SEATTLE - SOMETHING GREATER YET TO COME

By David Bacon

SEATTLE, WA (12/1/99) -- Those who marched or stood or sat in the
streets of Seattle this week made history, and they knew it. And like the
great marches against the Vietnam war, or the first sitins in the South in
the late 50s, it was not always easy to see just what history was being
made, especially for those closest to the events of the time.
Tear gas, rubber bullets and police sweeps, the object of incessant
media coverage, are the outward signs of impending change -- that the
guardians of the social order have grown afraid. And there's always a
little history in that.
Poeina, a young woman sitting in the intersection at the corner of
Seventh and Stewart, waiting nervously for the cops to cuff her and take
her away in her first arrest, knew the basic achievement she and her
friends had already won: "I know we got people to listen, and that we
changed their minds." It was a statement of hope, like the chant that rose
Tuesday from streets filled with thousands of demonstrators as the police
moved in - "The whole world is watching!"
The Seattle protests put trade on the roadmap of public debate,
making WTO a universally recognized set of initials in a matter of hours --
what it took a year of debate over NAFTA to accomplish.
But perhaps the greatest impact of Seattle will be on the people
who were there. Just as anti-war demonstrations and civil rights sitins of
decades ago were focal points, from which people fanned out across the
country, spreading the gospel of their movement, Seattle is also a
beginning of something greater yet to come. What will the people who
filled its downtown streets take with them back into this city's rainy
neighborhoods, or to similar communities in towns and cities across the
country?
A certain understanding of the world was forged in the streets here
-- a realization based, to begin with, on who was there. Environmentalists
came protesting the impending destruction of laws protecting clean air and
water. Animal rights activists came to protect sea turtles. Trade
unionists came fighting for jobs, and protesting child labor. Fair trade
campaigners arrived ready to debate corporate domination of the process by
which trade rules are decided.
Even the generational culture of the protestors started to spill
over, from one group into another. Environmental activists in their 20s
came with the tactics from the battles in the forests of northern
California and the Pacific northwest. They carried giant puppets, dressed
themselves in costumes rather than carrying signs, and laid down in busy
intersections at the height of morning rush hour.
In groups of 20 and 30, they chained their arms together, slipping
metal sleeves over hands and chains to make it hard for the police to cut
them apart. Two years ago, this tactic was answered by Humboldt County
sheriffs, who swabbed pepper spray directly into the eyes of protestors at
Pacific Lumber Company. Even for veterans of civil disobedience, the
chains are a tactic that demands determination and commitment to face down
the fear of violent response.
As police rushed in to make arrests and cut them apart, a young
woman stood to the side, crying out in tears to the helmeted and shielded
officers - "I'm your daughter!"
Later the same day, tens of thousands of union members marched into
downtown to join the protest. Having shut down all the ports along the
Pacific Coast from Alaska to San Diego, union members chanted and waved
picketsigns as their ranks filled the streets as far as the eye could see.
Each union's members marched together, each with its own color jacket or
t-shirt, each carrying banners and hundreds of signs printed for the
occasion.
Many of the morning's young protestors were visibly impressed by
the strength of the numbers and organization. For Annie Decker, "the
power and size of it made me feel joyful. I was proud that we were
together, bringing the WTO into the public eye."
In the midst of the teargas, it was not hard to see that this
culture of protest is starting to spread, whether through union jackets on
protestors in the redwood forests, or giant puppets on union picketlines in
Oakland. But under the culture is the germ of an idea - the linkage.
For unionists, the depradations of a global trading system has
pitted workers in many countries against each other, in a race to the
bottom in wages and workers' rights. Environmental activists see a system
which values profit-making over laws protecting health and the environment.
Rather than creating an atomized assembly -- each group pursing its own
interests in isolation -- protestors came ready to see what they had in
common.
Decker, an organizer and observer at an intersection filled with
sitting bodies, called her own realization liberating. "We don't have to
just express an opinion on one issue," she said. "Trade and the power of
corporations are affecting us in so many areas that we can all make
connections, and see the common element behind the problems we share."
President Clinton may regret planning a summit of the powerful
which has become overshadowed by street protest. But in the long run, he
will regret this realization more. It is an indictment, not of a
particular company, or even a single country, but of a whole economic order
which is uniting its enemies in opposition to it.

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david bacon - labornet email david bacon
internet: dbacon@igc.apc.org 1631 channing way
phone: 510.549.0291 berkeley, ca 94703
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