Bounced from Michael Pugliese

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[Michael, your message bounced because it was more than 100,000 bytes. I am
including the WTO article since it is of immediate concern. The other
article, which was a New Republic review of "The Black Book on Communism"
can be read online at:
http://www.thenewrepublic.com/magazines/tnr/122099/scammell122099.html]

SEATTLE DISPATCH
Means of Dissent

By CHARLES DUHIGG
Issue date: 12.20.99
Post date: 12.02.99


The extreme ideological gulfs among the estimated 10,000 protesters at the
World Trade Organization Ministerial in Seattle could almost be ignored when
the protesters gathered for a "People's Assembly" on the first day of the
conference. Ignored, that is, until people got hungry.

"Gimme some raw, dead meat!" shouted the aptly named Mike Crudes as he
warily eyed the long line of dreadlocked youths waiting to buy Green Life
Smoothies and Tofu Scrambles from the Light of Love Gypsy Village tent.
"Meat is dead," a much-pierced youth retorted under his breath as he and a
companion compared tattoos.

Welcome to the Battle for Seattle, 1999. When organizers decided to locate
the WTO's "millennium round" here, they pointed to the city's spirit of free
trade: one out of every three jobs in Washington state is affected by
foreign trade, and the percentage is even higher in Seattle and its
surrounding communities, home to Microsoft and Boeing. What the organizers
didn't take into account was the spirit of Kurt Cobain.

"Look, don't get me wrong. I think those guys who marched around dressed up
like turtles are probably fairies," said Crudes, a member of the AFL-CIO.
"But, as long as they're against the same thing as me, I got no problem. I
think this shows how bad the WTO is, that so many different people can
protest together." (Actually, the turtles were mostly family men. The
"fairies" were gathered across the field, alongside a group of lesbians
carrying DYKE PRIDE placards.)

Indeed, nothing represents the reality of globalization today better than
the uncomfortable bedfellows from more than 130 organizations and groups who
joined forces in Seattle to protest it--and, ironically, to partake of its
bounty. As militia members milled with black-clad anarchists and topless
environmentalists ("I painted my breasts with a mural of the tree I lived in
for a year"), and trade unionists marched under "FREE MUMIA!" posters, it
was clear that American protest had entered uncharted territory.

"I'll be honest--I don't really know many people like the ones here," said
Butch Razey, commander of the Yakima County Militia, who attended the
protest on orders from superiors in Montana. "We're willing to die for our
Constitution, and the patriots are all coming out because they know this is
the beginning of world government. But I'll be honest--this will be the
first time I'll be holding hands with a bunch of tree-huggers."

But the hand-holding didn't last long. While many of the groups protesting
the WTO on behalf of the world's oppressed showed a strong commitment to
nonviolence, a handful of protesters--who smashed storefront windows and
spray-painted graffiti--did not. And even less interested in nonviolent
protest were the oppressed themselves. As temperatures dropped throughout
the course of the day and middle-aged activists returned to their homes and
hotels, a handful of local youths from the poorer areas of Seattle--a few
impoverished urbanites in a vast sea of dreadlocked college
students--stopped by to take in the activity. And to loot the empty stores
sitting amid broken glass and deactivated alarm systems.

Suddenly, the underclasses needed to be, well, oppressed. "This is a
nonviolent protest!" one intrepid activist shouted as he attempted to form a
human shield across the recently removed door of a cellular-phone outlet.
"We are here to fight against child labor! You are not invited to be a part
of this!"

"Let's go hit Niketown!" a looter replied, embracing the globalization
spirit.

Within an hour the chaos had provoked tear-gas attacks from police ringing
the downtown area, culminating in a declaration of civil emergency, a
curfew, a request for National Guard occupation--and an effective answer to
the question of what happens when dissimilar elements unite.

Many commentators seemed genuinely surprised at the unwashed hordes that
descended on this rainy city and turned it upside down. They shouldn't have
been. Throughout the 1990s, the Pacific Northwest has been a hotbed of
radical activism. President Reagan and President Bush both faced protests
here (the latter dubbing Portland "the Beirut of North America" after one
particularly rough reception). And Hillary Clinton was rumored to have been
so shaken by the conservative activists who greeted her in Seattle in 1994
that she now visits the city only to attend tightly controlled fund-raisers.
Although the Pacific Northwest is seen back East as a reservoir of laid-back
good-naturedness, with its liberal enclaves of Portland and Eugene, Oregon,
and its conservative bastions in eastern Oregon and Washington, this area is
actually uniquely suited to generating large numbers of protesters,
regardless of their ideological slant.

And perhaps that's why the 1999 WTO Ministerial met here. The United States'
recent push to include labor conditions as an explicit issue in trade
agreements has been met with derision by developing nations. The U.S.
insistence on workers' rights, they contend, is a form of protectionism
thinly veiled in false altruism.

But the American public takes child-labor laws and minimum wages seriously,
and it consistently makes trade an issue in national elections. Perhaps the
U.S. government wanted to show other countries how much our electorate
really cares about these issues, thus strengthening America's position at
the bargaining table. So they chose a city where they could be sure that
thousands would join forces to march through the streets in the largest
united front of the decade. A brilliant strategy, when you think about it.

It's just too bad they didn't separate everyone first.


CHARLES DUHIGG is a writer in Albuquerque, New Mexico.


Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)