Voices from the WTO

Introduction by Stephanie Guilloud

The magnitude of the events that took place in Seattle demands attention. People with jobs, children, visions, and grit stood up and stood firm for 5 days in Seattle, Washington when the World Trade Organization met. Convinced by a daughter, by a letter written to the editor of their local paper, by a teach-in or street theater performance, or by the painful repercussions of the WTO’s policies, people left their daily lives to interrupt the proceedings of the world’s largest trade institution. They came and saw the power of numbers and the power of organization. When police became brutal, they came back the next day to continue resisting and to offer support. They came back the next day and the next.

The words, stories, poems, and reflections in this anthology emerge from a collision between people and history.

What happened in Seattle in late November has yet to be defined by the people who made it happen. This compilation of words and images is one step towards a collective definition. As we begin to un-learn the social idea that newspapers and televisions tell us the truth, we see that individual voices are equally as valid and important. Simultaneously, we see that our individual lives as connected to a much larger, more complex world. Our singular experiences are one story among thousands. And there were thousands. And we all have a story to tell.

He was sitting across the pavement from me. We were linked and locked to 27 other people. We contorted with cold and the weight of the heavy pipes attached to our arms, a circle of energized people surrounded us singing and dancing. We assumed crisis formation because the police were gassing a few blocks away. A decision loomed before us (for the fifth time that day) to stay or go in the face of gas. We were exhausted and irritable and scared. He lifted his head up so that all of us could hear. 

I don’t remember his exact words, but he talked about sacrifice. He talked from that place where rage is born and courage nurses it to sustainability. He spoke with heart pounding, speaking words as they came. “We must be willing to sacrifice. We must be willing to stay for that was the only reason we had come.” We consented to stay and poured more vinegar into our scarves to counter the fumes. The tactical team talked to the communication network and checked out the needs of the other intersections. Our position, though out of the center of confrontation, was pivotal to the success of the other blockades. We stayed.

I watched him rest his eyes and hold steady. I listened to his voice like seeing lines of blood for the first time connecting heart and brain and legs. We began to understand the meaning of true connection, feeling the heat of solidarity move through veins to throat, tongue, mouth. Finding our voices.

And holding on.

This compilation is a tribute to those moments of power and surprise that crashed concrete in late November 1999. This project compiles those lights and voices of Seattle. These voices are not journalists, TV crews, or lofty intellectuals who like Monday morning quarterbacks define the meaning of Seattle. The people who walked out of homes, work places, and schools will define the essence of what happened that week. And they cannot do it alone. Because we did not do what we did alone.

The week of November 30 – December 3, 1999 in Seattle, WA is a piece of our individual histories, but that week is also a piece of our global history. The numbers of people in the streets, the reasons they were there, the strategies we used, the repercussions we now face, and the struggle we committed to continuing are powerful moments of history.    The issues that brought people together in the first place now stand beside the issues that emerged from the site of convergence itself. After generations of painful and deceiving tactics that divide environmentalists and laborers and divide students from each other, we found ways to connect our issues.  US union members now talk about international environmental standards, and anti-nuclear activists now talk about the downward spiral of wages in this country. On the ground, we saw each other, talked to each other, and washed tear gas out of each others’ eyes. Issues we had not spoken about confronted us, and we broke new common ground. After Seattle, we all talk about police brutality and the power of the state to repress dissent.  Now we speak openly about racism within the decision-making structures and how to move beyond oppressive models of organizing. We all speak not only about the issues that got us out on the streets but about the solidarity that kept us there.  This project reflects the history of that week. This compilation is a testament to those historical moments.

The months of work and planning and educating and mobilizing that lead to that week are the details of history that get left out. Organizers, being the active animals they are, do not often take time to reflect and document how they create the actions in which other people participate.  I solicited writings from organizers and got very few responses.  But their stories should not be lost.

I was involved in the Direct Action Network.  I mobilized people in Olympia, WA. I organized a conference at the Evergreen State College with faculty member Dan Leahy that brought union members, indigenous people, environmentalists, internationals, and students together. I learned a hell of a lot about the WTO, its policies and effects.  I learned that organizing on such a massive scale is thrilling but also painful. I will carry the mistakes we made as well as the empowerment I found as I continue to organize.

I can only tell you one story of what happened in Seattle.  I can only offer one perspective on the conflicts, debates, and consequences.  I learned something new from every piece submitted to this project and continue to learn every day as my community comes to terms with the history of our present.

The 420 space was sweaty and dark.  Over a hundred people lined the walls, sitting on benches, on the floor, standing on tables in the back.  I was facilitating the nightly Spokescouncil meeting with a woman from Washington, DC.  We had just met that week, but we established a rhythm for this particular meeting.  I performed a poem to the circle of faces. I clutched tattered notebook paper and spoke into a portable mike system.  I had worked with the Spoken Word Core all day alongside puppets and radical cheerleaders and dancers, and I wanted the audience to participate in this poetry reading.  They repeated the refrain with me, ending the poem and beginning the meeting with

“It is natural to rise up.

It is natural to rise up.”

I carried the mike around to all the spokespeople as they introduced the affinity group they were representing.  The Dot Commies stood next to the Bananarchy group stood next to the people representing the Republic of Texas.  Tonight was important.  We had to decide which clusters of affinity groups would take which pie slice to block the Convention Center in about 48 hours.  We had trained for months, we were still offering trainings every day, and now we were egging each other on to take the final step.

People were stalling from nervousness. They didn’t see how their small group could be effective.  A member of my affinity group spoke, her face red and bright, flushed with excitement and frustration, “We got here with 5 people in our affinity group. We did nothing more than let people know we wanted to work with them.”  Her voice got louder, “We’re bigger now than we ever anticipated. We have almost 200 people in our action now. We have to push past our fear of the map, we have to push past the idea and do this.  We’re running out of time. We’re ready. We can do this.” 

We burst into applause.  We started at slice A and filled most of them that night.  We left the space to make copies and go to midnight meetings on the other side of town.

I am a 23 year old, white, queer woman organizer. I was not raised to be an organizer or a radical. I was raised in Houston, Texas to love and support the people around me. I pull on those chords of compassion as the root system of my politics. I pull on the chords I have fashioned from watching organizers (mostly women) be effective and beautiful. But when I look to history to help guide my work – when I look to history to know the mistakes made in the past so as not to repeat them – when I look to history to mirror some piece of myself in the words or actions of people from all kinds of experiences – I am often lost, yearning for documentation from the people who did the things others write about.

The corporate media is ready and willing to skew the truth. It is necessary to document unrecorded history in our own words rather than have others do it for us, which to do.  It is imperative to offer our history to the present and future generations of social justice workers in the form of first hand stories and experiences.

This anthology includes as many different people as we could find who wanted to write and send their pictures. The most amazing part of this project is that these different voices - steelworkers, postal workers, students, mothers, teachers, and activists - are all speaking about the same day.  When will there ever be another opportunity to collect the reflections on one day in history from such a broad spectrum of people? Soon, I hope.

We do not all agree. We participated in different ways, and we valued different actions. We argue over tactics and strategy and who was there and why. The dissent and differences are sometimes glaring. The agreement between people comes in the form of repetition. Read these stories closely. Pay attention to the detail and memory. These words are not written lightly. This anthology stands as a document of an historical moment.

Everyone who was there holds a piece of the truth.

* Voices from the WTO is distributed by the Evergreen State College Bookstore. Call (360) 867-6215 to order.