When I was able to open my eyes, I saw lying next to me a young man,
19, maybe 20 at the oldest. He was in shock, twitching and shivering uncontrollably from
being tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed at close range. His burned eyes were tightly closed,
and he was panting irregularly. Then he passed out. He went from excruciating pain to
unconsciousness on a sidewalk wet from the water that a medic had poured over him to flush
his eyes.
More than 700 organizations and between 40,000 and 60,000 people took part in the
protests against the WTO's Third Ministerial on November 30th. These groups and citizens
sense a cascading loss of human and labor rights in the world. Seattle was not the
beginning but simply the most striking expression of citizens struggling against a
worldwide corporate-financed oligarchy in effect, a plutocracy. Oligarchy and
plutocracy are often are used to describe "other" countries where a small group
of wealthy people rule, but not the "first world" the United States,
Japan, Germany, or Canada. The World Trade Organization, however, is trying to cement into
place that corporate plutocracy. Already, the worlds top 200 companies have twice
the assets of 80 percent of the worlds people. Global corporations represent a new
empire whether they admit it or not. With massive amounts of capital at their disposal,
any of which can be used to influence politicians and the public as and when deemed
necessary, all democratic institutions are diminished and at risk. Corporate free market
policies subvert culture, democracy, and community, a true tyranny. The American
Revolution occurred because of crown-chartered corporate abuse, a "remote
tyranny" in Thomas Jeffersons words. To see Seattle as a singular event, as did
most of the media, is to look at the battles of Concord and Lexington as meaningless
skirmishes.
But the mainstream media, consistently problematic in their coverage of any type of
protest, had an even more difficult time understanding and covering both the issues and
activists in Seattle. No charismatic leader led. No religious figure engaged in direct
action. No movie stars starred. There was no alpha group. The Ruckus Society, Rainforest
Action Network, Global Exchange, and hundreds more were there, coordinated primarily by
cell phones, emails, and the Direct Action Network. They were up against the Seattle
Police Department, the Secret Service, and the FBI to say nothing of the media
coverage and the WTO itself.
Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and author of an elegy to globalization
entitled The Lexus and the Olive Tree, angrily wrote that the demonstrators were
"a Noahs ark of flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unions and yuppies
looking for their 1960s fix." Not so. They were organized, educated, and determined.
They were human rights activists, labor activists, indigenous people, people of faith,
steel workers, and farmers. They were forest activists, environmentalists, social justice
workers, students, and teachers. And they wanted the World Trade Organization to listen.
They were speaking on behalf of a world that has not been made better by globalization.
Income disparity is growing rapidly. The difference between the top and bottom quintiles
has doubled in the past 30 years. Eighty-six percent of the worlds goods go to the
top 20 percent, the bottom fifth get 1 percent. The apologists for globalization cannot
support their contention that open borders, reduced tariffs, and forced trade benefit the
poorest 3 billion people in the world. Globalization does, however, create the
concentrations of capital seen in northern financial and industrial centers indeed,
the wealth in Seattle itself. Since the people promoting globalized free trade policies
live in those cities, it is natural that they should be biased. Despite Friedmans
invective about "the circus in Seattle," the demonstrators and activists who
showed up there were not against trade. They do demand proof that shows when and how trade
as the WTO constructs it benefits workers and the environment in developing
nations, as well as workers at home. Since that proof has yet to be offered, the
protesters came to Seattle to hold the WTO accountable.
On the morning of November 30th, I walked toward the Convention Center, the site of the
planned Ministerial, with Randy Hayes, the founder of Rainforest Action Network. As soon
as we turned the corner on First Street and Pike Avenue, we could hear drums, chants,
sirens, roars. At Fifth, police stopped us. We could go no farther without credentials.
Ahead of us were thousands of protesters. Beyond them was a large cordon of gas-masked and
riot-shielded police, an armored personnel carrier, and fire trucks. On one corner was
Niketown. On the other, the Sheraton Hotel, through which there was a passage to the
Convention Center. The cordon of police in front of us tried to prevent more protesters
from joining those who blocked the entrances to the Convention Center. Randy was a
credentialed WTO delegate, which means he could join the proceedings as an observer. He
showed his pass to the officer, who thought it looked like me. The officer joked with us,
kidded Randy about having my credential and then winked and let us both through. The
police were still relaxed at that point. Ahead of us crowds were milling and moving.
