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MAKING CONTACT Transcript: #27-00 Spinning Free Trade: The Battle for Public Opinion Phillip Babich: This week on Making Contact.... Patrick Woodall: People in America and indeed across the planet are viscerally responding to a free trade agenda that is driven by and for big business. Hugh Corbet: If people think that they can resist the advancement of change in hope that it can be slowed down or put off, then all they're doing is throwing out problems for the future. Phillip Babich: As mass mobilizations and educational efforts continue against economic globalization, corporations are showering the US congress with well-funded lobbying campaigns and pro-freetrade think-tanks are engaging in an information war for public opinion. On this program, we take a look at reactions to anti-corporate globalization activism. I'm Phillip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact, and international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas and important information. On the heels of mass mobilizations, in Seattle and Washington D.C. against international financial institutions, so called free trade policies and multi-national corporations, the U.S. House of Representatives passed three major trade bills in May 2000. On May fourth, the House passed two far reaching bills that dwarfed the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, in scope and impact. The legislation calls for U.S. trading partners in Africa and the Caribbean to jettison tariffs, trade barriers and protections for workers and the environment. A few weeks later, on May 22, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill granting China permanent normal trade relation status, a sharp departure from long-standing US policy which required annual congressional review of China's human and labor rights record before approving China's trading status. Critics say granting China PNTR could result in drastic reductions in labor standards worldwide. The House's enthusiasm for freetrade policies may be out of step with the intensity of anti- globalization protest in the streets and rising concern about global trade among the general public, according to Patrick Woodall, research director at Public Citizens Global Trade Watch based in Washington, D.C. He sights, for example, a nationwide survey conducted by the Harriss poll in April 2000, that found 79% of normal Americans opposed permanent normal trade relations with China. So, how was it that the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of a bill that so much of the public opposed? Woodall says it took heavy corporate lobbying and a multi-million dollar advertising campaign. Patrick Woodall: In my ten years in Washington I've never seen anything like the amount of corporate pressure... CEOs were all over Capitol Hill. All sorts of crazy stunts were performed by the corporate coalition. They fired up a huge Astroturf campaign in the field trying to generate what appeared to be local attention to this, although it was all coming from the boardrooms. The China fight is really unprecedented, I think, is the easiest way to explain it. There's never been anything like this. I mean, ten of millions of dollars were spent on advertising in the last couple of weeks to gain momentum on this PNTR fight. And, really it was astounding what was going on here on Capitol Hill. Phillip Babich: An association of chief executive officers of top U.S. corporations, called the Business Roundtable, headed up the pro-China PNTR campaign, employing 80 full time field organizers. According to Public Citizen, the Business Roundtable spent over ten million dollars on full page newspaper adds and slick television commercials: Patrick Woodall: The reason this bill had so much pressure is because the companies doing business in China were embarrassed by the annual attention to the egregious sweatshop conditions in many of China's factories, the human rights record of China and the religious freedom record of China. And to get rid of the annual review, which is what currently is happening, would allow these companies to do business in any fashion they wanted with no congressional oversight, no public examination of the way they do business in China. Phillip Babich: Some of those companies include Walmart, Nike, RCA and Ford Motor Company. And with China's 1.3 billion people, many more US corporations are waiting in the wings to take advantage of what business analysts call China's "market potential." Even as multi-million dollar corporate campaigns blitz Capitol Hill, mass mobilizations against free trade and economic consolidation continue. In Canada, in early June 2000, organizers held demonstrations and counter events at the Organization of American States' annual meeting in Windsor, Ontario and the meeting of the World Petroleum Congress in Calgary, Alberta. The World Petroleum Congress meets every three years and includes more than 2500 delegates from over 80 countries, representing oil companies and national governments. The meeting is significant to anti-globaliztion activists because it is an important networking opportunity for oil companies. Delegates discuss how to increase markets for oil and how to finance further oil exploration. Analysts say the oil industry is one of the main