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TIME: Seattle's Larry Dohrs, Burma
Subject: TIME: Seattle's Larry Dohrs, Burma and the anti-WTO protesters were heard
TIME: " Says Larry Dohrs, an activist with the Seattle
chapter of the Free Burma Coalition: "Strong
majorities of American voters support basic
labor rights and environmental provisions in
trade agreements. It's that simple."
Well done, Larry Dohrs. I am not much of a fan of TIME, but it does get
read and this is a crowning achievement to your steady committment
throughout these years. At least this time TIME was where the real
action was in Seattle...
Post Co-Editor wrote:
>
> Rage Against The Machine Despite, and because of, violence, anti-WTO
> protesters were heard
> BY RICHARD LACAYO - Time Magazine
>
> At the Seattle meeting of the World Trade
> Organization, the bureaucrats may not have
> accomplished all that much last week. The
> chaos that surrounded them did. In this
> moment of triumphant capitalism, of
> planetary cash flows and a priapic Dow, all
> the second thoughts and outright furies
> about the global economy collected on the
> streets of downtown Seattle and crashed
> through the windows of NikeTown. After two
> days of uproar scented with tear gas and
> pepper spray, Americans may never again
> think the same way about free trade and
> what it costs.
>
> At the very least, the dull but profound
> business of trade rules--which are usually
> hammered out by technocrats in closed
> meetings with corporate lobbyists hovering
> outside--will figure differently in the thinking
> of the millions of Americans whom the
> decisions affect. That might even happen
> soon enough to influence the next U.S.
> election, which helps account for some of the
> ways that Bill Clinton, who arrived in Seattle
> smack in the middle of the chaos, positioned
> himself when he got there. But neither
> Clinton nor U.S. Trade Representative
> Charlene Barshefsky was able to avert what
> must be viewed as a disaster: the WTO
> representatives' failure to reach agreement
> on launching the "Millennial Round" of trade
> talks. The delegates went home
> empty-handed.
>
> Not so WTO opponents, who left claiming
> victory, believing that what they hate about
> globalization will now come into focus as
> clearly as the familiar arguments in favor of
> it--that freer trade creates jobs for everybody
> and lower prices for consumers. Indeed, free
> trade has been an important reason for the
> '90s boom. Even as Seattle assessed the
> damage on Friday, the Dow was soaring
> nearly 250 points on news that the
> unemployment rate was stuck at its 30-year
> low. But the protesters were in Seattle to
> insist that globalization has become another
> word for capitulation to the worst excesses of
> capitalism, a cover for eliminating hard-won
> protections for the environment and workers'
> rights. "Before Seattle, we were dead in the
> water on trade," says George Becker,
> president of the United Steelworkers of
> America. "The big companies had their way
> completely. Now we've raised the profile of
> this issue, and we're not going back." Says
> Larry Dohrs, an activist with the Seattle
> chapter of the Free Burma Coalition: "Strong
> majorities of American voters support basic
> labor rights and environmental provisions in
> trade agreements. It's that simple."
>
> Trade issues are anything but simple.
> Demonstrators who want justice for poor
> nations were reminded last week that Third
> World delegates to the WTO don't want
> developed nations to force them to allow
> union organizing. Cheap labor is their
> competitive advantage. Environmentalists
> who want the WTO to keep its hands off U.S.
> laws that protect endangered species would
> happily force Venezuela--against its
> sovereign will--to clean up its gasoline
> exports.
>
> Because it deals with so many separate
> issues, from farm subsidies to
> intellectual-property rights, the WTO attracts
> a very mixed bag of opponents, which is one
> reason that opposition to it has been hard to
> focus. Some of the WTO opponents want to
> reform the organization. Some want to
> abolish it. Virtually all of them resent the
> secrecy in which the WTO makes decisions
> that its 135 member nations are supposed to
> abide by.
>
> Dohrs' Burma group mobilized against the
> WTO in part to advance the right of states
> and localities to boycott companies that do
> business in Burma, now called Myanmar,
> which is one of Asia's most saw-toothed
> dictatorships. But the U.S. State Department
> sees such boycotts as a violation of federal
> sovereignty and free trade. Then there are
> the environmentalists. To protect sea turtles,
> an endangered species, they want an import
> ban on shrimp caught in nets that don't have
> escape hatches to let the turtles swim away.
> Congress has adopted such a ban, but the
> WTO forbids it; member nations can't block
> imports on the basis of the way they are
> produced. The organization may also
> eventually forbid American "antidumping"
> laws that bar the import of low-cost foreign
> steel. Those laws are important to American
> unions. The WTO used the same logic in
> siding with the U.S. against European nations
> that wanted to prohibit the import of
> American beef fed with hormones that
> Europeans believe may be unsafe.
>
> In the aftermath of the Battle of Seattle, no
> single objection to the WTO may stand out
> any better than it has before. But from now
> on, every objection will be illuminated by the
> fires of last week. The WTO trade ministers
> and other delegates had come to Seattle to
> draw up an agenda for a new round of global
> trade talks, which are scheduled to last about
> three years and take up issues like
> European farm subsidies--of huge
> importance to U.S. and Canadian agricultural
> exporters--and whether to tax sales on the
> Internet.
