A Brief Comment: What's Happening in Seattle and Why
By Michael Albert
Ballpark 50-100,000 demonstrators assembled in Seattle. They are farmers and industrial workers, unionists and environmentalists, young and old, men and women, from the U.S. and from the third world, and they are angry and their target is the WTO, and thus also oppressive world trade, and thus also, just a minor step beyond, the market system and capitalism itself. They are there to raise social costs to elites by their actions on the scene and by the repercussions for continuing organizing around the world (75,000 today demonstrated in France, for example) to curtail or better to close down the WTO agenda.
So what do you do if you are in charge of the City and have Clinton due in town imminently and the whole world, literally, watching? Whats the elite strategy?
(1) You can sit back and be nice and allow the demonstrators to move freely and make their points and develop confidence and grow in number and size and, most important, in their mutual solidarity, with more people arriving every hour, and education and outreach blossoming each day.
Or (2) you can try and break the thing up, quickly, even if at great risk should you fail.
>From early reports it seems that the powers that be decided that to leave hands off was a recipe for sure disaster. They likely envisioned the specter of growing numbers, growing willingness to do civil disobedience, and worst of all, growing solidarity between diverse sectors and outreach to new constituencies, and realized that throughout the country and world this would send a message that dissent can restrain the state. They didn't like that picture.
Their other option the usual favorite choice of U.S. elites is to try to bust up opposition by using as much force as they can get away with. The idea in this case is to send an immediate message that being in Seattle as a demonstrator means braving gas, truncheons, and rubber bullets, at least. The police and media try to together get the less mobile and less militant demonstrators to leave, depressed or angry. Then the thinned ranks can be herded away from the WTO buildings and arrested or banished.
Judging by early reports I'm guessing thats the elite plan. The tactics are very typical intimidating costumes, quick and eager but still for the moment limited violence, curfews, provocations to get demonstrator (or town citizen) actions that one can complain are the source of the repression. Provoke a little violence, repress it, in due course, with a lot...
The demonstrator reaction will hopefully be not to fracture but instead to generate more and more organization, discipline, and steadfast solidarity and militance in marching, and, when need be, in committing non-violent civil disobedience.
What will happen? No one can possibly know, of course. But if you are in Seattle I think the thing to try to affect is whether Seattle's citizens -- its cab drivers, its bus drivers, its small shop keepers, its folks on the street -- become sympathetic to the demonstrators or even outright supportive of them, and whether the union and other more mainstream demonstrators align with the street demonstrations and continuing marches and rallies, telling the Seattle police that their opposition is workers like themselves, and angry ones at that. This is already an important event. If alliance and solidarity can be forged, it will be historic.
Here are some sites where you can get excellent up to the minute information to pass along to others to build support for the demonstrators and opposition fo the WTO:
ZNet's Global/WTO Watch -- Direct from the scene reports and analysis--plus contextual reports and in depth materials from Z Magazine's writers and beyond--and you can post your own reports, as well:
The Seattle Indy News Center -- on the ground, on the scene, with audio, video, and print reports:
Global Exchange's Democratize the Global Economy -- Analysis and context:
Food First -- Food politics in general and regarding the WTO:
coverage of the WTO: The Preamble Center: A research project into the U.S. economy...with special
Legal Help for Seattle Demonstrators: Information and connections:
Michael Albert
Z Magazine / ZNet
Información sobre ciencias y enlaces a periodicos, bases de datos y bibliotecas virtuales: rcci.net/.