forces fueling the corporate driven globalization process. The Organization of American States consists of delegates from Latin America and North America. The OAS makes regional policies on economic, political and military matters. In anticipation of the protest planned for their cities, Windsor and Calgary law enforcement officials met with counterparts from the Seattle and Washington D.C. police departments to learn from events during the anti-WT0 protests in late 1999 and the anti-International Monetary Fund and World Bank protests in April 2000. Police presence in Windsor and Calgary was reportedly heavy and the response to protesters was swift, and in some cases, severe. Amit Srivastava works with the Transnational Resource and Action Center based in San Francisco, California. He was invited to Calgary during the World Petroleum Congress by local activists to speak at a teach-in on the social and environmental impacts of the oil industry. But his trip was cut short after he and his colleague were stopped at the Calgary airport by immigration officials. They were first asked about their reasons for traveling to Canada: Amit Srivastava: I said I was... I was invited to speak at a teach-in about oil. Upon which they instructed us to go to this other office... an immigration office near there. And that's when the immigration officials started to ask us many questions such as : "How long are you going to be here? Who's financing you? Where are you gonna stay? Let me se your letter of invitation. Do you have any criminal convictions in the United States and if so what are they?" This and that, this and that. And it took them about two hours. Phillip Babich: They were then sent to customs and were told they were under investigation. Amit Srivastava: The customs proceeded to take everything we had apart including looking inside our socks. Everything, everything we had. Including my laptop computer. They proceeded to make copies of all my contacts with phone numbers, cell phone numbers in Calgary and outside. They went ahead and made copies of my work plan for my organization for the entire year. They looked through my laptop computer. I'm not sure if they copied but when I went to shut it down they were looking at our board of advisors. Very very invasive and we actually raised objections and we questioned whether they had the right to do this and they said yes they did. We were in a foreign country we weren't very well aware of our rights. And... we hadn't taken time out to look into our rights in Canada, primarily because we did not expect this at all. Phillip Babich: The two men spent the night in jail and were told in the morning that they would have to return to the airport. Shackles were put around their ankles and their arms were handcuffed behind their backs. They were put into cages measuring four feet by four feet, loaded into the back of a van and taken to the airport. There Srivastava and his colleague were given the choice to either contest deportation and risk a life-long ban from Canada, or withdraw their application to enter the country and leave immediately. Srivastava chose to return to the United States to do what work he could for the Calgary counter events from afar. He says that at first he was shocked by the treatment they received but that in retrospect he decided that it was not so surprising. Amit Srivastava: Oil companies work with national governments to suppress human rights. Especially human rights of those people who are opposed or concerned about their activities world-wide. What is significant about this is that if you look at the actions of the State working in the interest of corporations you will see that this is a pattern that is emerging even in industrialized or northern countries. I know in... in Washington D.C. there was a lot of irregularities in the way that a lot of civil disobedience... protesters used civil disobedience... were treated. Same in Seattle our individual experience in Canada makes stronger this point that this is part of a national international pattern to repress any kind of dissent in the name of development, in the name of corporations, in the name of doing good for the world and that is a very very disturbing trend. Shereen Meraji: 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 our toll-free number at the end of this broadcast. Phillip Babich: Alleged mistreatment of activists in Washington D.C. jails, after being arrested in connection to anti-IMF/World Bank protest, is the basis of a class action lawsuit. About 1,300 people were arrested during the April 2000 demonstrations. Many in a pre-emptory police sweep that snared over 600 activists gathered in the central staging and organizing area. Making Contact's Alison Hawkes has more: Alison Hawkes: Officers at Washington D.C. jails are notorious for mistreating inmates and bucking due process. In April 2000 about 1,300, mostly young and white demonstrators, got a taste of D.C. jail conditions after being arrested during the IMF/ World Bank protests. Many of them report being beaten, peppersprayed and denied food, water, toilets and medical care for long periods of time. Most activists were repeatedly denied access to their attorneys and were not allowed to make their legally permitted phone call to outside support persons. Many activists say