Avi Lewis speaks in long, comprehensive sentences that contain numerous references to local and international politics. Within a single answer, he moves from his latest project (documentary The Take) to the American media, to the benefits of globalization within the protest culture.
With this film, an account of the events in Argentina directly following the collapse of the country’s fragile economy, Lewis had the opportunity to spend extended time with an evolving subject, and results were both inspiring and surprising.
“Our film takes place in what happened next, which was an explosion of grassroots democracy,” Lewis, who directed the doc, says.
He describes the workers’ efforts as “a democracy lab, in a way, where there were popular assemblies of neighbours meeting and talking about how to create work in their communities, and how to protest against the government. There was a turning away from representative democracy as a means of affecting social change. And there were incredibly inspiring social movements making actual gains there after the cameras left and the attention of the world was elsewhere.”
The film also counters charges often aimed at prominent leftists such as him and his partner and co-conspirator on the project, superstar author and columnist (and former Varsity editor) Naomi Klein (who wrote and produced the film with Lewis).
“The film is our answer to the challenge, ‘We know what you’re against, but what are you for?’ The opposite of our politics is to say ‘This is the answer,’ or ‘This is the alternative.’ We’re tired of protesting-we know what’s wrong the system, and we want to go beyond critique; let’s find something that we’re fighting for.”
The Take is their resounding response to this question, and documents a movement of workers that constructed alternatives by occupying closed factories and taking them over. In short, enacting change themselves, rather than waiting for their governments to bail them out.
“That’s why we called the film ‘The Take,’ Lewis notes. “The ‘take’ is the spirit that informs a lot of differences for social movements around the world, and the occupied factories in Argentina are one of them. It’s what Naomi calls ‘the new impatience.'”
The film capitalizes on this social phenomenon, and the burgeoning popularity of the documentary form as a social movement (Fahrenheit 911, Super Size Me et al). Lewis sees the trend as having ramifications on the global community in that it embodies a positive movement.
“I hate the term ‘anti-globalization.’ It’s so inaccurate. We are a globalization movement,” he stresses. “We believe in globalization. We believe in the globalization of struggle. We believe in the globalization of democracy.”
This concept of the free movement of ideas inspired change in our own country when “Alcan workers occupied their plant working explicitly on the model of Argentina, which they learned though the independent media. They occupied their plant and put it back into production,” Lewis explains. “They sold $1.1 million [worth] of aluminum in ten days. Their productivity went through the roof. That’s not anti-globalization. That’s globalization.”
Lewis and Klein chose to focus specifically on Argentina as it was the site where IMF pressure and the rapid privatization of national industries took place first. They suggest this model has ramifications in other nations, including Iraq.
“Until Iraq, Argentina was probably the most extreme example of the embrace of this neo-liberal economic model,” says Lewis. “They privatized everything. Even the street signs in Buenos Aires are brought to you by MasterCard. That is what the government did in privatizing the state companies-they created a massive unemployment crisis.”
In Iraq, however, “they went another step further. They erased the government of that country and its constitution and they replaced it with a set of laws that were imposed by an occupying military force. Essentially, they allow for 100 percent foreign ownership of Iraqi companies-even in the worst dictatorships they always had 51 percent and they’d elect some local corrupt CEO or warlord to own the other 49 percent.
“They had a chance to start from scratch and impose it all at one time. So they did in three months in Iraq what it took 30 years to do in Argentina.”
Lewis hopes that his film will inspire others to follow the Argentinian model of resistance, but also offers advice for those who want to get involved, but might not know where to start.
“The fundamental question that faces all of us, once we’ve watched The Corporation and we’ve seen the Michael Moore films and we’ve immersed ourselves in Chomsky, and we know what’s wrong with the system and we’re really articulate about the failings of the system, is, ‘What do we do?’
“I’m a little bit reluctant to answer that question for people because I think the process-and the process that I’ve gone through myself as a political animal-is intensely personal. You have to look at yourself and what you’re good at. I think the key is to find winnable local struggles and to connect those local struggles in a wider global network. Study what other people are doing in other parts of the world and think about what you can learn from it locally.”
Lewis hopes he’s done his own small part with this film, his feature-length directorial debut (he made a short film in 2002 and is well known for his role as unflappable host of CBC Newsworld’s late, great scrappy debating program Counterspin, as well as political coverage on MuchMusic during the 1990s).
“The spirit of our film, I can see all kinds of ways that it connects to struggles in Canada in specific communities that are facing specific issues, revolutionary ideas. I don’t want to say what they are, because I want people to see the film and get their [own] inspiration from it.”
