Organized labor is mobilizing big-time to protest the Seattle summit of the WTO, with most of the effort going to a massive march and rally on opening day, Nov. 30.

"It’s building like a tidal wave," remarked Vinnie O’Brien, the national AFL-CIO staffer responsible for coordinating the logistics of the Nov. 30 event. So far, 25 AFL-CIO state federations are sending delegations. Colorado’s labor federation has booked 100 plane tickets, and the Montana federation is organizing a car caravan.

The Vancouver, British Columbia, Labor Council is mobilizing Canadians to participate and the AFL-CIO is working with the U.S. Border Patrol to expedite border crossings.

The Longshore and Warehouse Union will shut down ports throughout Washington on Nov. 30 with an eight-hour daytime stop-work meeting.

Every central labor council in Washington announced a goal to fill three to 10 buses with rally-goers, and by the end of October every one of them had met or exceeded that goal.

In Oregon, the state AFL-CIO expects to send 1,600 union members, family, and staff - a number equal to 1 percent of all AFL-CIO members in the state. Some 350 of them will be traveling on a special "Union Train" chartered from Amtrak.

The rally site is expected to be packed. Memorial Stadium has a capacity of 25,000: 11,500 in covered bleachers and 13,500 on the field. After a two-hour rally, a march will begin, led by The Hogs, a group of Harley-Davidson-motorcycle-riding Machinists. Union representatives from over 100 countries will take part in the march, bearing the flags of their homelands. Several international unions are gearing up for a major presence in Seattle, including the Steelworkers, Machinists, the Teamsters and AFSCME. The Service Employees International Union has stationed "Big MAC" (Mobilization Action Center), a purple semi-trailer equipped with phone lines, in Seattle to make calls to union members.

The United Steelworkers of America has 500 hotel rooms reserved throughout the week of the WTO. It chose Seattle as the location of its annual "Rapid Response" conference, which will take place before the WTO meeting, and those delegates will stay on throughout the week for protest activities. Over 10,000 union steelworker jobs have been lost due to dumping of steel by Japan, Korea, Brazil, and Russia, so the union is taking trade issues very seriously. Teamsters from 19 locals around the state of Washington will assemble Nov. 30 at the Joint Council headquarters near Seattle Center before proceeding to the rally site. Mark Endresen, research director at Seattle Teamster Joint Council 28, said he expects to see a couple thousand Teamsters, who will be recognizable in yellow and dark-blue ponchos. Organized labor is wagering that if anything is likely to convince Clinton, a consistent advocate of free trade, to push harder to add enforceable labor rights and environmental standards to the WTO agreement, it’s an unmistakeable buzz from the streets.