Anarchists were there, maybe 40 in all, dressed in black pants, black bandanas, black
balaclavas, and jackboots, one of two groups identifiable by costume. The other was a
group of 300 children who had dressed brightly as turtles in the Sierra Club march the day
before. The costumes were part of a serious complaint against the WTO. When the United
States attempted to block imports of shrimp caught in the same nets that capture and drown
150,000 sea turtles each year, the WTO called the block "arbitrary and
unjustified." Thus far in every environmental dispute that has come before the WTO,
its three-judge panels, which deliberate in secret, have ruled for business, against the
environment. The panel members are selected from lawyers and officials who are not
educated in biology, the environment, social issues, or anthropology.
Opening ceremonies for the World Trade Organizations Third Ministerial were to
have been held that Tuesday morning at the Paramount Theater near the Convention Center.
Police had ringed the theater with Metro buses touching bumper to bumper. The protesters
surrounded the outside of that steel circle. Only a few hundred of the 5,000 delegates
made it inside, as police were unable to provide safe corridors for members and
ambassadors. The theater was virtually empty when U.S. trade representative and meeting
co-chair Charlene Barshevsky was to have delivered the opening keynote. Instead, she was
captive in her hotel room a block from the meeting site. WTO Executive Director Michael
Moore was said to have been apoplectic.
Inside the Paramount, Mayor Paul Schell stood despondently near the stage. Since no
scheduled speakers were present, Kevin Danaher, Medea Benjamin, and Juliet Beck from
Global Exchange went to the lectern and offered to begin a dialogue in the meantime. The
WTO had not been able to come to a pre-meeting consensus on the draft agenda. The NGO
community, however, had drafted a consensus agreement about globalization and the
three thought this would be a good time to present it, even if the hall had only a
desultory number of delegates. Although the three were credentialed WTO delegates, the
sound system was quickly turned off and the police arm-locked and handcuffed them.
Medeas wrist was sprained. All were dragged off stage and arrested.
The arrests mirrored how the WTO has operated since its birth in 1995. Listening to
people is not its strong point. WTO rules run roughshod over local laws and regulations.
It relentlessly pursues the elimination of any restriction on the free flow of trade
including local, national, or international laws that distinguish between products based
on how they are made, by whom, or what happens during production. The WTO is thus
eliminating the ability of countries and regions to set standards, to express values, or
to determine what they do or don't support. Child labor, prison labor, forced labor,
substandard wages and working conditions cannot be used as a basis to discriminate against
goods. Nor can a countrys human rights record, environmental destruction, habitat
loss, toxic waste production, or the presence of transgenic materials or synthetic
hormones be used as the basis to screen or stop goods from entering a country. Under WTO
rules, the Sullivan Principles and the boycott of South Africa would not have existed. If
the world could vote on the WTO, would it pass? Not one country of the 135 member-states
of the WTO has held a plebiscite to see if its people support the WTO mandate. The people
trying to meet in the Green Rooms at the Seattle Convention Center were not elected. Even
Michael Moore was not elected.
While the Global Exchange was temporarily silenced, the main organizer of the downtown
protests, the Direct Action Network, was executing a plan that was working brilliantly
outside the Convention Center. The plan was simple: insert groups of trained non-violent
activists into key points downtown, making it impossible for delegates to move. DAN had
hoped that 1,500 people would show up. Close to 10,000 did. The 2,000 people who began the
march to the Convention Center at 7 a.m. from Victor Steinbrueck Park and Seattle Central
Community College were composed of affinity groups and clusters whose responsibility was
to block key intersections and entrances. Participants had trained for many weeks in some
cases, for many hours in others. Each affinity group had its own mission and was
self-organized. The streets around the Convention Center were divided into 13 sections and
individual groups and clusters were responsible for holding these sections. There were
also "flying groups" that moved at will from section to section, backing up
groups under attack as needed. The groups were further divided into those willing to be
arrested, and those who were not. As protesters were beaten, gassed, clubbed, and pushed
back, a new group would replace them. All decisions prior to the demonstrations were
reached by consensus. Minority views were heeded and included. The one thing all agreed to
was that there would be no violence physical or verbal no weapons, no drugs
or alcohol.
Throughout most of the day, using a variety of techniques, groups held intersections
and key areas downtown. As protesters were beaten, gassed, clubbed, and pushed back, a new
group would replace them. There were no charismatic leaders barking orders. There was no
command chain. There was no one in charge. Police said that they were not prepared for the
level of violence, but, as one protester later commented, what they were unprepared for
was a network of non-violent protesters totally committed to one task shutting down
the WTO.
