wlmmyers
12-31-1969, 07:00 PM
<x-flowed> I wanted to send this to you as soon as it was
finished. Your comments, reaction, response are
wholly welcome. I went to Seattle to learn more about the WTO, to
attend the teach-in, and to participate in the direct action. I did not
expect to write about it, but when I returned home and read what the
coverage was, I felt bad for the thousands and thousands of people who
had their lives and message distorted or ignored by the media. So I
began to write. If you would like to forward it on, please, of course, do.
All the best
Paul Hawken
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 not polite terms. They 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 world's top 200 companies have twice
the assets of 80 percent of the world's 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, they
threaten and diminish all democratic institutions are diminished and at
risk. Corporate free market policies subvert culture and community, a
true tyranny. The American Revolution occurred because of
crown-chartered corporate abuse, a "remote tyranny" in Thomas
Jefferson's 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 <italic>The Lexus and the Olive Tree,</italic>
angrily wrote that the demonstrators were "a Noah's 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 world's 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 three 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
Friedman's 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
protestors came to Seattle to hold the WTO accountable.
On the morning of November 30th, I walked toward the Convention Center
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 protestors 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 Organization's 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.
Mayor Paul Schell stood despondently near the stage. Since no scheduled
speakers were present, Kevin Danaher, Medea Benjamin, and Juliet Hill
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. Medea's 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 runs roughshod
over local laws and regulations. The WTO agenda relentlessly pursues
the elimination of any strictures on the free flow of trade, including
how a product is made, by whom it is made, or what happens when it is
made. By doing so, the WTO is 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 environmental destruction, habitat
loss, toxic waste production, and 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 their 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.
But 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 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 protestors
were beaten, gassed, clubbed, and pushed back, a new group would
replace them. Throughout most of the day, using a variety of
techniques, groups held intersections and key areas downtown. The
protests were organized through a network of cell phones, bullhorns,
and signals. All decisions prior to the demonstrations were reached by
consensus. Minority views here heeded and included. The one agreement
shared by all was no violence, physical or verbal, no weapons, no drugs
or alcohol. 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 protestor
later commented, what they were unprepared for was a network of
non-violent protestors totally committed to one task - shutting down
the WTO.
Meanwhile, Moore and Barshevsky's 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
Barshevsky's 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 Moore's moment, reviving what had been a mediocre
political ascendancy in New Zealand. To say nothing of Monsanto's
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 contains 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 didn't
arrive. The meeting couldn't 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 Randy's and my right on Sixth, protestors
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 protestors 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 mag 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
protestors 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. Goldstein's 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. It's not a gas, it's 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 couldn't 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 couldn't 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
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, protestors 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). Taunting, jeering, protestors 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 protestors 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 protestor 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
hadn't 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
couldn't 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 protestors and the anarchists (later
joined by local vandals as the night wore on). But the anarchists were
not primitivists, nor were they 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 Tully's. 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 U'wa tribe in Columbia. Starbuck's because of their non-support of
fair-traded coffee. The GAP because of the Fisher family's 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 we've been doing activism on these issues for many years. We
are neither ill-informed nor inexperienced." They don't 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. That's 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.
It's 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 congressman's choice if any of them signed
an affidavit saying they had read it and could answer several questions
about it. Only one congressman - Sen. 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 that 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,
didn't want to stop there. They chased demonstrators into neighborhoods
where the distinctions between protestors and citizens vanished. The
police began attacking bystanders, witnesses, residents, and commuters.
They had completely lost control. When President Clinton sped from
Boeing airfield to the Westin 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 world's problems; that
they are opposed to global integration; that they are against trade;
that they are ignorant and insensitive to the world's poor; that they
want to tell other people how to live. The list is long and
tendentious.
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, including their writings, area of focus, and organizational
affiliations: 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 can't 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 Zerzan's writings.
Some of the mainstream media also assigned blame to the protesters for
the meeting's 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 it does provide, where
democracies prevail, a means for people to set their own policy, to
influence decisions, and determine their future. Globalization
supercedes 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 Clinton administration. 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 really
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
under 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? Carribean 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 large
multi-national corporations such 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 foreign corporations. No
longer could local governments buy preferentially from local vendors.
It could force governments to essentially privatize health and allow
foreign companies to bid on delivering national health care programs.
It could privatize and commodify education, or ban cultural
restrictions to entertainment, advertising, or commercialism as a trade
barrier. In addition, 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 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. Beyond and before
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 Brand's new book, <italic>The Clock of the Long
Now - Time and Responsibility</italic>, 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, other 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 dollars
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 Pasternak's 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
benefiting. To those who are not benefiting, 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, and priests weren't invited and don't 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 fisherman's 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 other's consorts, inseparable and fast. These
expansive dreams of the world's future wealth were met with perfect
symmetry by Bill Gates, Jr. the co-chair of the Seattle host committee,
the world's 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 sulphurous rainy
streets of the night. She couldn't 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 didn't 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.
