<nettime> My WTO article

["cisler" <cisler@pobox.com>]

I posted a couple of times to nettime during the Seattle events.  Here's 
the article I did for First Monday
< http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_12/cisler/index.html>

Take a look there if you want to see the 9 JPEGS that accompany the text
which follows this.

Steve Cisler
cisler@pobox.com

Showdown in Seattle: Turtles, Teamsters, and Tear Gas
By Steve Cisler <firstmonday.org>


"What's all this WTO stuff?" the young man asked a young woman riding in
the airport shuttle into Seattle. We were heading from Sea Tac airport on
the busiest night of the year. She gave a cogent reply in three or four
sentences, explaining what the WTO was, what the objections to it were and
what might happen in Seattle during the week of protests, and then the
whole van lapsed back into silence. Nobody else wanted to talk about it.

I had flown up from San Jose, and as the plane punched through the clouds,
I half expected to see the city on fire, judging from the pre-conference
rhetoric and rather public plans for disruption and civil disobedience at
the 1999 Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization. Comprised
of 135 countries and dozens of observer states, hoping to join, government
trade representatives had been discussing trade regulations and since 1995,
when the WTO took up the reins at the conclusion of the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations. GATT began in 1947 as a post-war
strategy for recovery. A group called the Quad (Canada, EU, U.S., and
Japan) usually set an agenda for WTO meetings beforehand, and the other
nations followed. Peter Sutherland, former Director-General of the WTO,
sees the organization as one that provides rules-based trading to help the
small nations play with the same protection as the large and powerful ones.
It offers dispute settlement, but this process is still fragile and could
be undermined if the WTO cannot reach consensus. The disputes that have
made the mainstream news have been over price supports for Caribbean
bananas, American beef, the U.S. trade embargo of Cuba, U.S. textile
quotas, and Japanese control over the photographic film market. Normally,
only a few policy wonks and corporate lawyers pay much attention to all of
this. Why, then, did thousands of people opposing the WTO come to Seattle?

The turmoil over globalization and all of its attendant changes in
technology, currency flow and worker displacement attracted the attention
of many developing countries as well as dozens of non-profits and NGOs
around the world. After reading Manuel Castells' trilogy, The Information
Age,the reader realizes that trade is a major part of what the author calls
"the space of flows" that characterize the modern world. Because it touches
our daily lives and our environment, groups worried about jobs, the
environment, food and the democratic process have decided to target the
WTO.

The WTO lacks transparency, and its secrecy stirred up as much resentment
as its publicized decisions have. The new Director-General, Mike Moore of
New Zealand, took over this year and has tried to make some changes in the
way the WTO operates. For the first time, NGOs were invited to Seattle to
take part in a few limited discussions. He was more willing to make
overtures to opponents, but the events in Seattle overshadowed this
approach. Judging from the program, it was more the WTO talking to the
NGOs, rather than listening to their concerns. If the WTO ministers were
reluctant to engage in formal dialogue with the accredited NGOs, they
certainly heard from those groups who did not want to meet with the WTO,
and that is what made the news.

Tuesday, November 30

I tried to get press credentials, but I started the process too near the
starting date of the conference. Therefore, I had no particular doors
opened for me. In fact, few people had doors opened because disruption in
the streets and the imposition of martial law. Security was extremely
tight, and as the days passed, it was very hard to move around.

I had set up a schedule of open meetings and demonstrations that were
clearly advertised weeks, even months before the week of November 29. One
of the best sites for information was
www.agitprop.org/artandrevolution/wto. This led to an accurate calendar
(for WTO official events and those opposing it), links to other resister
sites, background on the Direct Action Convergence and detailed plans for
the opposition. The WTO site - www.wto.org - in Geneva had the usual
organizational profiles as well as webcasts of all the main sessions that
were not cancelled. The video archives are in three languages and stream at
three different speeds a total of nine files for each session! The 56 kb
worked remarkably well on December 6, 1999. It is worth watching a
selection to see that various delegates were voicing the same worries that
people outside the meeting halls were raising. The morning session for
November 29 is a good introduction to the WTO by Director-General Mike
Moore.

What the news media concentrated on were not the position papers that
weighed heavily on the NGO press tables but the telegenic events in the
streets. I woke early on November 30, and made my way through a steady rain
to a bus stop. I was staying with a friend from community networking
activities. He and his young daughter and teenage son were going to the
rally. The daughter carried a sign she had made, and the son was making a
video of the events.