Meanwhile, Moore and Barshevskys frustration was growing by the minute. Their
anger and disappointment was shared by Madeleine Albright, the Clinton advance team, and,
back in Washington, by chief of staff John Podesta. This was to have been a celebration, a
victory, one of the crowning achievements to showcase the Clinton administration, the
moment when it would consolidate its centrist free trade policies, allowing the Democrats
to show multinational corporations that they could deliver the goods. This was to have
been Barshevskys moment, an event that would give her the inside track to become
Secretary of Commerce in the Gore Administration. This was to have been Michael
Moores moment, reviving what had been a mediocre political ascendancy in New
Zealand. To say nothing of Monsantos moment. If the as-yet unapproved draft agenda
were ever ratified, the Europeans could no longer block or demand labeling on genetically
modified crops without being slapped with punitive lawsuits and tariffs. The draft also
contained provisions that would allow all water in the world to be privatized. It would
allow corporations patent protection on all forms of life, even genetic material in
cultural use for thousands of years. Farmers who have spent thousands of years growing
crops in a valley in India could, within a decade, be required to pay for their water.
They could also find that they would have to purchase seeds containing genetic traits
their ancestors developed, from companies that have engineered the seeds not to reproduce
unless the farmer annually buys expensive chemicals to restore seed viability. If this
happens, the CEOs of Novartis and Enron, two of the companies creating the seeds and
privatizing the water, will have more money. What will Indian farmers have?
But the perfect moment for Barshevsky, Moore and Monsanto didnt arrive. The
meeting couldnt start. Demonstrators were everywhere. Private security guards locked
down the hotels. The downtown stores were shut. Hundreds of delegates were on the street
trying to get into the Convention Center. No one could help them. For WTO delegates
accustomed to an ordered corporate or governmental world, it was a calamity.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Up Pike toward Seventh and to Randys and my right on Sixth, protesters faced
armored cars, horses, and police in full riot gear. In between, demonstrators ringed the
Sheraton to prevent an alternative entry to the Convention Center. At one point, police
guarding the steps to the lobby pummeled and broke through a crowd of protesters to let
eight delegates in. On Sixth Street, Sergeant Richard Goldstein asked demonstrators seated
on the street in front of the police line "to cooperate" and move back 40 feet.
No one understood why, but that hardly mattered. No one was going to move. He announced
that chemical irritants would be used if they did not leave. The police were
anonymous. No facial expressions, no face. You could not see their eyes. They were masked
Hollywood caricatures burdened with 60 to 70 pounds of weaponry. These were not the men
and women of the 6th precinct. They were the Gang Squads and the SWAT teams of the
Tactical Operations Divisions, closer in training to soldiers from the School of the
Americas than local cops on the beat. Behind them and around were special forces from the
FBI, the Secret Service, even the CIA.
The police were almost motionless. They were equipped with U.S. military standard M40A1
double canister gas masks; uncalibrated, semi-automatic, high velocity Autocockers loaded
with solid plastic shot; Monadnock disposable plastic cuffs, Nomex slash-resistant gloves,
Commando boots, Centurion tactical leg guards, combat harnesses, DK5-H pivot-and-lock riot
face shields, black Monadnock P24 polycarbonate riot batons with TrumBull stop side
handles, No. 2 continuous discharge CS (orto-chlorobenzylidene-malononitrile) chemical
grenades, M651 CN (chloroacetophenone) pyrotechnic grenades, T16 Flameless OC Expulsion
Grenades, DTCA rubber bullet grenades (Stingers), M-203 (40mm) grenade launchers, First
Defense MK-46 Oleoresin Capsicum (OC) aerosol tanks with hose and wands, .60 caliber
rubber ball impact munitions, lightweight tactical Kevlar composite ballistic helmets,
combat butt packs, 30 cal. thirty-round magazine pouches, and Kevlar body armor. None of
the police had visible badges or forms of identification.
The demonstrators seated in front of the black-clad ranks were equipped with hooded
jackets for protection against rain and chemicals. They carried toothpaste and baking
powder for protection of their skin, and wet cotton cloths impregnated with vinegar to
cover their mouths and noses after a tear-gas release. In their backpacks were bottled
water and food for the day ahead.
Ten Koreans came around the corner carrying a 10-foot banner protesting genetically
modified foods. They were impeccable in white robes, sashes, and headbands. One was a
priest. They played flutes and drums and marched straight toward the police and behind the
seated demonstrators. Everyone cheered at the sight and chanted "The whole world is
watching." The sun broke through the gauzy clouds. It was a beautiful day. Over cell
phones, we could hear the cheers coming from the labor rally at the football stadium. The
air was still and quiet.
