AUT: 1/2 Sherwood round table - Seattle and after

[pmargin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Steve Wright)]

What follows is a draft translation of the first two thirds of an article
recently posted at Radio Sherwood's web site. The last question put to
participants was "What scenarios are opening up after Seattle?"; I hope to
post their responses in the next day or so.

Any comments on the translation itself are more than welcome - for example,
I have tended to render "liberismo" as "neo-liberalism", although some
might argue with that.

Steve

______

Three Questions on Seattle- Sherwood Tribune 5 (22/12/99)
(www.sherwood.it/tavrot.html)


We have experimented by bringing together, in a sort of "virtual round
table", a range of subjects to whom we have posed the same three questions
concerning the Seattle revolt. A starting point for bringing into contact,
through debate in our journal, people, realities and experiences separated
by distances which are only geographical. In the process, we feel that
we've captured the spirit of the type of communication that characterised
Seattle. Those participating are:

* Pierluigi Sullo, journalist, and editor of the magazine "Carta";
* Fabrizio Fabbri, Campaign Director of Greenpeace Italia;
* Paolo Cento, Italian Greens MP;
* Patrice Vidieu, member of the Confédération Paysanne, Via Campesina;
* Yann Moulier-Boutang, editor of "Multitudes";
* Joshua Freeze, Austin Branch, Industrial Workers of the World;
* Sergio Baffoni, Local Group Coordinator of Greenpeace Italia.

1. What are your personal feelings about the Seattle events?

Sullo: Getting up that morning, I couldn't resist watching the morning news
on TV. I'm also lucky to have access to France2, which is much better,
relatively speaking, than RAI or Mediaset. Then at work I set to searching
the Internet. In this way I was quickly able to assemble a mass of timely
"sources" which, while partisan, were reliable and different from the press
and television. Just as has happened in recent years with the Zapatista
rebellion in Chiapas. In short, it's become possible to produce your own
"newspaper" outside the newspapers themselves. The impulse to seek news in
this way prompts other reflections in turn. There's obviously a lot in
common between the Zapatista insurrection of 1994 and the Seattle days of
1999. There's a causal nexus, a before and after. This is confirmed in the
splendid article that  Luìs Hernàndez Navarro wrote for the Mexican daily
"La Jornada" (and which can be found at that paper's web site). The feeling
that came over me, with some enthusiasm (although time has admonished me to
be prudent, balanced . . .) is that Seattle has revealed, in the space of a
few days as often is the case (there are days that equal years, someone
once said), precisely at the end of the century (a symbolism that is
accidental but very powerful) and in the heart of the empire itself, the
birth of a new collective will.

Fabbri: The Seattle events have contributed in a determinate manner to
spreading the message that our daily lives clash with the unscrupulous
connivances of a section of the world of information, and political and
economic global interests. The demonstrations have possibly opened the eyes
of millions of citizens to "be on guard" to the risk that all the decisions
concerning society's productive future be based on the laws of the market
and mere profit alone.

Cento: The motivation of what happened at Seattle was experienced both
through the delegations of Italian Greens present at the WTO summit, and
above all through the movement's formidable capacity to erupt into the mass
media's communication. The analogous initiatives that occurred in some
Italian cities such as Rome have brought to life the political and social
complexity of what happened in Seattle.

Vidieu: I experienced it intensely, obviously, like many of the people who
were there in this great movement. A very active and dynamic week. I
experienced it with many surprises. The first of these was seeing the
Americans, the number of American groups mobilised. But also to see many
American farmers with us. I was surprised to see the importance that the
mobilisation had assumed, and then was happy to be able to meet other
farmers from around the world within the ineternational movement of which
we, the Confédération Paysanne, Via Campesina, are part.

Moulier-Boutang: As the resumption of a cycle of struggles opened with the
successful strike of the casualised UPS workforce in the United States. As
the defeat of the blackmail through financial crisis that we had narrowly
avoided last year. As the swansong of neo-liberalism (liberismo). From the
point of view of subjectivities, it is a formidable staging post.

Freeze: This is symbolic of a turning point in the mobilization of the left
in the United States.  There have been demonstrations with more people, and
there have been riots, but it has been decades since the working class in
the US has participated in political action in the streets.  This is also
the first time in decades that the US union federation, the AFL-CIO has
taken a public stand against a major goal of the Democratic Party.  The
level of militancy of various unions, especially the Steel Workers,
hopefully indicates an increasing willingness on the part of workers and
unions to oppose bad policy directly, rather than relying only on lobbyists
in Washington DC.

Baffoni: Greenpeace experienced the Seattle days directly, both within the
convention centre and without, participating in the demonstrations,
following the events, the policy debates, the negotiations with an
international delegation. In fact it was at Seattle that we tabled our
report on "Secure Trade in the 21st Century", which contains the eight key
recommendations that Greenpeace considers absolutely necessary for the
opening of the WTO to civil society and for the protection of the
environment. They were intense days altogether, marked by a rapid flow of
news stories, and by the feeling that something had occurred which went
beyond the immediate: the affirmation of new forms of activism which across
a decade of experimentation have begun to become a common legacy.

2. What was innovative about the mobilisations?

Sullo: From what I could understand, not being there myself, the miraculous
equilibrium that allowed quite different organised social fragments, from
unions to environmentalists, from North Americans to Indians etc., to be
together without giving up their own identity - on the contrary,
structuring it better, through accomplishing together such a radical thing
as physically and politically impeding the WTO summit. As a polyphonic
declaration: social and civil rights, whose affirmation implies democratic
and transnational control over economic forces, are the new world
narrative. The medium, beyond words ("The flower of the word must not die",
as Marcos says), is nonviolent struggle (which, as we have seen, does not
mean unwarlike struggle). In our own little way, we have seen a
confirmation of this hypothesis in the project upon which many of us work
together, in what we call the "Social Work-in-progress" [translators' note:
this is a network of social centres and community groups in Italy, linked
to the journal "Carta"].