Thousands of labor union members were gathered at the stadium for a large,
approved march downtown. Leading up to this were environmental gatherings
at nearby park. This was not very stirring, so we headed to the stadium. On
the way we encountered hundreds of Asian practitioners of Falun Gong, the
spiritual exercise system that has so upset the Chinese government. Around
the edge of the park, dozens of followers stood silently, holding large
banners in English and Chinese. Nearby, young Chinese fluent in English
answered questions and asked passersby to sign a petition to the Chinese
government. According to the Financial Times, a majority of Americans want
to use trade leverage to link it to human rights improvement in China. In a
large grid hundreds of Falun Gong people stood with their arms high over
their heads, eyes closed. It was a silent testimony and a very impressive
one, considering what they have endured from Chinese authorities.

It was so different from the festive and feisty nature of the labor rally
and to the vandalism going on elsewhere in the city. For several hours we
heard diverse voices from El Salvador, Philippines, France, Canada and
unions representing longshoremen, steel workers, airline pilots, building
trades, teachers exhort the crowd to "fix it or nix it."

On the field there were clusters of members, and the folks dressed as sea
turtles stood by the Teamsters and unions that would usually never be in
the same room as environmentalists. It was quite a show, but the talks went
on so long that some groups began the march before James Hoffa and the head
of the AFL-CIO appeared. I sat next to a steelworker with a 100-decibel
whistle that blasted my ears every 30 seconds, so I was anxious to move
out. The exit was massively congested, but nobody pushed or appeared to be
impatient. Outside the stadium a gaggle of young anarchists dressed in
black were strutting around.

Later we were to hear that while we sat in the stadium another action had
taken place in the early morning. That is when the breaking of windows
began and the blocking of the intersections started. Non-violent protestors
tried to stop the vandals from breaking windows in stores. The labor march
proceeded at a leisurely pace; it was almost a carnival atmosphere with
street theater groups bearing coffins, dressing as Santa Claus, walking on
stilts, and playing music, courtesy of the anti-fascist marching band.

By the time we reached downtown, other activists tried to divert the main
flow of marchers down a street to confront the police. Eventually,
everything was jammed together, and we saw evidence of the morning rampage:
overturned dumpsters, boarded up windows, and scrawls on the building
walls.

The most ubiquitous was the anarchist's logo, an A with a circle around it.
If you look at a formal funeral wreath, it is a round display attached to a
free-standing A-frame. Take away the flowers and you have the anarchist
logo. Death wreath equals anarchism? Coincidence? Who knows?

Many of the intersections were blocked, but after an hour or so milling
about, the legions of union members left, and those remaining were casual
observers, more hardcore demonstrators, and the general public still trying
to get to work or even do Christmas shopping. However, most businesses were
closed by now. The hotels were guarded heavily, and the police seemed tired
and edgy. An African WTO delegate tried to get past the police, but he was
rebuffed. He stood near me, peering into the parking area and finally got
the attention of another officer. He flashed an ID badge inside his lapel,
and we helped him up on the high ledge so he could enter.

Many delegates were not allowed passage by demonstrators, and both Madeline
Albright and Kofi Annan were kept from meetings. We watched as the tension
built up between the chanting crowd and the immobile police line. Retiring
to an office above a congested intersection, we watched as the heavy armor
units of the Seattle police began preparing for an escalation. We heard
very loud concussion grenades exploding a few blocks away and then saw
large clouds of tear gas drift into our intersection.

There were only a few demonstrators grouping below our window, and nothing
violent happened.

Pain Compliance

We heard that a curfew had been imposed, but none of the police had been
told when we asked. Eventually, one hard case, Officer Best, said that
there was a curfew from 7 PM to 7 AM and if you looked like you were
causing trouble, he would "hurt you." Did he mean "arrest you?" No, he
meant pain compliance. A wonderful new term for my vocabulary. What methods
are used to exercise pain compliance? The police have an array of
non-lethal tools. You can read more about these online, but
www.armorholdings.com is a large supplier of "solutions" to law enforcement
agencies for SWAT (special weapons and tactics) vehicles, shields, body
armor and weapons that fire rubber pellets, bullets, and paintballs, tear
gas and pepper spray.

Pepper spray achieved notoriety in 1997 when it was used on
environmentalists from Earth First! who were demonstrating in northern
California. The police forced the eyelids apart and sprayed directly into
the eyes of the demonstrators. A lawsuit ended in favor of the police, and
undoubtedly other jurisdictions felt justified in using similar tactics.
Pepper spray is made up of oleoresin capsicum and a propellant. OC is the
oil from peppers which vary in strength. Sprays used by hunters have more
OC with a higher Scoville Heat Unit rating. Sprays carried by women to ward
off attackers are somewhat weaker, but any skin contact is extremely
painful. The symptoms cause pain, nausea, and restrict breathing. To see
this used so liberally by the police was shocking to many residents (as
well as those on the receiving end of the weapon).