law enforcement officials attempted to intimidate them immediately upon arrest. Seasoned activists said, for example, they noticed police separating young and less experienced activists onto separate busses where they were reportedly harassed by U.S. marshal. This was the first time that San Francisco Bay Area demonstrator, Paul Anderson, was arrested: Paul Anderson: A man in the back seat was yelling out the window, trying to get attention to the fact that we needed lawyers, which we hadn't had access to up until that time. He was asked to be quiet once, he yelled one more time and then a U.S. marshal charged full-speed down the aisle basically like a football linebacker, or something. And as he was running down the aisle another protester tried to pretty much put his body in the way, didn't do anything except just stood there and he got mowed down, thrown into the aisle and put into a pain compliance hold where the marshal was saying he was going to break his ankle and he practically did. I mean his ankle was twisted back really really far and the guy was in a lot of pain. Alison Hawkes: Anderson said that the man in the aisle was removed from the bus and put into solitary confinement for a long period of time. Nearly 85% of arrested activists expressed jail solidarity. They refused to give their names in an effort to force officials to deal with them collectively, so that individuals, such as foreign nationals and those with previous arrests would not be singled out for harsher prosecution. But refusing to cooperate with jail officials did have repercussions. Jennifer Highland, a University of California at Berkeley student, said that in the holding cells, she and others sat on cold cement floors in wet clothing. One woman developed a serious medical condition during this time: Jennifer Highland: You could tell that she was suffering from like the initial hypothermia shock and she needed medical attention and so we demanded... we're like she needs to go see a medic... and after an hour someone came to take her away. And ten hours later they bring her back to our cell where we learned that she basically had been in a cell by herself for ten hours and received no medical attention. Alison Hawkes: Sergeant Joe Gentile, communication officer for Washington's Metropolitan Police Department, said that he has not heard of any such complaints. Gentile said that the department did what they could for the activist under the circumstances: Joe Gentile: As far as I know they were given facilities when possible. Again, you're dealing with a large number of people and the facilities may not be that many compared to the size of the group you're dealing with. We tried to give them facilities. Again we tried to give them water, we tried to give them blankets, we tried to assist them as best as possible. Alison Hawkes: Corrections officers at the jail also violated activists rights, according to many accounts. Women said they were subjected to humiliating strip searches. One woman from Antioch College said she was patted down by male officers who touched her breasts. She was told to calm down when she requested a female officer. Many of the women had to pull down their pants, squat and cough in front of other men. The Midnight Special Law Collective, the activists' legal team, said that they were repeatedly denied access to their clients. The activists' legal team is gearing up for a class action suit against law enforcement agencies involved in the arrests. And individuals are filing separate suits. Katya Komisarek, an attorney for Midnight Special Law Collective, said taking legal action is important as part of an effort to deter constitutional violations at future demonstrations: Katya Komisarek: It looks like the police are trying to organize to stop protest all together, to... intimidate people. And to not exercise their first amendment rights and this is really dangerous and that's the way... that's the context in which we're looking at this current piece of litigation is that it is got to nip this law enforcement strategy in the bud, now before this goes on in other cities. Alison Hawkes: Whatever the legal outcomes may be, many activists are bracing themselves for heavy-handed law enforcement response at future demonstrations. California state senator Tom Hayden has been a long time political activist and demonstrated in Seattle and Washington D.C. He was acquitted with six other demonstrators for charges of insighting a riot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Hayden said that over the decades he has seen a pattern of excessive force used in political demonstrations. Tom Hayden: They will, when they're challenged, seek ways to punish and harm people because they don't think that people will get the message with a misdemeanor citation or something like that and so they inflict pepperspray, for example, on people in jail, on people on busses, people held down on the street. And I think that they really believe that they have a right to punish which goes far beyond upholding the law or arresting people who break the law and this is, I think, to be expected but not to be accepted. Alison Hawkes: For Making Contact, I'm Allison Hawkes. Phillip Babich: In addition to law enforcement responses to organized activities against free trade big money public