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MAKING CONTACT Transcript: #52-99 Seattle Ripple Effects Phillip Babich: This week on Making Contact.... Sanjay M.G.: The solidarity which has come together in Seattle, people from all around the world here and joining hands with the hand, this solidarity will continue. Elaine Bernard: You've got quite a very powerful coalition that really represents a different form of globalization. These folks aren't against solidarity, they're not against global connections. What they're against is a corporate model, of what George Saurus called "Market Fundamentalisms." Phillip Babich: It was one of the largest and most effective outpourings of dissent in recent decades. Many institutions, organizations, and individuals are now reflecting on the significance of events in Seattle during the week after Thanksgiving 1999 that disrupted the summit of the World Trade Organization. On this program, we take a look at ripple effects from Seattle's protests. I'm Phillip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact, an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas and important information. On December 17, 1999, the WTO general council decided to postpone discussion of outstanding issues not resolved at the Seattle ministerial until early in the year 2000. Many key issues were still on the table -- or hadn't even reached it -- by the end of the WTO talks in Seattle, largely due to delays caused by thousands of demonstrators, and public pressure, which had evolved, in part, from education and outreach efforts taking place among grassroots organizations internationally. Now, many of those organizations are capitalizing on what has been a pinnacle for the anti-corporate globalizing movement so far. Discussions and forums have been taking place regularly across the country: ranging from such topics as global capitalism and police brutality to social movement building and the impacts of media. In Boston, correspondent Martin Voelker spoke with two people who've been discussing the significance of the Seattle protests and what they mean for movement organizers. Martin Voelker: From an organizers perspective the protests against the WTO in Seattle have been a huge, and to some degree, an unexpected success. However, the questions remains, whether this movement's momentum can be maintained and focused. Focuses to provide visions for the future other than just to deplore the current state of global inequality. Elaine Bernard, the Executive Director of Harvard's Trade Union Program, thinks that Seattle, in some ways, gave birth to a new movement that may help to bring about true global solidarity. Elaine Bernard: Resistance to the WTO represents a type of emerging social movement, different than anything we've seen before. You know, I think one of the best placards was: Turtles and Teamsters United at Last. Think about the coalition that's coming together, resisting this corporate version of globalization. You've got labor and environmentalists, you've got Generation X and people from the 60s, you've got North-South. So you've got quite a very powerful coalition that really represents a different form of globalization. These folks aren't against solidarity. They're not against global connection. What they're against is a corporate model, of what George Saurus called "Market Fundamentalism." They have a very different view about international connections, and it's one that we would talk about by using a term like solidarity. So it's globalization, corporate globalization, versus global solidarity. And at the moment it looks like global solidarity has really started to appear in a serious way. Martin Voelker: Another perspective comes from Mike Prokosch, who works for United for a Fair Economy, a Boston-based organization that educates about wealth inequality. Mike Prokosch helped organize a well-attended workshop called: WTO For Beginners, out in Seattle during the WTO ministerial. He emphasizes the psychological breakthrough that came when this new movement saw that it was possible to confront powerful corporate institutions. Prokosch gives the upcoming China trade issue as an example for both the challenges ahead and their possible solutions. Mike Prokosch: It's a lobbying struggle, we're trying to convince Congress not to give China normal trading status. And that isn't going to create or involve a mass movement. It's not going to harness the energies coming out of Seattle adequately, so how do you do that. I think that you go after the corporations that are pushing for this deal. You go after the Nikes and the Disneys that are sourcing sweatshop goods from China. You go after the big banks and insurance companies that are hoping to capture 40% of the income of the Chinese people. If we can do that and if we can mobilize the anti-sweatshop movement to do that, then I think we do harness the energy from Seattle and carry it into the policy arena. So I think this is kind of a formula for us to go with the sense in Seattle that transnational corporations are behind this whole process, of corporate globalization, of the devastation of the planet. And we target them, but we connect it to the overall policies. Martin Voelker: There's another creative way of pointing out solutions borrowed from the concept of so-called "shadow governments," where opposition parties appoint "shadow ministers" to demonstrate how an alternative