PEN-L message, Protesters Win "Battle of Seattle" -- What Next?

Robert Naiman

Senior Researcher, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, DC

50 Years is Enough Network, Steering Committee

Sunday Journal, metro DC

December 10, 1999

"On the Left"

Protesters Win "Battle of Seattle" -- What Next?

You'd have to be comatose not to have some inkling of what happened to the World Trade Organization last week in Seattle. Much ink has been spilled -- a significant accomplishment regarding an issue which, while of great public import, had previously been relegated to the business pages, when it had been covered at all. Still, it's not every day that "ordinary people" seize the stage of history en masse, so, amidst the noise and haste of our corporate dominated culture, it's worth relishing the victory for a moment, as one would stop to smell a lone rose in a gritty urban landscape. And it's worth contemplating for a moment, with our minds liberated from corporate cant about the inevitability of corporate globalization, the broad new vistas of human freedom that might lie ahead.

How did nonviolent demonstrators shut down the meetings of the World Trade Organization? Some may fault Seattle for inadequate preparation; we may credit the months of organizing by the Direct Action Network, Public Citizen, labor unions, and hundreds of other organizations which educated and mobilized people to come to Seattle, and the commitment of protesters who locked arms and braved tear gas and rubber bullets to block the opening ceremony. On Tuesday afternoon on Pike Street in Seattle, it all came down to one thing: there were just too many protesters for the Seattle police to deal with. Too many steel workers, iron workers, and longshoremen; too many forest campaigners and animal rights activists; too many students; too many Koreans demanding freedom from the International Monetary Fund and Tibetans demanding freedom from the World Bank. It took a curfew, blanketing downtown with tear gas, and calling out the National Guard to clear the streets. By then the opening session of the WTO had collapsed in disarray. And like the clouds of tear gas seeping into buildings downtown and homes on Capitol Hill, the air of defeat hung over the WTO meetings all week, exacerbating the tensions between the US, European, and developing country delegates that existed prior to the meeting. And that air of defeat contributed mightily to the collapse of the talks, to the lack of meaningful agreement among the delegates.

What was defeated was the notion that corporate titans could indefinitely evade public scrutiny, plotting against democracy in their closed meeting rooms. Finally, all the blather about transparency and consultation with civil society and putting a human face on globalization was exposed as a farce. A choice must be made: who rules? Corporations, or democracy? If the corporate-dominated institutions refuse to respond to the public, the public will thrust the institutions aside.

Many are already calling for a similar mobilization in April at the Spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington, DC. The target couldn't be more appropriate: if the WTO is the occupying army, the IMF and the World Bank are the expeditionary force, going into developing countries and imposing the pro-corporate economic policies that are later ratified in trade agreements, and boomerang on workers in the U.S. through low-wage imports and capital flight. The timing couldn't be more appropriate either: it's the last meeting of the IMF and the World Bank in the U.S. before the close of the "Jubilee year" 2000. Religious leaders around the world have called for the cancellation of the foreign debts of the world's 52 poorest countries by the year 2000. So far, the IMF and the World Bank have ignored these demands. A little "street heat" might help focus their attention.

Some have suggested a boycott of World Bank bonds. Some 80% of the World Bank's funds -- money it uses to destroy the environment -- are raised in private capital markets. You may not think that your university, church or pension fund owns any World Bank bonds, but if it has shares in a "global bond fund" like Fidelity's International Bond Fund then it owns World Bank bonds. Ask your institution to pledge not to buy World Bank bonds in the future.

As for the WTO, President Clinton has pointed the way. He now supports trade sanctions against countries that violate labor rights. Let the Congress pass legislation barring imports produced by child labor and by slave and prison labor, and let Clinton sign or veto it. If that's "WTO-illegal," wonderful. From the city council to Congress, let's pass as much WTO-illegal legislation as possible. Let's jam up the works.