change of tactics.

As the anti-corporate movement cautiously emerges from hiding and evolves to incorporate the newly radicalized peace movement and the alternatives dialogues of the Social Forum dynamic there is an exciting and challenging future ahead for advocates of global justice.

We live in interesting times.