FYI: -------- Original Message -------- Subject: What's Happening in Seattle and Why Date: Thu, 02 Dec 1999 11:56:40 -0500 From: Jay Fenello <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Organization: Fenello.com, Inc. Newsgroups: alt.politics.usa.republican,alt.politics.democrats.d,alt.politics.reform,alt .politics.greens,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.anarchism,alt.journalism,alt.r eligion,talk.politics.misc http://zena.secureforum.com/wto-watch/report.cfm?ItemID=44 What's Happening in Seattle and Why by Michael Albert Michael Albert is editor of ZNet and writes regularly on movement strategy. Ballpark 100,000 demonstrators assembled in Seattle. They are farmers and industrial workers, unionists and environmentalists, young and old, men and women, from the U.S. and from the third world, and they are angry and their target is the WTO, and thus also oppressive world trade, and thus also, just a minor step beyond, the market system and capitalism itself. They are there to raise social costs to elites high enough, by their actions on the scene and by the repercussions for continuing organizing all around the world (75,000 today demonstrated in France, for example) to curtail or better close down the WTO agenda. So what do you do if you are in charge of the City and have Clinton due in town imminently and the whole world, literally, watching? What�s the elite strategy? (1) You can sit back and be nice and allow the demonstrators to move freely and make their points and develop confidence and grow in number and size and, most important, in their mutual solidarity, with more people arriving every hour, and education and outreach blossoming each day. Or (2) you can try and break the thing up, quickly, even if at great risk should you fail. It seems to me that the powers that be decided that to leave hands off was a recipe for sure disaster. They envisioned the specter of growing numbers, growing willingness to do civil disobedience, and worst of all, growing solidarity between diverse sectors, and outreach to new constituencies and realized that throughout the country and world this would send a message that dissent can restrain the state. They didn't like that picture. Their other option � the usual favorite choice of U.S. elites � is to try to bust up opposition by using brute force, or as much force as they can get away with, at any rate. The idea in this case is to send an immediate message that being in Seattle as a demonstrator means braving gas, truncheons, and rubber bullets, at the very least. The police and media try to together get the less mobile and less militant demonstrators to leave, depressed or angry. Then the thinned ranks can be herded away from the WTO buildings and arrested or crushed. Judging by early reports, that�s the elite plan, is my guess. The tactics are very typical � intimidating costumes, quick and eager violence, curfews, provocations to get demonstrator actions that one can complain are the source of all the repression. Provoke a little violence, repress it with a lot... The demonstrator reaction will hopefully be, of course, not to fracture but instead to generate more and more organization, discipline, and steadfast solidarity and militance in marching, and when need be, in committing non-violent civil disobedience. What will happen? No one can possibly know, of course. But if you are in Seattle I think the thing to try to affect is whether Seattle's citizens -- its cab drivers, its bus drivers, its small shop keepers, its folk on the street -- become sympathetic to the demonstrators or even outright supportive of the demonstrators, and whether the union and other more mainstream demonstrators divorce themselves from the street demonstrations perhaps even leaving, or, instead, join in the continuing marches and rallies, telling the Seattle police that their opposition is workers like themselves, and angry ones. If (a) happens this will be an important event. If (b) happens, it could well be historic. -- Respectfully, Jay Fenello, New Media Relations ------------------------------------ http://www.fenello.com 770-392-9480 "We are creating the most significant new jurisdiction we've known since the Louisiana purchase, yet we are building it just outside the constitution's review." -- Larry Lessig, Harvard Law School, on ICANN