According to a report after the conference ended, a WTO conference
consultant had recommended the police stockpile $100,000 worth of the
spray, but they only bought $20,000 worth. When the police expended this
supply by mid-week, they had to fly to Casper, Wyoming, to pick up more
canisters and deliver them by backpack to the troops.

Late in the afternoon, confrontations were stepping up, and we saw a number
of young men challenging the static police line. One fellow had been
injured and blood was streaming down his face in rivulets. People came up
to look and check the wound, but he shouted that he felt fine. Another
person looked as though he would call for medical help, but instead he
shouted "Can someone find a cameraman?" All sides were so media-aware and
this was evident in many other instances too. This proved to be useful in
some ways, but violence and street spectacle shaped the public perception
of what happened in Seattle rather than reports on private and public
meetings. I was shocked by the violence but pleased by the meetings I
attended. One successful one was the Tuesday evening debate.

IFG Debate

One of the most adamant opponents of many aspects of globalization has been
the International Forum on Globalization headed by Jerry Mander. Mander had
been very critical of the use of computer technology by NGOs because it
tended to benefit large businesses and government more than small
organizations and communities. However, IFG now has a useful Web site,
electronic mail, and I found it very useful to find out about the debate on
November 30. Though it was sold out long before, I thought many
ticket-holders would be afraid to come down town in the evening. Standing
around in the cold drizzle, eyeing the police across the intersection,
strangers began to sell tickets, and share stories, fears and rumors.

A longshoreman from San Francisco told of a CBS reporter who approached a
steelworker from Pennsylvania. She asked him if he didn't feel
uncomfortable about young activists with body piercings and weird dress.
When he responded that his nephew had an earring and that the kids were
standing with the labor unions in this demonstration, her face dropped.
Unable to drive a wedge between unlikely allies, she turned to someone
else.

The debate was excellent, but at a cost of $10 to $20, only a few hundred
people could take part in the education and discourse. It was the only real
dialogue that took place between WTO proponents and those who opposed the
WTO. The November 29 session between the WTO and accredited NGOs was very
one-sided. The WTO speakers had much more time to speak, and the
respondents only had three minutes. It was not give and take between
equals. The IFG debate was well-moderated and fair. Ambassador David Aaron
of the U.S. Department of Commerce and Columbia University professor
Jagdish Bhagwati were the main spokesmen in support of the WTO, while the
omnipresent Vandana Shiva, Research Foundation for Science, Technology and
Ecology (India) and Ralph Nader of Public Citizen were against the WTO.
Given the events going on, it was amazing that the audience, largely
against the WTO, let the speakers have their say without too much cheering
or hissing. The audience controlled those in the audience prone to
outbursts, and the debate went quickly. Nader frequently waved documents to
make his points, and in rejoinder Aaron cited another critique that
challenged many of the facts in one of Nader's own publications. This
really annoyed Nader who challenged Aaron to a five-hour debate on the
issues that were only touched upon that evening. Aaron accepted. It was
clear to me that many pro-WTO leaders really see the process as benefiting
poor countries, leveling the playing field, and setting out a rule making
process to stave off trade anarchy where the big, rich, and powerful will
prevail. Those against seemed to be arguing that decisions that affect the
culture and sovereignty of individual nations should be made locally. In
fact, many of the disagreements are over the centralization or devolution
of decision-making.

There were some letters to the editor of local papers from right-wing
conspiracy theorists who, in effect, said, "You laughed when we warned you
about black helicopters and a despotic world government. Now here it is in
Seattle." These are people that are suspicious of any important decision
made outside of a jurisdiction where they feel they have some power. That
might be a clan or town or state or perhaps a nation. Anti-globalization
politician Pat Buchanan was in town and offered support for the
demonstrators, even though many of those on the streets were hostile to
him.

Wednesday, December 1

This was a day for meetings, but the continued curfew and change in police
tactics made it very hard to get into the NGO headquarters. Police now
carried dozens of plastic restraining devices for arrested demonstrators.
Many had not had much sleep or food, and the mayor and top police officials
were starting to point fingers at each other over the debacle of Tuesday. I
knew it would be hard to get into the hotel, and I wrote the meeting
organizer to find out how to gain admittance. He just told me to "come on
down." I showed up at the door, brandished my print-out from the Agitprop
calendar, and told the guards that it was an open meeting, and that I had
been invited. Because I was not young and had a sport coat on, I was able
to use social engineering and rational arguments to get to the NGO
credential table and secure a badge for the meeting. I had to give up the
badge within 60 minutes of the end of the meeting.

