Raptorial Reader

Before the mass rallies, before the trashing of chain stores, before the tear gas, rubber bullets, and arrests, local businesses in Seattle got an inkling that something was up. At the Gap, Starbucks, McDonald’s, and other street level symbols of the relentless expansion of multinational corporations championed by the World Trade Organization (WTO), cash drawers began to fill with money bearing an anti-WTO symbol. These defaced dollars, fives, tens, and twenties circulated in ever-widening areas. Within days, there were reports of the bills turning up as far away as Washington, D.C.

‘Who knows how far they’ll ultimately go?’ wonders Mike Dolan of Public Citizen, who helped organize the anti-WTO protests that swept Seattle. ‘Just think; Bill Clinton or Trent Lott will be buying Christmas gifts and get anti-WTO dollars in change.’

This distribution of the funny money symbolizes the spirit and the style of protest that activists hope will flow from Seattle, where the streets filled with the largest outpouring of anti-corporate sentiment on U.S. soil in decades. Organizers like Dolan hope that the "Battle in Seattle" will prove to be a turning point in a long and often frustrating struggle to make the debate between corporate greed and human need a frontburner issue in America. Already, they have helped stall the WTO’s plans to launch a new ‘Millennium Round’ of trade negotiations.

When police jailed hundreds of nonviolent protesters and tear-gassed activists, unions organized a march in solidarity with the Direct Action Networkers. As crowds of young people held a sit-in outside the King County Jail to demand the release of their comrades, the Teamsters supplied cookies.

‘We have people working together who have never even been in the same room before – except maybe to yell at one another,’ says Dolan. ‘Substantial differences were transcended in order to build the Seattle Coalition. I think the WTO has pushed globalization in so many directions that it has touched just about everybody...

‘Remember when we used to talk about multinational corporations, and people would roll their eyes?’ asks former Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower. ‘Now, we’ve got tens of thousands of people in the streets – marching, rallying, in some cases even risking arrest – to challenge the excessive power of the corporations and the WTO’s efforts to expand that power. I think this is a historic turning point. Ninety percent of the American public, who had not heard of the WTO before, are suddenly asking: What are people so upset about that they’re willing to get their heads beat in over it? And, as they read on, they find that there really is a lot to be upset about.’

A USA Today/CNN/Gallup survey conducted on the eve of the WTO session found that 59 percent of Americans surveyed thought that free trade as it is currently practiced hurts American workers, while only 35 percent felt it helped...

U.S. Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, is spearheading this effort in Congress. 'People are genuinely concerned about losing the ability to legislate at the local level. They see that as an incredible usurping of local power. And they’re right.’ says Kucinich.

South African poet and activist Dennis Brutus, who was in Seattle, met recently with representatives from across Africa and Asia to come up with a strategy. They decided to call for a consortium of non-governmental organizations around the world to conduct a review of the record of the WTO over its first five years of existence.

‘The record will show that the WTO has consistently ruled on behalf of companies and against the people,’ says Brutus. ‘We believe that the record is destructive and that, when the destructiveness is detailed, it will lead to a call for the abolition of the WTO.’

‘What I’ve seen here is incredibly heartening and encouraging,’ says California State Senator Tom Hayden, the 1960s anti-war activist who became a Democratic Party officeholder. ‘Even if people don’t always get along on every issue, they’ve started to recognize that they can’t get along without each other – not against something as powerful and insidious as the WTO...

‘I don’t care if local officials are liberal or conservative or whatever, they don’t like being told by some agency in Geneva what laws they can pass. And I think that as people become aware of what’s at stake, you’ll see some genuine activism around this issue.’

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader agrees. ‘The energy you saw in Seattle is going to go home to Main Street America,’ he says. ‘You’re going to see people talking about these issues in church basements, union halls, and community centers. They’re going to make Seattle the turning point for a movement that is going to fundamentally change how America – and the world – does business. The inherent power of the people is more than enough to turn the tide. If people realize what’s at stake, they’ve got the power to prevail and win.’