Nov. 30 in Seattle (photo: Steven Shults)

You have probably already read a great deal about the WTO meetings in Seattle. The 50 Years Is Enough Network sent its staff there, as well as facilitating the trips of organizers from the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras in San Antonio and the Tennessee Industrial Renewal Network (TIRN) in Knoxville. All in all the week was one of many great victories, and a real turning point for the building of the movement for global economic justice. I think a few more reflections still bear saying, or repeating:

The opposition to the WTO and the global economic elite is massive and passionate enough that organizers were actually able through direct, non-violent action to force the cancellation of the opening ceremony. Even if some of the media coverage dwelt on the broken windows and graffiti and tear gas, the delegates themselves received a powerful signal, because they know they were blocked by entirely non-violent actions. (Faced with a room half-full of delegates with nothing to do, three staffers of Global Exchange, including 50 Years Is Enough Network Steering Committee member Kevin Danaher, tried to lead a discussion of the meaning of fair trade, but were promptly whisked off the stage by security personnel.) Although we probably shouldn't focus on the shutting down of a major event as our gauge of success, the fact that we got it this time is a significant, tangible tool: a symbol of how powerful the movement for global economic justice has become.

Those broken windows and graffiti (and a few incidents of looting) were several blocks from the conference venues, and had nothing to do with the cancellation of the opening ceremony, which was stopped before the vandalism started. The police violence also started well before any windows were broken.

I suspect that the indiscriminate assaults by police with tear gas and rubber bullets on non-violent demonstrators were a reaction not to vandalism but to the anger of local, national, and international officials over the cancellation of the opening ceremony. Indeed, the fact that no attempt was made to stop the vandalism but that peaceful demonstrators and by-standers were repeatedly attacked with chemical agents, rubber bullets, and clubs, suggests where the interests of the police and city government lay. But the vandalism provided those officials a more acceptable public excuse for their actions. Whether one believes that the cause of the arbitrary police violence, arrests, curfews, and declarations of "no-protest zones" was to protect private (corporate) property or to assuage the sensibilities of WTO delegates, a useful lesson was taught about the willingness of the state to suspend the constitution and use its repressive force to protect private property or inhibit effective protest against the elites.

As is so often the case, the institution we are fighting turned out to be a valuable ally. The WTO‚s internal contentiousness prevented it from reaching any agreements, and its meetings were declared a failure. Some attribute a large part of the credit, quite plausibly, to the presence of large numbers of protesters on U.S. streets, demonstrating to those delegations that want to resist the domination of the North (and specifically the G-7 group of industrialized countries) that they have allies among the people of the North ˆ if not always taking the same position, at least in opposing the institution‚s current trajectory.

President Clinton‚s statements on the need to open up the WTO to public participation were stronger than we could have anticipated. After five years of near-silence on this issue, there are probably few in the progressive community who believe that Clinton has suddenly been converted to our cause on this matter. Rather, his statements on the subject another gauge of how substantial our protests were. In the optimistic vein, so was his advocacy for integrating labor rights and some environmental issues into the WTO; a less rosy view would hold that some Southern governments are correct in their suspicion that the motivation for imposing new standards would be to have another tool with which to control Southern economies.

The sense of inclusiveness and unity forged in Seattle will be very useful in the struggle ahead. That said, some of the sensationalism in the media coverage of the protests might actually have been useful for obscuring the contradictions in the messages being delivered by WTO opponents. The most basic one is the question of whether to advocate dismantling the institution or strengthening it. Many labor and environmental activists want to expand the WTO‚s mandate to authorize sanctions and monitor working conditions or environmental impact. Those who have been involved in struggles like those to transform the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are generally more skeptical about the prospects for satisfactory reform, and wary of giving the institutions the chance. The distinction becomes more important politically when Southern governments charging Clinton with wanting to push through a disguised protectionism see Northern activists as his accomplices. It would have been better for WTO opponents from the various movements and parts of the world to agree at least on opposition to any "new issues" coming under the WTO‚s purview, and better yet on a call for closing the institution down altogether. Unions and environmentalists would do well to recognize that a body whose mission it is to facilitate commercial activity will never be a reliable advocate for their needs. Fortunately, the labor demands that Clinton took up proved to be "deal-breakers," so for now the calls for reform and for abolition result in the same outcome and we can celebrate together. For the future, progressives must develop a vision of proactively determining how to safeguard the rights of people and the environment, so that unions and others will be less tempted to ask corporations and officials dedicated to profits-above-all to prioritize their concerns.