Hi Elizabeth, this came through to the 'nocutnews' list serve a few days
ago. I am hoping that as many as possible are being archived. Kelly is
working on it at her site, others have come through the nocutnews,
teachers, activists, delegates from zerocut. I've asked if I can post the
others at my site, too. All the best
/donna
Feel free to distribute this widely.
REPORT FROM SEATTLE: Notes and Comments from the streets
and conference halls at the WTO
--Larry Fahn, WTO delegate
Executive Director of AS YOU SOW,
Sierra Club Board of Directors
The extraordinary events which took place in Seattle this past week were of
truly historic importance. The largest grassroots citizens coalition in
history came together, took to the streets, and succeeded in getting its
message to the world by halting the efforts of the World Trade Organization
to launch a "Millennium Round" of trade negotiations, which would have
primarily benefited multinational corporations.
As part of the Sierra Club's activist mobilization efforts, I attended and
took part in the five biggest marches and rallies, observed some of the
violence and confrontations with police, got blasted by tear gas, and
confronted a few of the cowardly masked anarchists who were about to toss a
newspaper rack through the front window of the FAO Schwartz toy store in
Seattle's downtown shopping district.
As a credentialed delegate to the WTO Ministerial sessions, representing
the
AS YOU SOW Foundation, with photo id passes to cross into curfew zones,
past
police barricades and into the bowels of the media circus and plenary
sessions of the WTO Conference, I got an inside look at the workings of the
WTO, met trade representatives, corporate types and press delegates from
all
over the world.
The proceedings of the WTO Ministerial paled in comparison to what was
happening outside, in the streets, halls and churches all around Seattle
during the week. The incredible feeling of energy and empowerment
generated
by the remarkable coming together of like-minded citizens from organized
labor, the environmental community, human rights, animal rights, and
consumer rights activists, farmers, teachers and regular folks from all
around the globe was truly amazing.
There were teach-ins on health and the environment, workshops on
biotechnology and trade, a labor and human rights forum, a debate between
Ralph Nader and the Undersecretary of Commerce and a Proctor & Gamble
lobbyist, peoples free concerts, panels on corporate accountability, and
dozens of briefings by various NGO's (non-governmental organizations) who
were taking part in the international civil society coalition actions.
Late Friday night I was at dinner with dozens of environmental leaders
hosted by Earth Justice Legal Defense Fund. Everyone was exhilarated by
the
week's remarkable events, but there was a sense of fatigue and frustration
that the negotiators were about to release a new "Seattle Round" agreement,
which would seriously undermine the efforts of our coalition to protect the
environment and working people around the world.
When word came that the negotiations had collapsed, the room erupted in
whoops and cheers and high-fives. We had, collectively, changed the world.
The message from the people in the streets had gotten through. Dan
Seligman
(the Sierra Club's Special Representative on Trade and the Environment) and
I grabbed a cab and rushed back up to the WTO Conference Center to take
part
in a last round of press conferences with leaders of Public Citizen, the
AFL-CIO, the Third World Network, Friends of the Earth, the National
Wildlife Federation and other coalition partners.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's front page story called it "an ugly
conclusion to an ugly week." To the contrary, for millions of people
across
the globe, for the world's forests and species, its indigenous peoples, and
small farmers, it was an unexpected triumph. For those of us who had come
to Seattle to help spread the message about the many threats of increased
corporate globalization, it was a hard fought victory after a truly
exceptional week. Our chant throughout the week "NO NEW ROUND" had been
achieved against vast odds. The political and financial might of the
multinational corporations, whose bidding was being done by faceless
bureaucrats from first world governments, had been brought to its knees.
The victorious grassroots coalition that came together in Seattle now faces
a daunting challenge: To stay united and work to create a global trading
system that is democratically accountable, makes environmental protection a
priority, and meets the diverse needs of the people, not simply the world's
largest corporations
What follows is a day-by-day summary of my Seattle experience:
MONDAY: Joined Sierra Club leaders, and health and animal rights activists
in a terrific forum and series of panels led by Congressman George Miller.
The place was packed with nearly 3,000 people, including about 300 in sea
turtle costumes made by Humane Society volunteers. Highlights included
Todd
Steiner's presentation on the plight of the sea turtles and a rousing
condemnation of the WTO by fiery Congresswoman Maxine Waters.
Next was the first of the big marches, the main environmental march of the
week. Due to a security breach at the WTO Conference Center (the morning
sessions had been canceled) the march was detoured to a point adjacent to
the Convention Center expansion site, where a flatbed truck served as the
stage. In a light rain the crowd of about 6,000 listened to some great folk
music and speeches from Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, Patty Forkan of the
Humane Society, Brent Blackwelder of Friends of the Earth, and a
charismatic
native American elder.
