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WTO protesters go to the Web
Guerrilla journalists and webcams bring you all the tear-gassed excitement of Seattle's street protests.
By Fiona Morgan
[12/01/99]

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If you can't beat 'em ...
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The whole world is watching
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By L.A. Kauffman
[11/30/99]

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"What brought me here is concern for humanity and our environment that’s being destroyed through the world and about the third-world countries that are being exploited," Goodman said. "These people are our brothers and sisters."

The labor movement provided most of the bodies, from a wide variety of unions -- Steelworkers, Teamsters, longshoremen, public workers, building trades workers, farm workers. But unlike the labor movement of old, unions embraced a wide coalition of groups whose message they did not control. On WTO issues, organized labor gives primary emphasis to finding ways to enforce core, internationally recognized labor rights -- the right to organize and the prohibition of child labor, forced labor and discrimination. But it has also endorsed the goals of environmentalists and advocates of consumer health.

Some unionists supported the militant action by the early morning protesters, who succeeded in disrupting the beginning of the WTO meeting. "It’s not enough to get a seat at the table," argued Vic Thorpe, the retiring general secretary of the International Chemical, Energy and Mine Workers, as he watched the street protests. "This is a better protest than to be conferring inside the hall, and in a real sense it’s more democratic."

The overwhelming sense of the march was of a magically coherent protest by a staggering range of people -- guys in union windbreakers and punks with pierced cheeks, high school students and the elderly -- brought together by opposition to the WTO and what they see as a corporate world order that rolls over the needs of young women in sweatshops, sea turtles, displaced American factory hands and anybody who eats food, drinks water or breathes the air.

Despite the diversity of causes, there was a remarkable unity in the message: The WTO and its free-trade rules are the tools of corporate interests, and the losers are the majority of people in the world and the environment. "The WTO gives rights and powers to corporations and takes power away from people," argued 19-year-old Adam Fargason, a University of Alabama student who credits his political awakening to linguist-writer Noam Chomsky and Dead Kennedys rocker Jello Biafra. "It violates democracy."

As the labor rally broke up and marchers headed back to their buses, there were some continued skirmishes, as police fired more gas and the contents of a dumpster burned in the middle of an intersection.

The WTO did accomplish something remarkable: It brought together strains of protest that rarely even talk to each other, let alone act together. "Everything is so divided, but with one spark, everything comes together," Fargason said. "I think that’s what’s going on here, and it will keep going."
salon.com | Dec. 1, 1999

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