Ten years ago today, a large group of American patriots were getting tear gassed on the streets of Seattle for demanding democratic oversight of emerging international trade rules.
Ten years later, the dream of globalized free trade where one country produces food, another cheap consumer goods, and another does the banking has been exposed as a sham. The global economic collapse revealed this reorganization of the world's work force at the whims of global corporations as pie in the sky. Sadly, the race to the bottom has continued unabated.
Here is a collection of newspapers put out by activists who acted as citizen reporters from the street and from inside the convention center.
http://depts.washington.edu/...
"The WTO has two options: either its next meeting is in Pyong-Yang, North Korea, to avoid the protests from civil society or it changes its attitude toward public scrutiny and democracy."
- Greenpeace International
Here are some samples of the writing that came out of that project.
In Seattle, the WTO hoped to launch a new round of negotiations to expand the organization’s activities into new arenas, including the hotly controversial topic of genetically altered food and seeds. One result of the collapse of the Seattle meetings, ironically, suggests that removing contentious issues from the WTO and submitting them to another international body can bring relief and progress that the public will support...
The WTO, however, is hostile to the "precautionary principle," which suggests that a new food, for example, be proved safe before being widely distributed, a sort of look-before-you-leap approach that shifts the burden of proof from the recipient (who must prove a commodity is dangerous in order to refuse it) to the producer (who must prove that it is safe).
The WTO’s first foray into the food safety debate—its attempt to force members of the European Union to import U.S. beef grown with growth hormones, was not only a diplomatic disaster; it also firmed up European support for the precautionary principle, which then carried the day at the biodiversity negotiations.
Props in an Amorality Play
When the champion "triangulator" arrives in Seattle, all indications are that he will strive to treat the tens of thousands of anti-WTO activists in the streets as mere props in his amorality play.
According to the script, Bill Clinton is eager to navigate the jagged shores of domestic politics as he pushes to advance the prospects of humanity for the new millennium. Such theatrics tend to enthrall the huge numbers of supposedly political reporters doubling as drama critics — who, in turn, give the public a nonstop supply of pseudo-journalistic fairy tales that bear little resemblance to global realities.
With oft-requited adoration, President Clinton has consistently put the interests of Wall Street first — while, with the encouragement of White House spinmeisters, the news media routinely portray him as one conflicted individual. The story often goes that Clinton wrestles with thorny dilemmas as he (in the words of yesterday’s page-one Seattle Times piece) "tries to satisfy core left-leaning constituencies and embrace free trade at the same time."
But Martin Khor of Malysia-based Third World Network told the panel from the floor that any trade round that purports to be a development round and ignores the concern of developing countries is "a sham." These concerns include the implementation of existing agreements and the impact of adding new issues like investment liberalization, government procurement and competition policy to the WTO, he said.
At a press conference, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky responded to the criticism that the symposium was simply a PR exercise, since the WTO has no intention of heeding NGO calls to abandon a new round.
"The essence of democracy is to let everyone in and let them be heard," she said. "That doesn’t mean that you agree with their views." She said the view that there should be no new WTO round "doesn’t take into account the need for global prosperity."
Don't miss the photo collection.
Were you there?
What are your memories of N30?
UPDATE: IndyMedia also began at Seattle. The website you are on now has a lot in common with those early experiments in citizen journalism.
UPDATE 2: Democracy Now takes a look at what the WTO is up to these days
here.