In the afternoon I met up with AS YOU SOW's Corporate Accountability
Associate Director Sheridan Pauker in the Press Room on the 4th floor of
the
convention center. We used the WTO's cybercafe computers to revise our
Press Release and make copies for press distribution. There were hundreds
of computers and high-speed copy machines at the disposal of all delegates
and the press. Outside the press room I was interviewed by a French TV
network and a Boston area radio station.
NGO presentations to the Plenary Session were cut short by three hours, due
to the morning sweep of the center by bomb-sniffing dogs and police. Only
50-60 out of the 776 registered NGO's were allotted speaking time. By the
luck of the draw, Sheridan was called on and she gave an excellent
statement
on the floor of the Ministerial Conference before hundreds of delegates and
trade representatives from around the world. It was a real thrill to watch
Sheridan on four huge video screens around the convention floor, and to
listen to her comments via headsets translated into French, Spanish and
Japanese. Although each speaker was limited to three minutes, Sheridan
managed to touch upon AYS' shareholder action program, the success of our
Home Depot resolution action, our toxics enforcement work, and the WTO's
threat to California's Proposition 65. She also raised our concern about
the need to reform the WTO so as to incorporate transparency and openness
into all WTO proceedings, including its trade dispute resolution process.
On Monday evening Sheridan and I met AYS' new Shareholder Action Associate
Michael Passoff at the NGO center at the Madison Renaissance Hotel, then
went to dinner to plan strategy for the rest of the week.
TUESDAY: The huge coalition march was to begin with a 10:00 a.m. rally at
Memorial Stadium. In the early morning hours, various groups (students,
enviros, labor, consumer groups, etc.) held separate warm-up rallies around
town and organized their own marches to the stadium. About 2,000
environmentalists, organized by Sierra Club Seattle coordinator Kathleen
Casey, gathered at Denny Park. My colleague on the Sierra Club Board
Michael Dorsey started things off with a passionate call to action on
environmental justice. He even quoted from the good book in his eloquent
condemnation of the corporate oligarchy embodied in the WTO. Followed by
protest veteran Tom Hayden, and my friend and hero David Brower, this small
rally was one of the most meaningful of the week.
When the environmental parade reached the stadium, it was already nearly
packed with more than forty thousand people. Although the vast majority
were union members, there were activists and protesters of every stripe
from
all over the world. There were small farmers from Korea, human rights
advocates from Burma and Columbia, California farmworkers, 300 costumed sea
turtles, Chinese Falun Gong practitioners, several hundred nurses from
Canada, Oregon fishermen, even a group of bare-breasted "lesbians for
justice." The Sierra Club's giant green banner "MAKE TRADE CLEAN, GREEN
AND
FAIR" was almost lost amidst large union banners, and signs promoting the
Green Party, the New Party, the Labor Party, the Communist Party and Free
Mumia. Earth Island Institute had a huge inflated sea turtle, and
Greenpeace had a 50 foot long green condom, advocating "practice safe
trade." The excitement and energy was palpable. Carl Pope's speech
decrying the corporate tyranny driving the WTO received some of the biggest
cheers of the day. After about 20 or so more rousing speeches, the crowd,
now about 60,000 strong, began the march toward downtown. It was like the
Bay-to-Breakers, with a cause.
Unfortunately, it was a march that had no end. Battalions of police in
full
riot gear regalia, looking like Darth Vader's storm troupers, blocked off
most exits downtown, and the anarchist types started throwing things
through
store windows. I confronted two punks who were going to toss a newspaper
rack into a toy shop window. While I held onto the newspaper box and tried
to convince them that violence was not going to help the cause, one guy
looked at me and said only "capitalism sucks, man" as he proceeded to kick
in the window instead. I had the misfortune of being nearby when a few
more
of the masked thugs decided to tip over some dumpsters and start a bonfire
in the intersection of 4th and Pike. Tear gas, shock grenades and a
fusillade of rubber bullets followed. After starting to choke and tear up
from the gas, I ducked into a progressive bookstore near 2nd & Pike, where
a
small group was watching the live coverage on TV, and the live action
outside the window, as terrified demonstrators ran by, sometimes followed
by
riot police. After some time I headed to Pike Place Market, which was
almost empty of people, and bought some fresh garlic-pepper smoked salmon,
my first food of the day. Then I attended a meeting/dinner given by the
Environmental Grantmakers Association, featuring a briefing from Martin
Kohr, the softspoken but brilliant Malaysian author who heads up the Third
World Network. By the end of the week, Martin was among the most
influential of WTO delegates on behalf of the developing world, and it was
a
great honor to meet him.