to the current policy would look like. Mike Prokosch: It's time for us to say, "This is what the global trade agreement on patents would look like, if we were constructing it." It wouldn't favor more profits for transnational corporations out of life-giving medicines, for example. Instead we would use patent law to transfer technology to the countries that most need it, so that they could develop, so that the whole world can share in the prosperity. And there can be development upward, instead of a race to the bottom. If we define things that way, we can be tremendously broad. We can appeal to everybody in the country. They can fill in their own blanks about what they do not like about the system, and they can join our movement on their own terms. And it's time for us to get out our message in the broadest possible terms. Martin Voelker: These broadest possible terms, that Mike Prokosch refers to, are also on Elaine Bernard's mind. When she sums up her prospective about an emerging global solidarity movement. Elaine Bernard: I like to say the best way to predict the future is to create it, and I think what's happened around WTO is that people started to say, "Well, let's create it." In creating first resistance, they're now starting to think about creating a different type of global solidarity. And so it's got to move beyond resistance into some positive assertion of what type of global relations we do want to have. Because I think we want to have them. I think the protesters want to have them. We don't want them in such an oppressive corporate-driven model. Martin Voelker: For Making Contact, I'm Martin Voelker in Boston.. Phillip Babich: Lingering in Seattle after the anti-WTO protests are political shake-ups, court hearings for those arrested, and public inquiries into charges of police misconduct. The police crackdown in Seattle resulted in numerous complaints of excessive force, intimidation and indiscriminate use of pepper spray and tear gas. From Seattle, correspondent Martha Baskin has more. Martha Baskin: During a series of public investigative hearings, held before the city council after the WTO ministerial, residents recounted tales of brutal police violence during the city's four-day siege, of officers kicking and billy-clubbing protesters already on the ground. Still others spoke of riot squads chasing them into neighborhoods, where concussion grenades were thrown into crowded shopping areas. Paul Bristow was arrested in front of the hotel where the WTO host committee where the Seattle business community was headquartered, after, as he puts it, the Darth Vader troops arrived. Paul Bristow: I pulled my turtleneck over my mouth and nose and my hat down over my eyes. It quieted down, and thinking they were gone, I lifted my hat, and one of the troopers had a foot on either side of me. He was leaning down. He had take the sprayer off of the pepper spray container, and from about 18 inches above my eyes, poured it into both of my eyes. Martha Baskin: At the Sand Point Naval Detention Center, where those arrested were initially held, people were detained without food, water, bathroom facilities, access to phones or lawyers, for up to 15 hours. Craig Webster, with the organization Direct Action Network, refused to voluntarily leave a holding bus and enter the detention center because he'd not been allowed to speak to a lawyer. Craig Webster: So the officers, four officers ran towards me, grabbed me...the officer who'd been speaking to us earlier said, "I've been nice to you, but now you've asked for it." One officer grabbed my feet, the other officer grabbed me by my hair, and carried me down out of the bus, banging my head against the side of the bus and against the doors, and carrying me entirely by my hair they threw me in a cell. They stood on my head. One officer stood on my head, another officer stood on my back. Then they turned me over and yelled at me: "Where'd that blood come from? Where's that burn on your face come from?" Martha Baskin: Left along in his cell, Webster recounts what happened to one of the people taken from the cell beside him. Craig Webster: After a little while, I saw some activity outside. I could see right outside the door of our cell. There were about six officers, including one who was not in a regular uniform, was a sheriff of some sort. And they brought out one of the people from next door. And they placed him in a wheelchair, a specially designed wheelchair that you can be buckled with your arms tied behind your back and your feet locked to the chair. And they buckled him down, so he couldn't move, and he was entirely immobile. He wasn't resisting at all, he was entirely passive. But despite that, the person who was dressed differently, the sheriff, in a position of authority, said, "This boy needs pepper gas." And so they put a towel around his head, and they opened a hole in the towel, and they sprayed directly into the man's face and eyes. And they held the towel over him so the gas couldn't escape, and rubbed it into his face. And then they wheeled him away and the last time I saw him his head was totally back and he was unconscious. And I was absolutely traumatized. Martha Baskin: There was much speculation as to whose orders the policy were following. According to Demetrie Egleitzen, a labor lawyer who was defending several of the nearly 600 people who were arrested, the city instituted, in essence, a state of