At 10 a.m. the police fired the first seven canisters of tear gas into the crowd. The
whitish clouds wafted slowly down the street. The seated protesters were overwhelmed, yet
most did not budge. Police poured over them. Then came the truncheons, and the rubber
bullets. I was with a couple hundred people who had ringed the hotel, arms locked. We
watched as long as we could until the tear gas slowly enveloped us. We were several
hundred feet from Sgt. Goldsteins 40-foot "cooperation" zone. Police
pushed and truncheoned their way through and behind us. We had covered our faces with rags
and cloth, snatching glimpses of the people being clubbed in the street before shutting
our eyes. The gas was a fog through which people moved in slow, strange dances of shock
and pain and resistance. Tear gas is a misnomer. Think about feeling asphyxiated and
blinded. Breathing becomes labored. Vision is blurred. The mind is disoriented. The nose
and throat burn. Its not a gas, its a drug. Gas-masked police hit, pushed, and
speared us with the butt ends of their batons. We all sat down, hunched over, and locked
arms more tightly. By then, the tear gas was so strong our eyes couldnt open. One by
one, our heads were jerked back from the rear, and pepper was sprayed directly into each
eye. It was very professional. Like hair spray from a stylist. Sssst. Sssst.
Pepper spray is derived from cayenne peppers. It is food-grade, pure enough to be used
in salsa. The spray used in Seattle is the strongest available, containing 10 percent to
15 percent Oleoresin Capsicum, with a 1.5 to 2.0 million Scoville heat unit rating. One to
three Scoville units are when your tongue can first detect hotness. (The jalapeño pepper
is rated between 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units. The habanero, usually considered the
hottest pepper in the world, is rated around 300,000 Scoville units.) This description was
written by a police officer who sells pepper spray on his website. It is about his first
experience being sprayed during a training exercise:
"It felt as if two red-hot pieces of steel were grinding into my
eyes, as if someone was blowing a red-hot cutting torch into my face. I fell to the ground
just like all the others and started to rub my eyes even though I knew better not too. The
heat from the pepper spray was overwhelming. I could not resist trying to rub it off of my
face. The pepper spray caused my eyes to shut very quickly. The only way I could open them
was by prying them open with my fingers. Everything that we had been taught about pepper
spray had turned out to be true. And everything that our instructor had told us that we
would do, even though we knew not to do it, we still did. Pepper spray turned out to be
more than I had bargained for."
As I tried to find my way down Sixth Street after the tear gas and pepper spray, I
couldnt see. The person who found and guided me was Anita Roddick, the founder of
the Body Shop, and probably the only CEO in the world who wanted to be on the streets of
Seattle helping people that day. When your eyes fail, your ears take over. I could hear
acutely. What I heard was anger, dismay, shock. For many people, including the police,
this was their first direct action. Demonstrators who had taken non-violent training were
astonished at the police brutality. The demonstrators were students, their professors,
clergy, lawyers, and medical personnel. They held signs against Burma and violence. They
dressed as butterflies.
The Seattle Police had made a decision not to arrest people on the first day of the
protests (a decision that was reversed for the rest of the week). Throughout the day, the
affinity groups created through Direct Action stayed together. Tear gas, rubber bullets,
and pepper spray were used so frequently that by late afternoon, supplies ran low. What
seemed like an afternoon lull or standoff was because police had used up all their stores.
Officers combed surrounding counties for tear gas, sprays, concussion grenades, and
munitions. As police restocked, the word came down from the White House to secure downtown
Seattle or the WTO meeting would be called off. By late afternoon, the mayor and police
chief announced a 7 p.m. curfew, "no protest" zones, and declared the city under
civil emergency. The police were fatigued and frustrated. Over the next seven hours and
into the night, the police turned downtown Seattle into Beirut.
That morning, it was the police commanders that were out of control, ordering the
gassing and pepper spraying and shooting of people protesting non-violently. By evening,
it was the individual police who were out of control. Anger erupted, protesters were kneed
and kicked in the groin, and police used their thumbs to grind the eyes of pepper-spray
victims. A few demonstrators danced on burning dumpsters that were ignited by pyrotechnic
tear-gas grenades (the same ones used in Waco). Protesters were defiant. Tear gas
canisters were being thrown back as fast as they were launched. Drum corps marched using
empty 5-gallon water bottles for instruments. Despite their steadily dwindling number,
maybe 1,500 by evening, a hardy number of protesters held their ground, seated in front of
heavily armed police, hands raised in peace signs, submitting to tear gas, pepper spray,
and riot batons. As they retreated to the medics, new groups replaced them. Every channel
covered the police riots live. On TV, the police looked absurd, frantic, and mean. Passing
Metro buses filled with passengers were gassed. Police were pepper spraying residents and
bystanders. The mayor went on TV that night to say, that as a protester from the
60s, he never could have imagined what he was going to do next: Call in the National
Guard.