Later Tuesday night I hooked up with AS YOU SOW Board Chairman Tom Van
Dyck
and Rain Forest Action Network founder Randy Hayes at the big debate on the
WTO hosted by Public Citizen, the International Forum on Globalization, and
the Nation Magazine, featuring Ralph Nader and Vananda Shiva, a popular
environmental and feminist spokesperson from India. After the debate a
small group recounted the excitement of the day's events at a bar called
The
Bookstore. Then, after last call, we retired to Randy's hotel room to
watch
the tv news coverage. Some time after midnight I walked fifteen blocks
down
First Avenue back to my hotel. Even though it was part of the curfew zone,
it was quite eerie. There was not a soul on the street. What an
incredible
day it was.
WEDNESDAY: In the early morning I went down to Pioneer Square, which was
nearly empty of people. I met a King County employee (an aide to a County
Councilman) who had been caught up in Tuesday's melee and spent 10 hours in
jail. After attending some boring Plenary Sessions and briefings at the
WTO
Conference Center I headed down to the Labor Temple and joined a
steelworkers march to the waterfront where union leaders symbolically
dumped
a dozen or so large steel girders into Elliot Bay in protest of the WTO
dumping rules (they looked real, but were actually artificial, and were
later fished back out of the water).
In the afternoon I participated in a working session on the global spread
of
biotechnology and GMO's (genetically modified organisms) which is a new
focus of AS YOU SOW's corporate accountability program, and the subject of
a
new Sierra Club task force. Another downtown church was overflowing with
activists concerned about the future of food safety and production, and the
plight of small farmers around the world. I had the opportunity to speak
at
length with Ralph Nader about the threat to Prop. 65 posed by a recent
decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an important case from Vermont,
which could have major impacts on private citizen enforcement laws. Ralph
promised to have Public Citizen follow up and work with AS YOU SOW in
submitting a friend-of-the-court brief.
At an early evening reception given by EGA, I spoke with George Frampton,
President Clinton's Council on Environmental Quality Chair, who made the
astonishing claim that the WTO's plan for accelerated tariff liberalization
would have "less than minimal impact" on the rate of the world's forest
harvesting. This deceptive notion was raised an hour or so later when Carl
Pope and the CEO's of four other mainstream environmental groups met with
President Clinton in a lively forty minute meeting at the Westin Hotel.
The
President made some important commitments about opening up the WTO process
(the transparency issue), but would not budge on ATL, according to Mark Van
Putten, Director of the National Wildlife Federation, who was at the
presidential meeting.
Sheridan and I then went up to the Town Hall where we met with a small but
committed group of representatives of like-minded NGO's from around the
world where we began planning for the post-Seattle agenda. This meeting
was
organized by a lawyer from the Geneva office of The Center for
International
Environmental Law (CIEL). The acronyms are enough to drive you batty, and
I'm planning to publish an alphabet soup of the WTO, a guide to
trade/environment/labor group abbreviations.
THURSDAY: I had pre-registered for a day-long forum on global trade and the
environment sponsored by SHO, the Seattle Host Organization, and chaired by
former EPA Chief Bill Ruckelhaus, now Director of the World Resources
Institute (WRI). This was a classy event, with mostly industry
suit-and-tie
guys in attendance, held at the Bell Harbor World Conference Center on
Seattle's Northern Waterfront. It was also where President Clinton was
coming to sign the ILO (one more acronym--the International Labor
Organization) treaty on child labor, so it was crawling with secret service
and other security. After observing the Presidential ceremony, basically a
labor-Clinton administration photo opportunity, I attended two
Trade/Environment panels, which had a noticeable industry oriented balance.
After being seated next to a lobbyist for the Canadian timber industry at
the lavish buffet lunch, I excused myself and walked about five blocks down
the waterfront to catch the last few speeches at the Food and Agriculture
Day Rally, featuring Texas populist radio talk show host Jim Hightower and
Mark Ritchie of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP),
which
organized this rally and many other Thursday events. There must have been
about 5,000 people there (lots of great signs, Frankenstein carrots and
other food characters). The crowd soon divided into two large groups to
march to the corporate offices of Cargill (North) and Weyerhouser (to the
South). I headed back to the Bell Harbor Center to catch the end of a
speech by the British Minister of the Environment and publicly challenge
George Frampton on his deforestation position. He was scheduled for an
afternoon panel, but was a no-show, since he was "busy with President
Clinton." It was later learned that the President had already left town.
