Seattle Shows WTO's True Colors
By Steve Stallone

If there was any doubts about the World trade Organization representing a cynical and sinister corporate coup, one week in Seattle laid them to rest.

On the morning of  Tuesday Nov. 30 police assaulted anti-WTO demonstrators with tear-gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets in large sections of downtown Seattle hours before a handful of "Black-clad anarchists" started smashing windows and stealing media attention away from tens of thousands of protesters in the streets with a message.

Freedom of speech and assembly was not tolerated when the representatives of the world's ruling class were gathering to carve up the big pie. The police state ruled, the Constitution be damned. We got a quick preview -- a horror movie teaser -- of the future envisioned by the WTO.

Although even President Clinton and the editorial pages of the Journal of Commerce have called for opening up of the WTO to more public scrutiny, accountability and input, the Seattle delegates made it clear they had tolerated just about as much "transparency" as they were going to -- and that wasn't much.

The access passes the WTO gave to members of non-governmental organizations would get you past the police on the street corner, the police at the front gate of the Convention Center and the security at the metal detectors just inside the door.

From there you could wander the smoke-filled hallways or go to the plenary hall where a procession of trade bureaucrats gave boring speeches reveling in their 15 minutes of fame.

But the NGO badge couldn't get you past the plain clothes security in front of the side rooms, where delegates were doing the dirty work of debating and cobbling together the details of the new trade agreements. Even California Assembly member Audie Bock, the official trade representative of a state with a higher GNP than most of the WTO member countries, couldn't crack that wall of security.

The delegates also made it clear that any agreement that included guarantees of core labor standards, even the basic International Labor Organization conventions adopted in 1919 was a deal-breaker.

By the end of week the WTO meeting came out with nothing. No agreements could be reached because of typical capitalist greed and self-interest. The least developed countries rebelled against the arrogant ways a handful of the richest countries -- the United States, Canada, Japan, the European Union -- tried to imposed their positions on all the rest.

These least developed nations also complained that they never received the aid from rich countries they were promised at the first WTO meeting in 1994 to help put them in a position to compete in the global economy.

But while the WTO members bickered and splintered in Seattle, their opposition in the streets forged new alliances and communities of interest. Labor, environmentalists, social justice activists and students came together and worked together with new respect and appreciation.

This new coalition may well be the most important legacy of Seattle -- the beginnings of a new mass social movement against corporate globalism.