space Press Releases, News Stories

by Patrick McMahon, USA Today

SEATTLE, U.S.A, 12 November 1999 -- Billboards are going up. Giant street puppets have been constructed. Teach-ins are being organized. A downtown march is set. Civil disobedience training has begun, and hotel rooms are scarce.

While governments are preparing for an international trade summit here the week after Thanksgiving, opponents of U.S. trade policies are gearing up to protest the upcoming sessions of the 134-nation World Trade Organization.

Thursday, billboards began going up across the city asking, "WTO: But What Are We Trading Away?" The 14 billboards and 90 bus placards suggest U.S. trade negotiators are making deals in secret that harm the environment or thwart human rights. One ad shows the Bill of Rights going through a paper shredder.

"To trade or not to trade is not the issue," says Jim Puckett, executive director of the Asia Pacific Environmental Exchange. The issue "is who sets the rules for trade and whom do they serve." The exchange helped organize the $40,000 ad campaign, which was paid for by a coalition of organizations.

"To date, the doors of WTO negotiations have been held wide for corporate interests and slammed on the toes of civil society," Puckett says.

Patricia Davis, head of the Washington Council on International Trade, says 7,500 world trade ministers, heads of state and government officials of all levels are expected for the meeting Nov. 30-Dec. 3. President Clinton and at least a half-dozen U.S. Cabinet members are expected.

The trade delegates may be in for a surprise, Seattle labor leader Ron Judd says.

Seattle, where one of every three or four jobs are trade-related, is "the Camelot of the neo-liberal, free-trade thinking," he says. The delegates may have "thought they were going to get the red-carpet treatment and rose petals thrown in their path."

Judd, executive secretary treasurer of the King County Labor Council (AFL-CIO), is organizing a march with national and international trade leaders through downtown on WTO's opening day. "We are urging people to take the day off and join us," he says. "We are not calling for a general strike."

Organizers hope the march will draw tens of thousands of participants.

Wednesday, during a speech at a Harley-Davidson factory in York, Pa., Clinton told workers to pay attention to the Seattle meetings.

"I want you all to watch Seattle when it rolls around," he said. "Every group in the world with an ax to grind is going to Seattle to demonstrate.

"I'll have more demonstrators against me than I've had in the whole seven years I've been president. I'm kind of looking forward to it. I'll tell you why. I told them all I wanted them to come. . . . I want everybody to get this all out of their system and say their piece. And I want us to have a huge debate about this."

In addition to opponents who want to open secret negotiations of the WTO and focus on environmental, human-rights and labor issues, some protesters want to shut down the meeting altogether.

David Solnit, a member of the Art and Revolution Street Troupe and of Direct Action Network, vows, "We're going to shut down the WTO." The groups plan to ring the convention center with protesters "to prevent the trade ministers and their limousines from getting there," Solnit says. "We're training hundreds of people in non-violent techniques. . . . Hundreds of us are ready to go to jail."

Davis, who is leading local planning for WTO, is skeptical of reports of Seattle protests with upward of 50,000 people. "It's getting cold," she says. "I think they're throwing out the big numbers to scare people."

Seattle Mayor Paul Schell suggests gamely that the city is eager for the issues to be debated here.

"It's not a city that shrinks from a challenge," Schell says. "We're probably the best place in the world to hold this meeting. We're a city that cares about human rights and the environment deeply. We are not anticipating that the city will be shut down."