This is what I remember about the violence. There was almost none until police attacked
demonstrators that Tuesday in Seattle. Michael Meacher, environment minister of the United
Kingdom, said afterward, "What we hadnt reckoned with was the Seattle Police
Department who single-handedly managed to turn a peaceful protest into a riot." There
was no police restraint, despite what Mayor Paul Schell kept proudly assuring television
viewers all day. Instead, there were rubber bullets, which Schell kept denying all day. In
the end, more copy and video was given to broken windows than broken teeth.
During that day, the anarchist black blocs were in full view. Numbering about one
hundred, they could have been arrested at any time but the police were so weighed down by
their own equipment, they literally couldnt run. Both the police and the Direct
Action Network had mutually apprised each other for months prior to the WTO about the
anarchists intentions. The Eugene Police had volunteered information and specific
techniques to handle the black blocs, but had been rebuffed by the Seattle Police. It was
widely known they would be there, and that they had property damage in mind. To the credit
of the Mayor, the Police Chief, and the Seattle press, distinctions were consistently made
between the protesters and the anarchists (later joined by local vandals as the night wore
on). But the anarchists were not primitivists, nor were the all from Eugene. They were
well organized, and they also had a plan.
The black blocs came with tools (crowbars, hammers, acid-filled eggs) and hit lists.
They knew they were going after Fidelity Investments but not Charles Schwab. Starbucks but
not Tullys. The GAP but not REI. Fidelity Investments because they are large
investors in Occidental Petroleum, the oil company most responsible for the violence
against the Uwa tribe in Columbia. Starbucks because of their non-support of
fair-traded coffee. The GAP because of the Fisher familys purchase of Northern
California forests. They targeted multinational corporations whom they see as benefiting
from repression, exploitation of workers, and low wages. According to one anarchist group,
the ACME collective: "Most of us have been studying the effects of the global
economy, genetic engineering, resource extraction, transportation, labor practices,
elimination of indigenous autonomy, animal rights and human rights and weve been
doing activism on these issues for many years. We are neither ill-informed nor
inexperienced." They dont believe we live in a democracy, do believe that
property damage (windows and tagging primarily) is a legitimate form of protest, and that
it is not violent unless it harms or causes pain to a person. For the black blocs,
breaking windows is intended to break the spells cast by corporate hegemony, an attempt to
shatter the smooth exterior facade that covers corporate crime and violence. Thats
what they did. And what the media did is what I just did in the last two paragraphs:
Report on the desires and recount the property damage caused by a tiny sliver of the
40-60,000 marchers and demonstrators.
Its not inapt to compare the pointed lawlessness of the anarchists with the
carefully considered ability of the WTO to flout laws of sovereign nations. When the
"The Final Act Embodying the Results of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade
Negotiations" was enacted April 15th, 1994 in Marrakech, it was recorded as a
550-page agreement that was then sent to Congress for passage. Ralph Nader offered to
donate $10,000 to any charity of a congressmans choice if any of them signed an
affidavit saying they had read it and could answer several questions about it. Only one
congressman Senator Hank Brown, a Colorado Republican took him up on it.
After reading the document, Brown changed his opinion and voted against the Agreement.
There were no public hearings, dialogue, or education. What passed is an Agreement that
gives the WTO the ability to overrule or undermine international conventions, acts,
treaties, and agreements. The WTO directly violates "The Universal Declaration of
Human Rights" adopted by member nations of the United Nations, not to mention Agenda
21. (The proposed draft agenda presented in Seattle went further in that it would require
Multilateral Agreements on the Environment such as the Montreal Protocol, the Convention
on Biological Diversity, and the Kyoto Protocol to be in alignment and subordinate to WTO
trade polices.) The final Marrakech Agreement contained provisions of which most of the
delegates, even the heads of country delegations, were not aware, statutes that were
drafted by sub-groups of bureaucrats and lawyers, some of whom represented transnational
corporations.
The police mandate to clear downtown was achieved by 9 P.M. Tuesday night. But police,
some who were fresh recruits form outlying towns, didnt want to stop there. They
chased demonstrators into neighborhoods where the distinctions between protesters and
citizens vanished. The police began attacking bystanders, residents, and commuters. They
had lost control. When President Clinton sped from Boeing airfield to the Westin Hotel at
1:30 a.m. Wednesday, his limousines entered a police-ringed city of broken glass,
helicopters, and boarded windows. He was too late. The mandate for the WTO had vanished
sometime that afternoon.
