space Press Releases, News Stories

by Laurence M. Cruz of the Associated Press

SEATTLE, U.S.A, 12 November 1999 -- Opponents of World Trade Organization meetings set to begin in less than three weeks raised their profile Thursday with the launch of a $40,000 outdoor advertising campaign.

Ninety ads on buses and 14 billboards aimed at educating the public to what organizers call the behind-closed-doors practices of the organization will begin appearing around Seattle through November.

"I think everybody agrees that there is massive public ignorance about" the WTO, said Jim Puckett, director of the Asia Pacific Environmental Exchange, which organized the campaign.

"And it's in the climate of this public ignorance that the WTO has been able to become so powerful and so unaccountable."

The organization will bring trade ministers and other diplomats from 135 member nations to Seattle Nov. 30 through Dec. 3 to discuss global commerce issues. As many as 50,000 to 100,000 visitors, including delegates, protesters and journalists, are expected to attend at least a portion of the conference.

The ad campaign seeks to increase public interest in the trade organization discussions, which will take place behind closed doors.

Puckett and representatives of some of the 15 participating labor, human rights and environmental groups launched the campaign at a news conference at the Mountaineers Club.

The ads pose a common question:

"WTO: But what are we trading away?" Each suggests a different answer: from worker's rights to human rights; from clean air and clean water to forests, family farmers and endangered species.

The groups want more say in the organization's free-trade talks.

"Until now, we've been completely locked out of what are supposed to be democratic negotiations," Puckett said, adding that many of the advisory committees that give input to the U.S. Trade Representative are accessible only to preferred industries.

A small step in redressing that imbalance was achieved this week, when a federal judge in Seattle declared it illegal not to have "fairly balanced" viewpoints represented on such committees, said Patti Goldman, a lawyer for Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein ordered the Paper Committee and the Lumber and Wood Products Committee to include an environmental representative as soon as possible.

Earthjustice, representing five environmental groups, had sued U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky in July on the issue.

"It's not a balance," Puckett said, "but it's progress."

The success of the campaign also would be measured in "less empty rhetoric" by presidential candidates and by city, local and state officials taking the groups' issues seriously, Puckett said.

He said city and King County Council candidates in the recent elections had felt "obliged to speak out on" activists' concerns as a result of a heightened level of public debate. Twenty-two state representatives also are expected to sign a letter of concern about the trade organization.

"If we can move that level of awareness across the country and the world," the campaign would have succeeded, he said, noting that that is a long-term goal.

Ron Judd, executive-secretary of the King County Labor Council, AFL-CIO, said it was a golden opportunity to move the groups' concerns front and center.

"If you can have a rule to protect a CD or a rule to protect intellectual property rights, then you ought to have rules that protect the environment and rules to protect communities," he said.