“The quad, with its double memory of shared, common space —the meadow and the agora — turns now to become private, and will be defended by military force from the public real or imagined. The student union, larded now with private franchises from the gleaming new food court to the corporate travel agency (there used to be a bank here as well, we gather) must be protected by the university and the District Attorney on behalf of the public.”
…
“The first scene is that of enclosure, the privatizing by force of common lands that inaugurates the modern world of employers and employees, commodities and wages, blood and fire. The second scene is that of globalization, wherein every corner of the earth must be drawn into the dream of liberal democracy, open to all — in so far as every corner of the earth might thereby become another outpost of the market, hiring a few, dispossessing a few more, and assuring that commerce is equally available to each with sufficient coin in purse. The whole history of capitalist modernity in four months!”
[full article (Bicycle Barricade)]