The next morning, and over the next days, a surprised press corps went to work and spun
webs. They vented thinly veiled anger in columns, and pointed guilt-mongering fingers at
brash, misguided white kids. They created myths, told fables. What a majority of media
projected onto the marchers and activists, in an often-contradictory manner, was that the
protesters are afraid of a world without walls; that they want the WTO to have even more
rules; that anarchists led by John Zerzan from Eugene ran rampant; that they blame the WTO
for the worlds problems; that they are opposed to global integration; that they are
against trade; that they are ignorant and insensitive to the worlds poor; that they
want to tell other people how to live. The list is long and tendentious. Outstanding
coverage came from Amy Goodmans Democracy Now on Pacifica radio and The
Nation.
Patricia King, one of two Newsweek reporters in Seattle, called me from her hotel room
at the Four Seasons and wanted to know if this was the 60s redux. No, I told her.
The 60s were primarily an American event; the protests against the WTO are
international. Who are the leaders? she wanted to know. There are no leaders in the
traditional sense. But there are thought leaders, I said. Who are they? she asked. I began
to name some: Martin Khor and Vandana Shiva of the Third World Network in Asia, Walden
Bello of Focus on the Global South, Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians, Tony Clarke
of Polaris Institute, Jerry Mander of the IFG, Susan George of the Transnational
Institute, David Korten of the People-Centered Development Forum, John Cavanagh of the
Institute for Policy Studies, Lori Wallach of Public Citizen, Mark Ritchie of the
Institute For Agriculture and Trade Policy, Anuradha Mittal of Institute for Food &
Development Policy, Helena Norberg-Hodge of the International Society for Ecology and
Culture, Owens Wiwa of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, Chakravarthi
Raghavan of the Third World Network in Geneva, Debra Harry of the Indigenous Peoples
Coalition Against Biopiracy, José Bové of the Confederation Paysanne Europèenne, Tetteh
Hormoku of the Third World Network in Africa, Randy Hayes of Rainforest Action
Network
Stop, stop, she said. I cant use these names in my article. Why not? Because
Americans have never heard of them. Instead, Newsweek editors put the picture of the
Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynksi, in the article because he had, at one time, purchased some
of John Zerzans writings.
Some of the mainstream media also assigned blame to the protesters for the
meetings outcome. But ultimately, it was not on the streets that the WTO broke down.
It was inside. It was a heated and rancorous Ministerial, and the meeting ended in a
stalemate, with African, Caribbean, and some Asian countries refusing to support a draft
agenda that had been negotiated behind closed doors without their participation. With that
much contention inside and out, one can rightly ask whether the correct question is being
posed. The question, as propounded by corporations, is how to make trade rules more
uniform. The proper question, it seems to me, is how do we make trade rules more
differentiated so that different cultures, cities, peoples, places, and countries benefit
the most. Arnold Toynbee wrote in 1871 that "Civilizations in decline are
consistently characterized by a tendency toward standardization and uniformity.
Conversely, during the growth stage of civilization, the tendency is toward
differentiation and diversity."
Those who marched and protested opposed the tyrannies of globalization, uniformity, and
corporatization, but they did not necessarily oppose internationalization of trade.
Economist Herman Daly has long made the distinction between the two. Internationalization
means trade between nations. Globalization refers to a system where there are uniform
rules for the entire world, a world in which capital and goods move at will without the
rule of individual nations. Nations, for all their faults, set trade standards. Those who
are willing to meet those standards can do business with them. Do nations abuse this?
Always and constantly, the US being the worst offender. But nations do provide, where
democracies prevail, a means for people to set their own policy, to influence decisions,
and determine their future. Globalization supplants the nation, the state, the region, and
the village. While eliminating nationalism is indeed a good idea, the elimination of
sovereignty is not.
One recent example of the power of the WTO is Chiquita Brands International, a $2
billion dollar corporation which recently made a large donation to the Democratic Party.
Coincidentally, the United States filed a complaint with the WTO against the European
Union because European import policies favored bananas coming from small Caribbean growers
instead of the banana conglomerates. The Europeans freely admitted their bias and policy:
they restricted imports from large multinational companies in Central America (plantations
whose lands were secured by US military force during the past century), and favored small
family farmers from former colonies who used fewer chemicals. It seemed like a decent
thing to do, and everyone thought the bananas tasted better. For the banana giants, this
was untenable. The United States prevailed in this WTO-arbitrated case. So who won, and
who lost? Did the Central American employees at Chiquita Brands win? Ask the hundreds of
workers in Honduras who were made infertile by the use of dibromochloropropane on the
banana plantations. Ask the mothers whose children have birth defects from pesticide
poisoning. Did the shareholders of Chiquita win? At the end of 1999, Chiquita Brands was
losing money because they were selling bananas at below cost to muscle their way into the
European market. Their stock was at a 13 year low, the shareholders were angry, the
company was up for sale, but the prices of bananas in Europe are really cheap. Who lost?