>
> The backlash in the streets started Tuesday
> morning, several hours before more than
> 25,000 largely peaceful marchers headed
> from a union-backed rally at Memorial
> Stadium, near the Space Needle, toward the
> shops and hotels of downtown. Many
> thousands of other protesters were already
> converging there, some engaged in peaceful
> sit-ins that blocked traffic. Things got serious
> when scattered groups of self-described
> Black Block anarchists, wearing all-black
> outfits with handkerchiefs or hoods covering
> their faces, started to smash windows and
> trash businesses, giving special attention to
> companies such as the Gap and Nike that
> have been accused of using low-wage or
> child labor to produce some of their
> merchandise. Peaceful protesters,
> horror-struck, shouted, "Shame! Shame!" at
> the rioters. Once word got out that the
> streets were haywire, however, a wave of
> garden-variety thugs headed downtown to
> smash the windows at Radio Shack and walk
> off with CD players. Anarchist websites
> subsequently complained that their boys in
> black were blamed for the apolitical looting
> by the later group that ruined their
> well-planned attack. But the thing about
> anarchy is, it has a way of getting out of
> control.
>
> Most of the WTO
> visiting
> dignitaries--including
> U.N.
> Secretary-General
> Kofi Annan,
> Secretary of State
> Madeleine Albright
> and
> Barshefsky--spent
> part of Tuesday
> trapped in their
> hotels. With the
> morning's opening
> ceremonies
> canceled,
> frustrated delegates spent the hours
> muttering into their cell phones. By late
> afternoon, as police moved through
> downtown in armored personnel carriers, a
> stunned Mayor Paul Schell asked
> Washington Governor Gary Locke to send in
> the National Guard. Schell also slapped a
> dusk-to-dawn curfew on the city's downtown
> and imposed a 50-square-block no-protest
> order on downtown, which left demonstrators
> furious.
>
> On Wednesday, police arrested about 500
> demonstrators, dragging many of them
> feet-first into buses and speeding them off to
> detention centers, where some of them idly
> communicated among themselves by flashing
> in Morse code with their laser pens. Schell
> and his police chief, Norm Stamper, seemed
> taken by surprise by the calamity caused by
> the demonstration. If so, they were the only
> ones. Protest leaders had long promised as
> much, and websites have been bubbling for
> months about the gathering. Hundreds of
> would-be demonstrators attended camps in
> civil disobedience this summer in
> preparation. In a building not far from
> downtown, organizers literally mapped out
> about a dozen areas where they planned to
> choke off central Seattle so that delegates
> could not reach their meetings.
>
> The police lost control first of downtown and then, in some
> cases, of themselves. Many of the demonstrators
> complained that the cops were using rubber
> bullets, tear gas and pepper spray against nonviolent
> protesters while a few blocks away vandals freely roamed the city
> throwing litter baskets through store windows. These complaints
> were seconded by angry residents of the city's Capitol Hill district,
> where police pursued protesters with tear gas and concussion grenades
> despite the fact that the area was outside the no-protest zone.
>
> Early Wednesday morning Bill Clinton arrived. After being driven through
> the streets of broken glass and police lines, he ascended to a suite on
> an upper floor at the Westin Hotel and flipped on local news,
> where he saw for the first time the scenes of chaos that had raged all
> around his hotel earlier that day.
>
> Clinton moved quickly to adapt to the new
> conditions, keenly mindful of the fact that
> labor unions and environmental groups are
> crucial parts of the coalition that Al Gore
> hopes will take him to the White House. At
> two appearances the following day, Clinton
> departed from his prepared text to
> emphasize that it would be necessary from
> now on to explain to people more clearly the
> ways that trade benefited them and to open
> up the WTO so that its rulings were more
> legitimate in the eyes of the people they
> affected. "If the WTO expects to have public
> support grow for our endeavors, the public
> must see and hear and, in a very real sense,
> actually join in the deliberations," said
> Clinton.
>
> Before the president left, an interview with
> him appeared in the Seattle
> Post-Intelligencer that unnerved some WTO
> delegates almost as much as the rioting had.
> Low-wage, developing nations at the
> meeting, led by India, Egypt and Brazil, were
> incensed that Clinton told the paper he
> wanted a working group on labor to be
> established within the WTO to develop "core"
> standards for wages, working conditions and
> other labor issues, and that such standards
> should be part of every trade agreement.
> Ultimately, he said, they should be enforced
> through trade sanctions, the WTO's ultimate
> weapon.
>
> The word sanctions sent delegates from
> developing nations up the wall. Thailand's
> Minister of Commerce, Supachai
> Panitchpakdi, who takes over as WTO chief
> in 2002, warned that if Clinton insisted on the
> issue, developing countries could "walk away
> from any agreement on a new round" of
> talks. To them, Clinton's words were nothing
> but protectionism wrapped in progressivism.
> But that position happens to be the one
> taken by the AFL-CIO. Unhappy about the
> White House trade deal to admit China to the
> WTO--an agreement that labor is now better
> armed to fight in Congress--the unions had
> pressed Clinton to push their case on labor
> rules in Seattle.
>
> By late Friday night, negotiations to get
> agreement on an agenda for a new round of
> global-trade negotiations collapsed.
> Exhausted WTO delegates said they would
> try again next year in Geneva to bridge huge
> differences.
>
> Public attention will eventually shift from the
> mayhem of last week, but a new political
> sensitivity may endure--one that gives
> unionists, environmentalists and others a
> platform for concerns heretofore ignored by
> the WTO bureaucrats and elected
> representatives alike. "In America trade
> policy has been conducted by elites inside
> the Washington Beltway," explains Craig
> Johnstone, senior vice president of the U.S.
> Chamber of Commerce. "Now the issue is
> very visibly moving out into the streets.
> Those who want to promote trade are going
> to have to make their case much more
> vigorously to all the American people."
>
> It is a pretty compelling case. And if they can
> make it with anywhere near the vigor that
> was demonstrated by the antis last week in
> Seattle, free trade may yet win the day.
>
> --REPORTED BY ADAM ZAGORIN AND STEVEN
> FRANK/SEATTLE, MARGOT HORNBLOWER/LOS
> ANGELES AND JAY BRANEGAN/WASHINGTON
>
> COPYRIGHT © 1999 TIME INC. NEW MEDIA