martial law. Demetrie Egleitzen: As far as I could tell, the police, with some exceptions, were effectuating, executing orders which were given to them: You can be here to go, as a delegate to a meeting, but you cannot be present without a lawful reason. That is a content-based distinction. That is a part of martial law. Martha Baskin: The ACLU of Washington is proceeding with a lawsuit to have the imposition of a no-protest order, and militarized zone, declared unconstitutional. The city council, meanwhile, has created an office of professional accountability to investigate charges of police misconduct. But there's a history of police misconduct in Seattle which had not been fully dealt with. And to further complicate matters, the police union contract stipulates that the department itself, not the city council, has jurisdiction over police misconduct investigations. For Making Contact, this is Martha Baskin in Seattle. Phillip Babich: Joining us now on Making Contact is David Solnit. He's an organizer with Direct Action Network. And he's also a street theater performer with the Art and Revolution Collective. Thanks for joining us at Making Contact. David Solnit: Thank you. Phillip Babich: Well, David, you've been tracking some of the fallout from the Seattle protest, and some of the police brutality there. As I understand it, the Los Angeles Police Department was also in the area, tracking what the Seattle Police Department was up to. Were you aware of that, and what are your thoughts on that? David Solnit: I heard that's the case. I find it fairly disturbing, as the L.A. Police already have their own horrible reputation of brutality. And mixing up Seattle Police Department's sort of brutal ineptness with their legacy of brutality, bodes badly for the Democratic Convention in L.A. But I don't expect it will scare anyone off. Phillip Babich: That's right, we have the Democratic Convention coming up this summer of the year 2000. You were actually at the last Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1996. What was the level of police repression in Chicago that year? David Solnit: Well, there were two things happening. One, is they did a massive publicity campaign to sort of get ride of what was referred to as the "Chicago syndrome." To try and make it clear that 1968 Chicago was something in the past, and these are the new Chicago Police, and they're not like that. But at the same time, I was part of an anarchist and radical conference taking place with 1000 young activists from all over the country. And we did a street theater procession that was really brutally attacked by the police. A dozen people were arrested, people were injured, trampled by police horses...some of those arrestees taken to dark alleys and threatened and interrogated by large numbers of police. Phillip Babich: Given these police actions against organizers and protesters at these events, Chicago in 1996, and the WTO summit in 1999, what do you have to say about the level of police repression. Do you think there is a kind of a ramping up of what police are utilizing to try and stifle dissent in the country. David Solnit: Feels that way a little bit, but I think when our movements get effective, and take powerful action and direct action like we just did at the World Trade Organization, we basically unmask the threat of force and violence on which the power rests. So when we confront a large concentration of power, whether it's the Democratic Party or the corporations behind them that met at the World Trade Organization, I think we bring that hidden threat which their power lays on to the surface. And so when we challenge their authority they come back in force and we get a little taste of what movements in other parts of the world deal with on a weekly and monthly basis, folks in Mexico, and Nigeria, and like that... Phillip Babich: I've been speaking with David Solnit from Seattle. He's an organizer with Direct Action Network. He's also a street performer with the Art and Revolution Collective. David, thanks for joining us. David Solnit: Thank you. Stephanie Welch: You're listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. If you'd like to get in touch with us, we'll be giving out our toll-free number at the end of this broadcast. Phillip Babich: Since the Seattle protests corporate media outlets have reflected on the significance of the movements that had such powerful effects at the WTO summit. Despite the fact that more than 50,000 people focused on a set of primary goals over a one-week period -- and largely accomplished them -- Newsweek magazine, in the December 13, 1999, cover story, claimed that "There was no evidence of a mass social movement in the United States." Other articles that appeared in the corporate media challenged how well protesters knew their own causes. For example a December 8th Los Angeles Times article stated that the protesters had destroyed their own hopes of saving the world's poor by preventing the WTO from conducting its business. That business, according to the L.A. Times, was to enact fairer trade rules that would help poor countries raise their standard of living, the very public relations line used by the WTO itself. To give a fuller sense of who the "protesters" were and what they represent, Making Contact has selected excerpts from World Trade Watch radio, a co-production of the National Radio Project, Corporate Watch, and the Institute