Caribbean farmers who could formerly make a living and send their kids to school can no
longer do so because of low prices and demand.
Globalization leads to the concentration of wealth inside such large multi-national
corporations as Time-Warner, Microsoft, GE, Exxon, and Wal-Mart. These giants can
obliterate social capital and local equity, and create cultural homogeneity in their wake.
Countries as different as Mongolia, Bhutan, and Uganda will have no choice but to allow
Blockbuster, Burger King, and Pizza Hut to operate within their borders. Under WTO, even
decisions made by local communities to refuse McDonald's entry (as did Martha's Vineyard)
could be overruled. The as-yet unapproved draft agenda calls for WTO member governments to
open up their procurement process to multi-national corporations. No longer could local
governments buy preferentially from local vendors. It could force governments to privatize
healthcare and allow foreign companies to bid on delivering national health programs. The
draft agenda could privatize and commodify education, and could ban cultural restrictions
to entertainment, advertising, or commercialism as a trade barrier. Globalization kills
self-reliance, since smaller local businesses can rarely compete with highly capitalized
firms who seek market share instead of profits. Thus, developing regions may become more
subservient to distant companies, with more of their income exported rather than being
re-spent locally.
On the weekend prior to the WTO meeting, the International Forum on Globalization(IFG)
held a two-day teach-in at Benaroya Hall in downtown Seattle on just such questions of how
countries can maintain autonomy in the face of globalization. Chaired by IFG President
Jerry Mander, more than 2,500 people from around the world attended. A similar number were
turned away. It was the hottest ticket in town - but somehow that ticket did not get into
the hands of pundits and columnists. It was an extravagant display of research,
intelligence, and concern, expressed by scholars, diplomats, writers, academics,
fishermen, scientists, farmers, geneticists, businesspeople, and lawyers. Prior to the
teach-in, non-governmental organizations, institutes, public interest law firms,
farmers organizations, unions, and councils had been issuing papers, communiqués,
press releases, books, and pamphlets for years. They were almost entirely ignored by the
WTO.
But something else was happening in Seattle underneath the debates and protests. In
Stewart Brands new book, The Clock of the Long Now Time and Responsibility,
he discusses what makes a civilization resilient and adaptive. Scientists have studied the
same question about ecosystems. How does a system, be it cultural or natural, manage
change, absorb shocks, and survive especially when change is rapid and accelerating? The
answer has much to do with time, both our use of it and our respect for it. Biological
diversity in ecosystems buffers against sudden shifts because different organisms and
elements fluctuate at different time scales. Flowers, fungi, spiders, trees, laterite, and
foxes all have different rates of change and response. Some respond quickly, others
slowly, so that the system, when subjected to stress, can move, sway, and give, and then
return and restore.
The WTO was a clash of chronologies or time frames, at least three, probably more. The
dominant time frame was commercial. Businesses are quick, welcome innovation in general,
and have a bias for change. They need to grow more quickly than ever before. They are
punished, pummeled and bankrupted if they do not. With worldwide capital mobility,
companies and investments are rewarded or penalized instantly by a network of technocrats
and money managers who move $2 trillion a day seeking the highest return on capital. The
Internet, greed, global communications, and high-speed transportation are all making
businesses move faster than before.
The second time frame is culture. It moves more slowly. Cultural revolutions are
resisted by deeper, historical beliefs. The first institution to blossom under perestroika
was the Russian Orthodox Church. I walked into a church near Boris Pasternaks dacha
in 1989 and heard priests and babushkas reciting the litany with perfect recall as if 72
years of repression had never happened. Culture provides the slow template of change
within which family, community, and religion prosper. Culture provides identity and in a
fast-changing world of displacement and rootlessness, becomes ever more important. In
between culture and business is governance, faster than culture, slower than commerce.
At the heart, the third and slowest chronology is Earth, nature, the web of life. As
ephemeral as it may seem, it is the slowest clock ticking, always there, responding to
long, ancient evolutionary cycles that are beyond civilization.