relations firms and corporate backed think tanks are crafting new strategies to bolster pro-globalization arguments and in some cases discredit opposition groups. Making Contact's Stephanie Welch has more: Stephanie Welch: A leaked memo, signed by the managing director of the multi-million dollar public relations firm, Black, Kelley, Scruggs and Healey, may give some indication as to how seriously corporations are taking mass-mobilizations and public education campaigns against international financial institutions and big business. The PR-firm, which offers such services to its corporate clients as "securing the inclusion or deletion of specific language in congressional legislation," is a subsidiary of Berson-Marstellar, one of the largest pr-firms in the world. In the leaked memo, dated January 14th, 2000, Black, Kelley, Scruggs and Healey managing director Gardner Peckham writes, "the spectacle created in Seattle during the WTO ministerial meeting may have significant short-term ramifications for the business community." Peckham notes that the perceived success of activists and non-governmental organizations will lead to substantially enhanced fund-raising capabilities and will strengthen the recognition that broadening such coalitions to include non-traditional allies exponentially increases effectiveness. After reading the memo on the internet, Doug Henwood, author and editor of the Left Business Observer, a newsletter on economics and politics, called Peckham to verify its authenticity. Peckham confirmed the memo was his but didn't elaborate on the matter. Henwood says the memo, the bulk of which consisted of a listing of 50 non-governmental, labor and activist organizations was probably intended to try and make sure that the firms corporate clients don't get caught of guard again: Doug Henwood: Their corporate clients were taken by surprise and... just think their doing a little favor to them trying to help them understand what happened. I think that the corporate world and their political friends have had a pretty free run of it, now, for many many years without very much opposition. And while there is certainly some opposition picking up abroad there was not much happening in the United States and I think very few people really expected there was going to be this kind of extravaganza in Seattle. So no one would have imagined that scores of thousands of people would get together to protest issues that used to be very arcane very much the province of a small group of experts to see these things become suddenly issues that mobilize large numbers of people, I think, really shocked the corporate and political elite and the media elite, too. They don't really know what to make of it. As far as they're concerned it just came out of nowhere. Stephanie Welch: Making Contact spoke with Gardner Peckham and at his request faxed him a formal invitation to be heard on this program, but he declined to be interviewed. To read the complete version of the Black, Kelley, Scruggs and Healey memo you can go to our website at www.radioproject.org. To be sure the Black, Kelley, Scruggs and Healey memo could be a PR-ploy in itself- a tool to drum up business from its corporate clients interested in the PR-firm's capability direction assessments of the groups listed in its guide. The firm's memo also offers consulting to its clients on how to defend themselves against activists "attacks." But Henwood says, regardless of the firm's motives, its efforts to offer damage-control PR-services coincides with a push by big business and corporate backers to polish tarnished images and reframe the public policy debate over what's known as free trade. Doug Henwood: They've really very substantially changed their rhetoric over the last several months to appear more caring and sympathetic. There have been editorials, articles in the business press and stuff coming out of the World Bank and IMF... entities like that... the problem is really understanding that we haven't explained ourselves very well. We haven't explained... haven't gotten the message across to the broad public and once we get the message across all these.. all these protesters will go home. Stephanie Welch: This effort to tell the public about the benefits of globalization is important to Hugh Corbet, president of the Cordell Hull Institute, a new conservative think-tank based in Washington D.C. Among the institute's board of directors is formal National Security Advisor for the Bush Administration, Brendt Scowcroft And chairing the board is Lawrence Igelburger who was President Bush's Secretary of State. Corbet helped form the institute after he and his colleagues became frustrated with what they saw as a lack of direction for U.S. trade policies and a failure of government and business leaders around the world to educate the public about the rapid changes associated with globalization... Stephanie Welch: Is it your organization's opinion that public understanding about economic issues is currently low? Hugh Corbet: Well, yes. Economic growth is a process of continuous adjustment to change... to changes in patterns of demand, to advances in technology, to shifts in comparable advantages and all the rest. For the most part in the world's functioning economy adjustment proceeds more or less autonomously. We have that situation