for Public Accuracy that was broadcast from Seattle during the WTO talks. Norman Solomon and Julie Light co-hosted World Trade Watch. Norman Solomon: Mary Fleur worked in a rubber glove factory in Ohio, as I understand it, for 16 years, until the factory moved to Mexico. Welcome to World Trade Watch. Mary Fleur: Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Norman Solomon: You worked in a small town in Ohio, and I wanted to ask what that experience was like, and then what occurred when the plant disappeared. Mary Fleur: ...a small town in Ohio, the people there are community people. They work together to develop the community to what it is. And I apologize for my voice, because I did so much demonstrating yesterday, I'm about to lose it. But what I want to tell the people, that, when the factories are there, this was a hard-working people that worked in these factories. They started there in a generation when you had to go to work to make a living. A lot of them started there when they were 18 years of age. And when the factory announced they were going to close, a lot of my workers were 55, 58 years of age, and they just devastated their whole lives when the factory closed. But not only was it an impact on the workers, it was the tax dollars generated by the factory for the community. It was the volunteering that these workers did for the community. It was the dollars they generated into the small businesses. When the factory closed and went to Mexico, it devastated the whole community. Norman Solomon: And what's happened since then? Can you give us a kind of a bird's-eye view of your own experience in the last couple of years. Mary Fleur: As the factory was closing and phasing out, some of the workers felt like there was hopelessness. I had...my workers had attempts at suicide. Some of them had heart attacks. We buried a couple of our fellow workers because they just got so upset over the whole situation, it forced a heart attack on 'em. About 10 to 15 of my workers are all on medications. They are developing stress related illnesses that they never had. But you have to keep in mind that these workers are long generated workers in the factory, and they're older. It's like taking them out...instead of the company rewarding them with a retirement check for their services and dedication, they got rewarded with an unemployment check. Julie Light: Farmers around the world are up in arms defending their land and their livelihood from encroachment by agricultural giants like Cargill, Monsanto, and Archer Daniels Midland. Here to kick off the discussion with us is Paul Nicholson. He's a Basque farmer with Via Campesina, an international farmers' organization. Paul, why are agricultural issues so important to the WTO, particularly to the advocates of global trade? Paul Nicholson: Food is a weapon. It's also a political weapon for control of the world. Through food you control all politics, in fact. And that's why it's so important in these issues on the question of patenting of seeds, the whole issue of genetic food, on the issue of the model of production, sustainable agriculture. Because in the end we're speaking about life, about environment, about food quality, about culture, about the diversity of culture in the world, or the maintaining of living conditions for everybody. Norman Solomon: Well, here in the United States, we hear political leaders of both major parties talk about the need to defend, for instance, "family farmers." And I wonder Bill Christison, as someone working so hard for the National Family Farm Coalition, how you feel about the role of the national political folks in the White House and Congress, and how you feel about that role here in Seattle with the WTO? Bill Christison: Well, I can tell you, as a family farmer, that if those people who bring us WTO and the freedom-to-farm legislation agriculture policy that the farmers in the U.S. are operating under, if they are our friends, we certainly don't need any enemies. Family farmers are losing the fight to stay on the land, and this is not good for the consumers of this country. Monica Lopez: Although discussions ranged from intolerable working conditions in export processing zones, known as maquiladoras, to the sex trafficking of women in the Philippines, one particular theme that resonated with leaders was a strong opposition to the WTO agreement on agriculture. So many of the world's subsistence farmers are women, and they have been especially hard hit. According to Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, from the Indigenous Network for Policy Research and Education, top agricultural competition forces some Filipinas from one way of life to another. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz: Our women who have been doing subsistence production, had to shift into some production of cash crops, like potatoes, for instance. But suddenly, we were flooded with potatoes from the United States, and the price of this is 50% less than the price of the potatoes that our women are producing. So many of our women had to go bankrupt, and now there is a huge out-migration of women leaving the countryside rural area to go to the cities, and they either end up as the urban poor women, or some of the women can find employment in the export processing zones. Other women have to go abroad to work as domestic helpers. All over the world now there are a lot of Filipinos who are domestic workers, who are nannies, and in some areas who are working as entertainers or prostitutes, precisely because of this conversion of the lands into all these cash crop production, which in the end falls into the hands of the big agribusiness corporations. (music and chanting) Julie Light: Amparo Reyes has been working in a maquilladora assembly plant on the U.S.