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the battle in seattle by Nick Mamatas (nillo@agoron.com) - July 28, 2002 |
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| One of the largest, sustained political protests in the United States since the Vietnam War will be remembered always, thanks to a single omnipresent image. The image isn't a burning American flag or a phalanx of riot cops standing over the broken bodies. Instead the corporate media chose the picture of the shattered windows and gutted interior of a Starbucks to symbolize the Battle In Seattle over the World Trade Organization's millennium round. Unable to count to ten and thus understand that the millennium begins in 2001, not 2000, the WTO is also interested in lowering barriers to trade across the world. In addition to eliminating sometimes counter-productive tariffs and ridiculous protectionist policies, WTO policy guts environmental and labor laws and twists the arms of Third World countries, in order to make them comply with a free trade regime designed solely to help the United States and the European Union. Potentially, even basic protections like voluntary labeling of food products or the right to organize labor unions (a pretty important right if you're a 12 year-old Indonesian who is chained to a lathe 12 hours a day, or an American computer programmer whose carpals have been splintered by typing 12 hours a day) were threatened by the Seattle WTO meeting. The meeting failed. Instead of a handful of lukewarm protestors simply yelling at imperialism, nearly 100 000 people hit the streets. The trade unions who gave Bill Clinton $30 million dollars in 1996 finally turned against him, and didn't blame all their problems on poor Mexicans. The Freedom for Tibet crowd realized that confronting the global economy would be more effective than listening to REM and quietly weeping. Environmentalists stopped writing poems about the mighty redwood for a few days and turned the urban streets into a wild zone. Because Seattle is the most heavily unionized city in the United States, and is located near environmentally sensitive bodies of water and forests, it was the perfect choice for a massive protest. The media however, decided that thirty anti-civilization anarchists from Eugene, Oregon and other areas in the Pacific Northwest were more important. One less Starbucks in Seattle got more ink than the AFL-CIO finally standing up to the Democrats. The death of The Gap was mourned, but police provocation was ignored. I personally received over 50 email reports from unrelated activists and witnesses, all of them agreed that time and again, the cops started the violence and made escape impossible. The use of tear gas, rubber bullets and flailing batons were described as a 'response' by the news, and it was a response. A response to people standing up for themselves, their planet and their way of life! Even trade ministers and delegates from countries in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean decided to stand with the protestors; the army of police, emergency curfews and virtual martial law may have made some of them feel at home. The people of Seattle were less than happy with their right to walk down the street or visit friends being summarily taken away. And they did something about it, and may just have saved life as we know it, if only for a little while. Now, what are you going to do about it? The views expressed above represent the writer and not necessarily those of The Disinformation Company Ltd. |
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Seattle And Beyond: A WTO Agenda For The New Millenium Break The Corporate Stranglehold With Green Living Seattle: Hub Of The Global Economy City Drops Most Cases Against Protesters Cattlemen On The Hill Eat The State Word War WTO The World Trade Organization NO2WTO: Our Resistance Will Be As Transnational As Capitalism Disinformation's Dossier On The World Trade Organization |
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