© Paul Hawken, Sausalito, January 6, 2000
Paul G. Hawken
Natural Capital Institute
3B Gate Five Road
Sausalito, CA 94965
415 332 6990 ph
415 332 7933 fx
hawken@well.com
</x-flowed>
This post transferred from the cdb-l mailing list
finished. Your comments, reaction, response are
wholly welcome. I went to Seattle to learn more about the WTO, to
attend the teach-in, and to participate in the direct action. I did not
expect to write about it, but when I returned home and read what the
coverage was, I felt bad for the thousands and thousands of people who
had their lives and message distorted or ignored by the media. So I
began to write. If you would like to forward it on, please, of course, do.
All the best
Paul Hawken
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 not polite terms. They 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 world's top 200 companies have twice
the assets of 80 percent of the world's 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, they
threaten and diminish all democratic institutions are diminished and at
risk. Corporate free market policies subvert culture and community, a
true tyranny. The American Revolution occurred because of
crown-chartered corporate abuse, a "remote tyranny" in Thomas
Jefferson's 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 <italic>The Lexus and the Olive Tree,</italic>
angrily wrote that the demonstrators were "a Noah's 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 world's 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 three 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
Friedman's 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
protestors came to Seattle to hold the WTO accountable.
On the morning of November 30th, I walked toward the Convention Center
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 protestors 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 Organization's 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.
Mayor Paul Schell stood despondently near the stage. Since no scheduled
speakers were present, Kevin Danaher, Medea Benjamin, and Juliet Hill
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. Medea's 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 runs roughshod
over local laws and regulations. The WTO agenda relentlessly pursues
the elimination of any strictures on the free flow of trade, including
how a product is made, by whom it is made, or what happens when it is
made. By doing so, the WTO is 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 environmental destruction, habitat
loss, toxic waste production, and 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 their 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.
But 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 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 protestors
were beaten, gassed, clubbed, and pushed back, a new group would
replace them. Throughout most of the day, using a variety of
techniques, groups held intersections and key areas downtown. The
protests were organized through a network of cell phones, bullhorns,
and signals. All decisions prior to the demonstrations were reached by
consensus. Minority views here heeded and included. The one agreement
shared by all was no violence, physical or verbal, no weapons, no drugs
or alcohol. 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 protestor
later commented, what they were unprepared for was a network of
non-violent protestors totally committed to one task - shutting down
the WTO.
Meanwhile, Moore and Barshevsky's 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
Barshevsky's 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 Moore's moment, reviving what had been a mediocre
political ascendancy in New Zealand. To say nothing of Monsanto's
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 contains 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 didn't
arrive. The meeting couldn't 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 Randy's and my right on Sixth, protestors
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 protestors 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 mag 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
protestors 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. Goldstein's 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. It's not a gas, it's 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 couldn't 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 couldn't 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
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, protestors 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). Taunting, jeering, protestors 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 protestors 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 protestor 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
hadn't 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
couldn't 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 protestors and the anarchists (later
joined by local vandals as the night wore on). But the anarchists were
not primitivists, nor were they 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 Tully's. 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 U'wa tribe in Columbia. Starbuck's because of their non-support of
fair-traded coffee. The GAP because of the Fisher family's 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 we've been doing activism on these issues for many years. We
are neither ill-informed nor inexperienced." They don't 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. That's 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.
It's 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 congressman's choice if any of them signed
an affidavit saying they had read it and could answer several questions
about it. Only one congressman - Sen. 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 that 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,
didn't want to stop there. They chased demonstrators into neighborhoods
where the distinctions between protestors and citizens vanished. The
police began attacking bystanders, witnesses, residents, and commuters.
They had completely lost control. When President Clinton sped from
Boeing airfield to the Westin 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 world's problems; that
they are opposed to global integration; that they are against trade;
that they are ignorant and insensitive to the world's poor; that they
want to tell other people how to live. The list is long and
tendentious.
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, including their writings, area of focus, and organizational
affiliations: 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 can't 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 Zerzan's writings.
Some of the mainstream media also assigned blame to the protesters for
the meeting's 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 it does provide, where
democracies prevail, a means for people to set their own policy, to
influence decisions, and determine their future. Globalization
supercedes 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 Clinton administration. 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 really
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
under 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? Carribean 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 large
multi-national corporations such 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 foreign corporations. No
longer could local governments buy preferentially from local vendors.
It could force governments to essentially privatize health and allow
foreign companies to bid on delivering national health care programs.
It could privatize and commodify education, or ban cultural
restrictions to entertainment, advertising, or commercialism as a trade
barrier. In addition, 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 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. Beyond and before
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 Brand's new book, <italic>The Clock of the Long
Now - Time and Responsibility</italic>, 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, other 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 dollars
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 Pasternak's 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
benefiting. To those who are not benefiting, 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, and priests weren't invited and don't 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 fisherman's 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 other's consorts, inseparable and fast. These
expansive dreams of the world's future wealth were met with perfect
symmetry by Bill Gates, Jr. the co-chair of the Seattle host committee,
the world's 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 sulphurous rainy
streets of the night. She couldn't 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 didn't 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.
© Paul Hawken, Sausalito, January 6, 2000
Paul G. Hawken
Natural Capital Institute
3B Gate Five Road
Sausalito, CA 94965
415 332 6990 ph
415 332 7933 fx
hawken@well.com
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