in the United States. Now, if people think that they can resist advancements of change in the hope that it can be slowed down or put off, then all they're doing is storing up problems for the future. That's what's been happening in the textiles industry, in the steel industry, in certain parts of agriculture such as sugar and cotton and peanuts and land- all of which are still dependent on public assistance through subsidies and protection. Now, if people don't understand what's happening in national... in their economy and for that matter in the world economy at large, they're liable to be frightened about all the changes they see happening around them. And when people don't understand something, get frightened then they resist. And it's an important function in this day and age of political leaders to make sure that their public , their people understand what's happening in a fast-changing world. And the well-educated and so on do manage to keep abreast of these things but the not so well educated don't understand and so this ignorance can be exploited by people who are wanting protection, special treatment, and it's the job of leaders to resist that kind of... that kind of thing. Stephanie Welch: Now, I think there are a number of critics who would say that this so-called globalization process is really being driven by transnational corporations and big business, who are pretty much looking at their interests, that it is not an inevitable process, not a natural evolution... economic evolution or anything like that. What's your response to that? Hugh Corbet: Well, I think it is a fairly natural evolution. A multinational enterprise, that's the term I prefer to use, is simply a business that operates in more than one country and as economies have integrated firms increasingly began to internationalize their production- that term sort of gradually got replaced by the word globalization and the process sort of extended from production to marketing and to all sorts of other things and now the word globalization tends to cover the integration of the world's economy which, there's a process which historically goes back an awful long way... hundreds of years. So, it does look as if it's... its big corporations, businesses that are benefiting from the system but their employees... their employees are benefiting, the people around them are benefiting, it's simply the way in which the economic process works. Stephanie Welch: Hugh Corbet of the Cordell Hull Institute, for Making Contact, I'm Stephanie Welch. Phillip Babich: Since passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, public discussions about globalization and its supposed inevitability have become more common. Demonstrations and education efforts by activists and others around the world have shed light on the decision-making process involving corporations, government officials and global institutions. Patrick Woodall, research director at Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, says public participation in activities related to these issues is bound to increase: Patrick Woodall: Ordinary people are becoming more and more active on the globalization issue. Some of them are very active on corporate campaigns related to sweatshops, others are concerned about debt-relief, others are concerned about the environment and labor standards. But all of these issues from the WTO to A.G.O.A (African Growth and Opportunity Act) to the China vote are really broader issues about how people in America and indeed across the planet are viscerally responding to a free trade agenda that is driven by and for big business. When you have a global trading system that encourages the harmonization downwards of food safety, for example, that effects people in the supermarket at their kitchen table that's something that people care about. Phillip Babich: Now, some think-tanks are putting out the line that the general public just simply doesn't understand enough about the economy and economics to make a rational decision about how they feel about free trade policies. Do you think that there is a low amount of public understanding about such issues out there? Patrick Woodall: I think there's actually a growing understanding of these issues and I think that for a lot of these globalization policy-related issues, they've come off the business page and on to the front page of the newspaper. So, more people are learning about it and this has been a ten fifteen year fight and more and more people are getting involved all the time. Phillip Babich: Patrick Woodall of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. That's it for this edition of Making Contact- a look at corporate reactions to anti-globalization activism. Thanks for listening. Laura Livoti's our managing director. Peggy Law's executive director. Associate producer, Stephanie Welch. Senior advisor, Norman Solomon. National producer, David Barsamian. Women's desk coordinator, Lisa Rudman. Prison desk coordinator, Eli Rosenblatt. Production assistant, Shereen Meraji. Archivist Din Abdullah. 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 the same phone number for tapes and transcripts. That's 800-529-5736. You can also go to our website at www.radioproject.org. That's www.radioproject.org. 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. |