Thursday's EGA briefing featured Mark Van Putten (NWF--National Wildlife
Federation President), as well as President Clinton's personal trade
advisor, Karen Tramantano, and the EPA's Environment & Trade Policy
Coordinator, John Audley. I introduced the Sierra Club's Trade
Representative Dan Seligman to the group and a very lively exchange ensued.
After dinner Dan and I caught a cab to Capitol Hill where we met up with a
large group of the organizing team from Public Citizen for some late night
beers, in one of Seattle's only non-smoking pubs.
FRIDAY: This was Corporate Accountability Day in the civil society
organization's agenda. I had planned to spend all day at workshops and
meetings with shareholder activists and corporate reform proponents. There
was one great panel, with some stellar leaders of the corporate
accountability movement. I had a nice talk with Anita Roddick, progressive
owner of the Body Shop, and met David Kortem who wrote "When Corporations
Rule the World." Michael Passoff made an excellent statement about AS YOU
SOW's pioneering shareholder activism work.
The day was cut short however when it was announced that environmentalists
and labor had planned one last great rally and march. This one had more of
a
spiritual focus as a rabbi lit candles signifying the first day of Chanukah
and a Baptist minister fired up the crowd with a speech/sermon in the
manner
of Martin Luther King, quoting extensively from King and Ghandi. Then it
was back to the streets, as the 10,000 or so of us began a final solidarity
march to downtown. As one of the few in the crowd displaying my WTO
delegate ID badge (with a NO WTO decal attached) I was singled out and
interviewed by several news representatives, including Brazilian TV and
Pacifica radio. At the end of this march, some more speeches featured the
Sierra Club's Dan Seligman and Patti Goldman, Northwest Director of Earth
Justice Legal Defense Fund. Then the crowd spelled out DEMOCRACY in the
street, which was an awesome sight when seen on TV from the helicopters
hovering overhead.
The day's proceeding within the WTO were mostly uneventful, at least until
late in the evening. On Thursday a draft trade agreement leaked out, with
many important blanks. The language of the section on Agriculture had
angered the developing countries' trade ministers, who were increasingly
frustrated at having no real role in the closed-door sessions. Rumor had
it
that the entire African/Caribbean block of nations was preparing to walk
out
of Friday morning's Plenary Session, so the WTO simply canceled the entire
day's open meetings. Large numbers of official delegates spent the entire
day sitting around, smoking and waiting to hear of the official trade
negotiation results. The hundreds of reporters and NGO representatives who
were not covering the rally or marching were sitting around in frustration.
In the meantime the U.S. Trade Representative team was inside at
loggerheads
with the EU over food tariffs, transparency and other issues. The day's
highlight from the inside took place when Rain Forest Action Network's
Randy
Hayes and Sheila Gallagher were hauled away from the Press Room by the
secret service after unfurling a large banner reading " PROTECT THE
FORESTS: CLEARCUT THE WTO". Later an Earth Island delegate did the same
thing after scaling a wall next to the giant smoking foyer for
international
delegates. His banner hung for about a minute before he was whisked away
shouting "SEA TURTLES ARE NOT TRADE BARRIERS".
When the talks finally collapsed, the press was as interested in talking to
environmental and labor leaders as the U.S. Trade Representative. Later
that night word came that Mrs. Barshefsky, the USTR who led the United
States' delegation had requested one of the ubiquitous turtle costumes as a
memento of the week's events. What more could the environmental community
have asked for?
As a result of these momentous events, the politics of trade in the U.S.
and around the globe will never be the same. Martin Kohr said it best
after
the NO NEW ROUND success was final. "For the past year a global coalition
of thousands of groups demanded 'no new round' in the WTO and instead
called
for massive reform of the WTO rules and system. The failure in Seattle for
a new round affirms the correctness of the NGO call. The WTO should now
focus its work to review its rules and reform its system of decision
making."
The environmental community's challenge is to stay focused, work closely
with our new coalition partners, and make sure that food safety, forest
health, species protection, climate change and other environmental issues
remain near the top of the world trade agenda.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE SUBSTANCE OF THE IMPORTANT WTO-RELATED
ISSUES RAISED IN THIS REPORT, START WITH A GREAT WEB SITE:
www.wtowatch.org, or go to the Sierra Club's, www.sierraclub.org, and then
click on Trade Issues