Once inside, I had a certain freedom to roam around, and my first stop was
the press table. Hundreds of piles of position papers and press releases
were spread over a large area. Even choosing titles sparingly I came out
with five kilograms of documents. Some were crude; others were lavish.
ActionAid, a London NGO, had a fancy folder with a dozen nicely designed
position papers on farming, biodiversity and Trade Related Intellectual
Property Rights (TRIPS). There were comics for kids to learn about
globalization (write rifas@earthlink.net); IFG's "Beyond the WTO:
Alternatives to Economic Globalization"; a huge volume from the Japan
delegation that included exhaustive studies of the importance of rice
paddies in Japanese culture; and a lavish "World Trade Brief" from the WTO
and Agenda Publishing. It is inconceivable that any reporter, let alone
many of the delegates could skim and absorb the main points from many of
these documents, but it was the only way for these approved groups to get
their message out.

I attended a meeting on TRIPS which was hosted by Doctors without Borders
(Médecins Sans Frontières) and Nader's Consumer Project on Technology.
James Love led the group from NGO's as well as the World Intellectual
Property Organization (WIPO) in a discussion of the issues around access to
expensive medicines. Carlos Correa, University of Buenos Aires and Ellen't
Hoen of (M.S.F.) took an active role. U.S. and European drug firms have
spent a lot of money developing expensive treatments for AIDS and other
diseases like meningitis. Many countries can't afford the retail prices and
have tried to institute "compulsory licensing" for firms that want to sell
in their borders. The U.S. has linked rejection of this clause to other aid
or trade, and the countries like Thailand and South Africa, which have
marketed generic versions of such drugs, are being threatened by the U.S.
Large drug firms do not develop drugs where the market can't deliver
adequate profits, even if the need is there. This affects the sick in many
poor countries in Africa.

Another issue was TRIPS and patents on indigenous knowledge or products
derived from local resources. One cogent example was explained by ActionAid
in their brochure on TRIPS and farmers' rights. In Gabon there is a natural
sweetener that is 2,000 times sweeter than sugar. It is called brazzein or
J'oublie (I forget) locally. A University of Wisconsin researcher brought
it back to Madison where the DNA encoding was sequenced and then produced
it in the lab, eliminating the need to grow it in Africa. They applied for
a patent, claiming the University had "invented" it. The whole process
ignores the oral tradition that kept local knowledge of this food. This
disconnect between indigenous farmers and trained researchers and product
developers is not easily mended in the WTO framework. This split causes
opponents to use the term "bio-piracy" when publicizing these inequalities.

>In the afternoon Love gathered a much smaller group to talk about the Internet
and TRIPS. There were only eight of us talking about electronic commerce,
patents on business processes and ICANN. All of these issues are like a
distant tidal wave ignored (for the most part) by beleaguered delegates who
had their hands full with all the other challenges. On November 30,
Microsoft had hosted a meeting on e-commerce where business and UNCTAD
(U.N. Conference and Trade and Development) took part. Our small group
discussed Internet taxes, the pressure from the U.S. to have other
countries enforce patents on business processes, many of which are coming
out of American Internet firms. Most countries find it ludicrous that these
processes were granted patents in the first place. ICANN seems to be facing
on a small scale the kind of opposition faced by the WTO, but it was barely
discussed in Seattle. Still, there were parallels with the complaints about
ICANN's transparency, back-room deals, their governance ambitions and those
of the WTO.

Librarians from Canada representing the International Federation of Library
Associations and Institutions (IFLA) and Canadian organizations attended
and took part in discussion about cultural issues and intellectual
property. Their concerns are with privatization of libraries, the right of
for-profit foreign libraries to be established in Canada, and the
likelihood that these businesses would challenge government subsidies for
public libraries. They also advocated that libraries be part of the
cultural sector, an area that some Europeans and Canadians want excluded
from consideration by the WTO.

That evening I attended part of a session on indigenous environmental
issues at Seattle College. Speakers from the Cuna people in Panama and
groups in Colombia as well as American Indian groups met to talk about
common concerns. I left for a two-hour walk home. Overhead, a helicopter
beamed its light on North Broadway, and after ten minutes I reached an area
of restaurants and shops. Young couples sipped cabernet and dined at a
restaurant as hundreds of activists blocked the intersection just outside
the window. SWAT vehicles bristling with robo-cops were on side streets,
and a large amount of trash smouldered at another intersection.

One of the few buses I saw stopped a hundred yards away, and their
passengers got out because it was impossible for it to proceed or detour.
As I headed away, the chanting crowd crept toward town.

