Eighty-five thousand members of the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers from Maine to Virginia face a showdown with Bell Atlantic on August 5 over the issue of organizing rights at its new subsidiaries.

They didn't start in Seattle. Protests against the impact and institutions of corporate globalization have been mounting around the world for some time. As global capital pokes its sticky fingers into one corner of the planet after another in search of profits, disrupting lives and communities, destroying jobs and the environment, spreading low-wage high-stress work, and subordinating entire nations to its goals, resistance has grown.