Where Do We Go From Here?

In the heady days after the WTO demonstrations in Seattle, the question on everyone's lips is: where do we go from here? This has proved a more challenging question than many might realize. The very diversity and spontaneity of the Seattle uprisings present the greatest hurdle to long-term coalition-building. How, for example, are French farmers supposed to remain in solidarity with Teamsters from Tacoma? Other veterans of the street battles of Seattle, of course, see the diversity and unpredictability of the uprising against the WTO as its prime virtue.

Regardless, efforts to capitalize on the momentum of Seattle are advancing on multiple fronts.

Global Trade Watch, a Ralph Nader-sponsored operation, was responsible for many of the planned events during WTO week in Seattle, including lectures, NGO tribunals, debates, and several protests. They have recently proposed the "Fix It or Nix It Campaign," a plan to keep the pressure on the WTO. One of the big issues for the Citizen's Trade Campaign and big labor is China's potential entry into the WTO. "All the energy and momentum from Seattle is going directly into a huge national campaign to block permanent most-favored-nation status for China," says Lori Wallach, director of Global Trade Watch. "The people at Seattle rallies have gone home bolstered by their success and they are looking for their next fight," Wallach said. "Members of Congress had better be prepared to find hundreds of trade activists camped out at their district offices."

Opposition to China's admission to the WTO is only one of ten items on a list of demands that Global Trade Watch activists have come up with. Among the others: abolish the WTO trade-related intellectual property agreement, restore each nation's right to make its own decisions about goods sold in its domestic markets, allow individual nations to set their own environmental and health standards, and exclude water and biological life forms from any trade rule applications. The campaign would give the WTO 18 months to make their changes or, according to a memo by Darci Anderssen, "we will launch campaigns worldwide to both cut off our countries' WTO funding contributions and to get our countries out of WTO."

But there is a potential divide here between those who talk about reforming the WTO and those who oppose its very existence. "The momentum coming out of Seattle was toward a global campaign to kill the WTO," says Michael Donnelly, an environmental organizer from Salem, Oregon, who has twice run for Congress as a Green. "The WTO is a star chamber for the global capitalists. It will never serve the interests of the working people or the environment. It can't be fixed."

Donnelly argues that the real legacy of the WTO protests was the sense of optimism and renewed energy it infused into ongoing campaigns against corporate rapacity. An example is the new impetus given to the anti-biotech movement. Shortly after WTO, the Food and Drug Administration held a hearing on genetically engineered foods in Oakland in December. More than a thousand people turned out to protest. It was the largest anti-biotech gathering to date in the United States. Ronnie Cummins, director of the PureFood Campaign, credits the popular uprising in Seattle with increasing the level of successful outrage towards Frankenfoods. "Seattle made people feel as if they had some power once again," says Cummins. "As the Battle of Seattle showed, the entire World Trade Organization is now being undermined by a growing international alliance of Civil Society--consumers, farmers, workers, environmentalists, and young people. The most important lesson of Seattle is that there is now a global New Democracy Movement being built from the grassroots up. Food safety and genetic engineering are clearly proving to be one of the strategic pressure points or weak spots of global corporate power."

Another movement that got a boost from Seattle was Jubilee 2000, the international campaign to cancel third world debt. Jubilee 2000 sponsored one of the more creative events in Seattle, an attempt to form a human chain around the Paul Allen-financed exhibition center to keep WTO delegates from attending a soiree with corporate executives from Microsoft and Boeing. Thousands of people turned out, braving fierce winds and rain. Now Jubilee 2000 and the 50 Years Is Enough campaign are plotting a week of protests in Washington, D.C. against the activities of the finance mavens of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The week begins on Sunday, April 9, with a Jubilee 2000/USA mobilization for cancellation of the debts of African, Latin American, Asia-Pacific, and Caribbean countries, and continues with teach-ins and trainings on the global economy. It will culminate with a planned rally and march to the headquarters of the IMF on Sunday, April 16.

But perhaps the most intriguing movement to emerge from Seattle is the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment, a coalition of Earth First!ers and Steelworkers that came together a year ago, but first made its presence felt on the street of Seattle. This unlikely union was pulled together by two remarkable people: David Brower, the founder of Friends of the Earth and Earth Island Institute, and David Foster, director for District 11 of the United Steelworkers of America, one of the most articulate and unflinching labor leaders in America. The groups had a common enemy: Maxxam Corporation and its CEO, corporate raider Charles Hurwitz. Hurwitz used the Houston-based Maxxam to plot the takeover of two other companies, Pacific Lumber and Kaiser Aluminum. Pacific Lumber owns the largest swath of redwoods in private hands, and the company has clearcut them since the takeover, prompting years of protests and civil disobedience by Earth First!ers. Hurwitz's takeover of Kaiser was followed by a frenzy of cost-slashing and attacks on workers, culminating in a lock-out of 3,000 Steelworkers at its plants in Washington, Ohio, and Louisiana. "We came together because we found we had a common foe," says Foster. "But that foe is more than Hurwitz. It's the kind of global capitalism that exploits both workers and the environment."

From its strong showing in Seattle, the Alliance has joined with about 20 other groups in an effort to force presidential candidates to grapple with the issue of global trade. The first stage was the "Ruckus at the Caucus," a week-long series of protests and events during the run-up to the Iowa Caucuses. The group developed a "people's challenge," prodding the candidates on issues ranging from logging on federal lands to protection of family farms and workers' right to strike. "Gore's and Bradley's Des Moines staffs were cordial and engaging," says Steelworker Don Kegley. "Bush's staff was nervous and offered us home-baked cookies. Forbes' staff showed us the door." From Iowa, the Alliance plans to take its campaign to New Hampshire, where they will stage a "people's debate" on jobs, trade, and the environment the evening before the presidential debates in Manchester.

"This whole effort should culminate toward the end of the summer in Philadelphia and Los Angeles," says Michael Donnelly. "We need to try to shut down both political conventions, since neither party seems ready to nominate a candidate who expresses any reservations about unfettered global trade."