December 2, Thursday

Food and Agriculture Day was a very well-integrated event. It began with a
press breakfast with excellent, locally-produced food, and in a safe and
roomy church panels spoke for two hours. José Bové, the French sheep owner
and activist who trashed the MacDonald's in the south of France, was one of
the media stars during the whole conference. Ralph Nader repeated some of
his main themes, as did Vandana Shiva. I sat next to an old retired farmer
from the eastern plains of Montana (featured in Jonathan Raban's book Bad
Land) who is still very active in working with fellow farmers and staying
in touch with groups around the world. To my left a young woman clapped and
frequently jumped up to show support to most of the speakers.

The weather was beautiful as the panels ended, and we oozed out of the
church onto the streets. I talked with Farhad Mahzar, an activist and
researcher from Bangladesh. He recognized the need to do serious
evaluations of practices on the effects of policy changes, as well as
articulating the more emotional side of these effects. A leader of a South
African farmers' union quizzed me about satellite access to the Internet,
and as we reached the Pike Place Market (largely deserted by shop owners),
some farmers handed out delicious organic apples to the crowd. The mood was
high, and the only police were a block away as the speakers mounted the
back of a truck and began to address the crowd of at least 1,000 farmers
and supporters. Jim Hightower, radio commentator with a real down-home
delivery commented that the people would prevail because they had "just
opened a big can of kick-ass." Bové and Nader spoke as did Helen Waller of
the Northern Plains Research Council, and Jean Bakole of COSAD in Cameroon.

There was a call for a march on Cargill, and part of the group headed that
way while others went to approved meeting places for breakout strategy
sessions. I attended the farmer and farmworker strategy session where about
100 farmers from every continent talked about their current activities and
some common plans for the future. Most felt they needed to get more power
locally in order to change the views of the national government, but it was
difficult to generalize. Some encouraged those not online to get connected
and begin electronic networking. All in all, however, the role of the
Internet was very low profile. Everyone realized that the prime way to
convince and organize was face-to-face or through the traditional media.
Many activists had integrated e-mail and Web information into their routine
activities, but many countries still have high costs of access, and poor
NGOs are spending their money for other agenda than electronic
connectivity.

Conclusion

Though WTO's Moore tried to put the premature ending in a positive light,
it was a disaster for them, for the delegates, and for the city of Seattle.
While some of the demonstrators were jubilant, there seemed to be little
new dialogue established between the NGOs and the WTO. Ministers were cool
to the call for more openness in the meetings and labor disputes, and
President Clinton's call for sanctions against countries that used child
labor angered many from developing countries who saw this as yet another
example of the West imposing its own version of human and labor rights on
poor nations. Some nations are still arguing that universal human rights
are not that at all, but are still specific to industrialized countries and
should not be shoved down their throats with threats of trade sanctions.
The developing countries still feel that the more industrialized countries
with large delegations are not listening to them, and there seems to be no
ongoing forum to deal with this resentment.

For those who actually wanted the WTO to go away (to nix it, not fix it)
probably considered Seattle a victory, but there is the danger that it will
continue to operate in relative secrecy and choose only cities where the
security forces can maintain a larger and more impenetrable perimeter that
separates the delegates from the NGO representatives as well as the
protestors. Were there lessons learned from the confrontations? Perhaps,
but not the same ones that the protestors hoped to convey. Many delegates
believe the WTO is for the weak countries, and that it has been successful
in alleviating poverty in many places. Supporters like Thomas Friedman of
the New York Timeswrites of innovative companies competing successfully in
Sri Lanka while Vandana Shiva talks about thousands of onion farmers losing
their market, their land, and heading for the big, over crowded cities of
India. Who's right? Both, but until the WTO or UN or World Bank comes out
with a way of measuring the social impact of these trade agreements, the
arguments over their benefits or harm will continue. Perhaps the Earth is
too big and complex for 135 nations and hundreds of NGOs to reach any kind
of meaningful consensus.

Before the Seattle meeting most Americans would have asked, as the young
man did in the airport van, "What's all this WTO stuff?" A week later they
still may not be able to say much more about the organization, but they
know it seems to provoke disorder and dissension and so many American will
be against it until other events convince them that it is beneficial.

Was this a landmark event for the end of the 90s? I compared it to the
battle of Agincourt in 1415 where English archers destroyed thousands of
French knights who could not defend against the clouds of lethal arrows.
This was the end of the age of chivalry and of mounted knights as a
fighting force. Seattle may be the end of faceless trade lawyers making
decisions and deliberating without any input from other organizations that
hurled their own verbal arrows across police lines and onto the Web sites
and television channels of the world.
--

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