Fabbri: Reviewing the mass movement - or better, movements - at work it is
the motive of hope and the strength to continue to work for different
global rules for all those active in social and environmental associations.

Cento: This mobilisation has made visible for the first time a widespread
mass critique of free trade and the priorities of profit. After the fall of
the Berlin wall, globalisation has revealed its other face and entered into
crisis. The unheard of alliance between ecologists, workers and unions, and
local communities - above all those from the global South - has confirmed
that it is possible to construct, around ecological priorities, a social
bloc able to transform radically the priorities on the political agenda of
the global powers-that-be.

Vidieu: According to us, and as was our objective, the mobilisations
expressed a reappropriation, on the part of citizens and all the movements
and organisations present at Seattle, of the political sphere, of the
public sphere. In this sense they were like a flash illuminating the WTO,
which usually prefers to work in the shadows. And this was very important
for us! On the other hand, the Seattle days express the diversity of
movements, the occasion of a strong exchange of ideas concerning
neo-liberalism and its perverse effects upon workers, and above all upon
the farmers of the whole world, and it was this last ambit that most
concerned me in Seattle. The various interventions of citizens from across
the world demonstrated that neo-liberalism has devastating effects on
subsistence agricultures and that the forced importations and quotas
imposed by the Marrakesh Accord are destroying the South's capacity for
subsistence and consequently destroying farmers.

Moulier-Boutang: Straight up I want to add to what I said back in September
in the seminar organised by "La Monde Diplomatique", namely that free trade
(liberismo) has always, historically, been a phase of transition in
capitalist change. Ever since the speculator Soros wrote a book against the
danger of anarchy in markets, ever since the rhythm of mergers amongst
gigantic firms accelerated, there's been no mistaking the enemy, or need to
fall back into a rearguard struggle. The true power to be fought against is
not the market but capitalism (a distinction made by Braudel, as everyone
knows). The rules of the market, such as they are, are democratic (a great
number of small capitalists, of small firms, . . . of self-eimployed
workers), but are constantly violated by the large multinational
corporations and by the monopolistic Mega-States, that alternate between
free trade and protectionism at their convenience. From this point of view,
the defeat of Monsanto over genetically modified organisms (GE), when
(apparently at least) it had to renounce its Terminator seed, and the
American government's pronouncement that genomes could not be patented,
were fundamental victories that preceded Seattle. Combined with a genreal
rethink about nuclear power, the growth of the concept of precaution finds
and designates new paths that the power [potenza] of the multitude must
undertake against the bio-power that is becoming the strategic articulation
of the 21st century sovereign or Leviathan. The same thing goes for
Microsoft. We are entering into a new Progressive Era. The question we must
pose ourselves is the following: why is capitalism itself abandoning the
neo-liberal utopia and seeking to sack, on the grounds of professional
ineptitude, the Cambdessus of the IMF, the leaders of the WTO . . .?
Probably because neo-liberalism leaves too much space to the growth of the
autonomy of the multitude; because it is urgent, from the stablising point
of view of the three imperial poles (USA, Japan, Europe) to return to some
regulting power. Neo-liberalism has lost in Russia, it risks throwing China
into chaos. The new business cycle will assume a more organised, more
monopolistic aspect. It's likely that this will be the only way to control
the antagonism relaunched by the contestation of workers and the
unemployed.

Freeze: They demonstrated that the militant left once again has the power
to shut down a city when necessary.  Left wing parties are insignificant in
the US, but radical organizations such as certain environmentalist ones and
unions like the IWW were the force grouped together under the name "Direct
Action Network" that organized the blockades of the WTO delegates and
prevented
their meeting on the morning of 30 November.  The Center was divided into13
sectors and each was claimed by an organization which was then responsible
for ensuring access was closed.  This was well executed, and was the reason
for the delay of the start of the meetings.  Our level of organization had
fallen way behind our European counterparts, but I think we are catching
up.

One important action was the diversion of the AFL-CIO march.  The top
leadership had cut a deal with President Clinton that they would not march
downtown where the action was.  The IWW communicated with our allies inside
more militant AFL-CIO unions like the ILWU and at the point the AFL-CIO
march was turning back, we went straight, chanting "Don't turn around, Go
downtown."  It worked.  With the cooperation of several AFL-CIO unions,
much of the AFL-CIO went downtown.  Learning to work with other
organizations and tendencies may seem obvious, but it has been a problem
for the anti-capitalist left in the US for a long time.

Baffoni: They were a meeting point between the century closing and the new
one coming . . . They were the first visible impact of the great struggles
of the next century: intellectual property, the big multinationals' control
over life and intelligence, the unregulated circulation of commodities,
capital, labour, natural and genetic resources. At the same time, the
summit failed not so much because of the force of the protests, as for the
tensions between Europe and the United States: in sum, even the
gloablisation of the "mighty" is still far less homogenous and monolithic
than is suggested. The past and future met amongst the Seattle demostrators
as well. There was a coalition of very different forces and groups,
motivated at times by precise objectives, other times by generic motives,
at times by the media presence itself. And yet they were able to
demonstrate a high degree of organisational efficiency - part prepared,
part improvised - and a still higher degree of content. As with the MAI,
the protests were inserted in the WTO's weak point, playing on the discord
amongst the great economic powers and lending to these the colours of their
own protest: the grand themes of the environment and of rights.




     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---