10 Years Later: The Battle in Seattle and beyond

[blindpig]

10 Years Later: The Battle in Seattle and beyond

By Maude Barlow
October 2009

For many people, the mass demonstrations ten years ago in Seattle against the World Trade Organization appeared entirely spontaneous. In fact, they were the result of an unprecedented solidarity among disparate social groups and civil society organizations convinced that corporate globalization was failing the world, worsening environmental damage, and creating - not solving - global poverty.


The WTO was therefore already deeply controversial in the lead up to the 1999 Seattle summit. Overseeing a huge array of trade agreements on everything from food production and intellectual property to financial services and investment measures, the WTO had already been throwing its weight around with a powerful set of enforcement mechanisms since its birth in 1995. Unlike the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was effectively a business contract between nations, the WTO had been endowed with a “legal personality” and formidable powers of enforcement. It had also become clear that, in spite of the fact that decisions were to be made by vote or consensus, the real decision-making power was coalescing in the powerful countries known as the QUAD – the United States, the European Union, Japan, and Canada. Already a great divide was opening up between the global North and the global South.

Seattle was chosen to be the site for this summit because, for the first time, the event was largely funded by the private sector and it was necessary to find a city with deep-pocketed corporate funders. Bill Gates of Microsoft and Phil Condit of Boeing hosted a formidable team of corporate backers who were given privileged access to WTO officials and negotiators in exchange for financial backing. President Bill Clinton was hugely proud to sponsor this summit in his country and much was made of the welcome delegates and the 3,000 journalists from around the world would find in America.

What almost no one in authority foretold was the massive number of protesters who would also descend on Seattle (delighted that the less accessible Honolulu had not been chosen), deeply concerned about the ambitious corporate-friendly nature of the agenda and the fact that the event itself was so heavily dependent on corporate money. Protesters were dismissed as “a Noah’s Ark of flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unionists and yuppies looking for their 1960’s fix” by the New York Times, which was not alone in underestimating the legitimate, sophisticated and growing body of criticism against the WTO around the world.

http://www.canadians.org/trade/issues/WTO/1999/anniversary/10-years-later.html

more....

[Peace Patriot]

1. Excellent summary of the fight against "free trade for the rich"!

I was part of the Seattle protest, and I have never ever seen, or heard of, a more awesome civil disobedience protest than the one that shut down the WTO meeting in Seattle that day. I would just make one criticism of this account--the identification of the protestors who implemented this awesome protest as "youth protestors." A whole bunch of us were well past "youth." Lots of gray-haired old ladies and gentlemen, and middle-aged folks, in that beautiful action!

"Early morning before dawn, thousands of youth protesters converged on the Paramount Theatre near the Washington State Convention and Trade Center where the official ceremonies were to take place, and ringed it with a human chain impossible to break through. Highly disciplined groups placed themselves at strategic spots, blocking key intersections and preventing delegates from leaving their hotels. Official opening ceremonies were cancelled and for the first time in the city’s history, the mayor of Seattle called in the National Guard. By noon, an estimated 60,000 people left a rally at a downtown stadium, and while many headed for buses and home, many others headed to the convention center to join the thousands of direct action protesters on the streets."

------

One other comment: Brazil--whose new steelworker and labor organizer president, Lula da Silva, had won the Brazilian election (with more than 60% of the vote, in a runoff) a month after the Cancun WTO--played a critical role in organizing the Global South opposition within the WTO at Cancun. I think this should be mentioned because Lulu is now one of the great leaders of the leftist movement that has swept Latin America, along with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela (who had survived a US-supported rightwing military coup earlier in the year, due to an enormous, spontaneous protest against the coup in Caracas, and has enjoyed 60% approval ratings ever since).

While Lulu is not as far left/socialist as Chavez, they are in close accord on certain principles, namely, the sovereignty and independence of Latin American countries vis a vis the US and global predator corporations; opposition to "neo-liberalism" ("free trade for the rich") and to World Bank/IMF/WTO policy; the "raise all boats" philosophy (big countries helping little or weaker countries, for fairness and social justice reasons, as well as to pull the region together); political/economic integration, ultimately in a Latin American "common market" (UNASUR, formalized last summer in South America, and with Venezuela and Cuba helping Central American/Caribbean countries to form a regional trade group, ALBA), and solving poverty and other social injustices.

The Seattle protests were part of--and one of the sparks of--an historic movement that spans the globe. I have been particularly following this movement in Latin America. It is a very inspiring movement, considering the sad state of our own (hardly worthy of the name) democracy. But I know, having been involved in the Seattle protest, that there is hope for our democracy. Although we, the people, have been unable to stop horrible wars and other outrages committed in our name, and the massive looting of our country, what I know is that our people want to--as evidenced in Seattle and in many other ways since that time. And Latin America's movement gives me hope that it can happen here, too--and also has given me clues and lessons as to why it hasn't happened yet.

One of them is the takeover of our election system by corporate-run 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines. Latin Americans have done a lot of long hard work on their democratic institutions, with fair and transparent elections being a first priority and condition for change. In short, we cannot currently elect a Lulu da Silva or a Hugo Chavez--or, to take an example from our own history, an FDR. It is not possible. Those who are running our election system, and stealing our elections, will not permit it. We need to restore transparent vote counting before we can reform anything else, and start electing leaders who truly represent us.

[G_j]

2. a beauty of the "anti-globalization" movement

in those times, was the diversity of age.

truly awesome

[blindpig]

3. thanks for that

Great post, good to hear from someone who was there. We need more 'Seattles', a lot of them, until they come to understand the way of things.

[eridani]

4. Unfortunately there can only be one

People who want to organize another are in the position of the second guy to think of the Pet Rock ides.

[Peace Patriot]

5. Well, in fact, there have been much bigger marches--500,000 against the Iraq War in New York,

as I recall, post-Seattle--although not civil disobedience actions (which have been small, compared to Seattle). And there was quite a protest against the FTAA, which was effective at scuttling the FTAA.

But I wonder why you have this rule: "There can only be one." Why say that? Peoples' movements build over time, sometimes taking many decades--and even centuries--to mature. The anti-slavery movement started in Greece in 73 BC! That slave rebellion then inspired the Abolitionists of the 19th Century! Peoples' rebellions create waves that ripple through history and around the world. The Seattle wave is still in motion--as the article points out--across Latin America all the way to Asia and reaching into Africa. It's only a matter of time before this tidal wave of social justice returns, here, where our people are now being grossly looted and exploited. I would say, to the corpo-fascists who are running things, 'You ain't seen nothin' yet.'

[eridani]

6. But in popular perception, people think of that huge march right before

--the Iraq war as THe antiwar event. Other subsequent marches tend not to be remembered as individual events. I think the same applies to WTO protests.