These three chronologies often conflict. As Stewart Brand points out, business
unchecked becomes crime. Look at Russia. Look at Microsoft. Look at history. What makes
life worthy and allows civilizations to endure are all the things that have
"bad" payback under commercial rules: infrastructure, universities, temples,
poetry, choirs, literature, language, museums, terraced fields, long marriages, line
dancing, and art. Most everything we hold valuable is slow to develop, slow to learn, and
slow to change. Commerce requires the governance of politics, art, culture, and nature, to
slow it down, to make it heedful, to make it pay attention to people and place. It has
never done this on its own. The extirpation of languages, cultures, forests, and fisheries
is occurring worldwide in the name of speeding up business. Business itself is stressed
out of its mind by rapid change. The rate of change is unnerving to all, even to those who
are supposedly benefiting. To those who are not, it is devastating.
What marched in the streets of Seattle? Slower time strode into the WTO. Ancient
identity emerged. The cloaks of the forgotten paraded on the backs of our children.
What appeared in Seattle were the details, dramas, stories, peoples, and puppet
creatures that had been ignored by the bankers, diplomats, and the rich. Corporate leaders
believe they have discovered a treasure of immeasurable value, a trove so great that
surely we will all benefit. It is the treasure of unimpeded commerce flowing everywhere as
fast as is possible. But in Seattle, quick time met slow time. The turtles, farmers,
workers, and priests werent invited and dont need to be because they are the
shadow world that cannot be overlooked, that will tail and haunt the WTO, and all it
successors, for as long as it exists. They will be there even if they meet in totalitarian
countries where free speech is criminalized. They will be there in dreams of delegates
high in the Four Seasons Hotel. They will haunt the public relations flacks who solemnly
insist that putting the genes of scorpions into our food is a good thing. What gathered
around the Convention Center and hotels was everything the WTO left behind.
In the Inuit tradition, there is a story of a fisherman who trolls an inlet. When a
heavy pull on the fishermans line drags his kayak to sea, he thinks he has caught
the "big one," a fish so large he can eat for weeks, a fish so fat that he will
prosper ever after, a fish so amazing that the whole village will wonder at his prowess.
As he imagines his fame and coming ease, what he reels up is Skeleton Woman, a woman flung
from a cliff and buried long ago, a fish-eaten carcass resting at the bottom of the sea
that is now entangled in his line. Skeleton Woman is so snarled in his fishing line that
she is dragged behind the fisherman wherever he goes. She is pulled across the water, over
the beach, and into his house where he collapses in terror. In the retelling of this story
by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, the fisherman has brought up a woman who represents life and
death, a specter who reminds us that with every beginning there is an ending, for all that
is taken, something must be given in return, that the earth is cyclical and requires
respect. The fisherman, feeling pity for her, slowly disentangles her, straightens her
bony carcass, and finally falls asleep. During the night, Skeleton Woman scratches
and crawls her way across the floor, drinks the tears of the dreaming fisherman, and grows
anew her flesh and heart and body. This myth applies to business as much as it does to a
fisherman. The apologists for the WTO want more-engineered food, sleeker planes, computers
everywhere, golf courses that are preternaturally green. They see no limits; they know of
no downside. But Life always comes with Death, with a tab, a reckoning. They are
each others consorts, inseparable and fast. These expansive dreams of the
worlds future wealth were met with perfect symmetry by Bill Gates, Jr. the co-chair
of the Seattle Host Committee, the worlds richest man. But Skeleton Woman also
showed up in Seattle, the uninvited guest, and the illusion of wealth, the imaginings of
unfettered growth and expansion, became small and barren in the eyes of the world.
Dancing, drumming, ululating, marching in black with a symbolic coffin for the world, she
wove through the sulfurous rainy streets of the night. She couldnt be killed or
destroyed, no matter how much gas or pepper spray or rubber bullets were used. She kept
coming back and sitting in front of the police and raised her hands in the peace sign, and
was kicked, and trod upon, and it didnt make any difference. Skeleton Woman told
corporate delegates and rich nations that they could not have the world. It is not for
sale. The illusions of world domination have to die, as do all illusions. Skeleton Woman
was there to say that if business is going to trade with the world, it has to recognize
and honor the world, her life and her people. Skeleton Woman was telling the WTO that it
has to grow up and be brave enough to listen, strong enough to yield, courageous enough to
give. Skeleton Woman has been brought up from the depths. She has regained
her eyes, voice and spirit. She is about in the world and her dreams are different. She
believes that the right to self-sufficiency is a human right; she imagines a world where
the means to kill people is not a business but a crime, where families do not starve,
where fathers can work, where children are never sold, where women cannot be impoverished
because they choose to be mothers and not whores. She cannot see in any dream a time where
a man holds a patent to a living seed, or animals are factories, or people are enslaved by
money, or water belongs to a stockholder. Hers are deep dreams from slow time. She is
patient. She will not be quiet or flung to sea anytime soon.