-Mexican border for the last nine years, since she was just 18. She's a single mother of two who puts in a 70-hour work week at an electronics assembly plant, making parts for Ford vehicles. You work on the U.S.-Mexico border for a U.S.-based company. How has free trade specifically affected you and your life? Amparo Reyes: (translated) It affects me morally, physically, and socially, because I can't have a day of rest. I can't have time to talk with my children, about the problems that they have, or the problems that I have. It's very difficult for me because I'd like the government to know that poor people, we also have a right to live. Maybe they've never arrive to their house and discovered that they have nothing to eat. I want my children to continue studying, and to be useful to society. Julie Light: We're speaking with Adam Ma-a-Nit. He's with the Corporate Europe Observatory, that's CEO, and also joining us is Sanjay Mangala Gopal, sometimes called Sanjay M.G. He's co-coordinator of the National Alliance of Peoples Movements in India. We hear a lot, Adam, about the behind the scenes lobbying at the WTO, about the corporations setting the agenda. And that seems somewhat Machiavellian, it seems somewhat conspiratorial, but there really are institutions and mechanisms for how this works. The Corporate Europe Observatory has been following this. Adam, can you tell us a little about some of them? Adam Ma-a-Nit: Yes. We've found for a long time that people have assumed that transnational corporations had a tremendous role to play within the World Trade Organization, but it wasn't very clear how. And what we found that there is in fact a very official interface between big business and governments, and within the European Union and the United States they've set up this process called the Transatlantic Business Dialogue, where the governments sit down together with the top CEOs from the largest transnational corporations of their region. So in the U.S. it will be people like Bill Gates, Boeing, Phil Condit, people like that. They sit down together in a room and these CEOs tell government, they tell Charlene Barsherfsky what they want, what they want to get rid of when they're trading with the European Union, which is the largest trading partner for the U.S. So they give them a scorecard, they actually call it a scorecard, and they rate both the EU and U.S. governments on how rapidly they've been implementing big business desires. Norman Solomon: So it sounds almost as though, or it sounds as though corporations are regulating government, rather that the other way around. Adam Ma-a-Nit: Exactly. Norman Solomon: And it that true in India, as well? Sanjay M.G.: Right, that is what is happening in India. In fact, when I was listening to Adam, I though he was describing what was happening in India. It's an exactly similar pattern. They want to control the politicians, the decision-making power, and that not only that in India, they have managed too the intellectuals and press media. They're getting written by these people in India how all these transnational corporations are doing good, and this and that. So they are in fact trying to, with this advertisement media, they are trying to get over our culture also in India. They are creating new culture and inculcating things through advertisements on the TV. In all walks of life, they want to take the grab. That's what is happening. Julie Light: Sanjay, do you think this burgeoning emerging international coalition will hold together? Many people will say, "So much energy went into preparing for Seattle, but it's so critical what happens after Seattle." Sanjay M.G.: Yes, I consider this is a beginning, what is taking place in Seattle. Like whatever may happen in the WTO conference, the solidarity which has come together in Seattle, people from all around the world are here, and joining hands with the hands, this solidarity will continue. And understanding between problems of South and North of the globalization, and fight for justice and peace. This real global moment will come. This is a beginning. Phillip Babich: That was a collection of excerpts from World Trade Watch, direct broadcasts from Seattle during the WTO talks produced by the National Radio Project, Corporate Watch, and the Institute for Public Accuracy. That's it for this edition of Making Contact: A look at the significance of the Seattle protests. Thanks for listening. Laura Livoti is our managing director. Peggy Law is executive director. Our associate producer is Stephanie Welch. Norman Solomon is senior advisor. Our national producer is David Barsamian. Shereen Meraji is production assistant. Din Abdullah is archivist. And I'm your host and managing producer Phillip Babich. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts. Making Contact is an independent production. We're committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. If you have suggestions for future programs, we'd like to hear from you. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter Trio. 'Bye for now. |