THE WTO PROTESTERS AND THE POWERS THAT BE
>
> All week I've been cringing at the news.  Tear gas.  Broken windows.  Bloody
> faces.  The National Guard called in to defend Seattle against anti-WTO
> demonstrators.  From far away, totally in sympathy with the demonstrators, I'
ve
> been yelling at them, "No, please, get hold of yourselves!  Don't tar our cau
se
> with violence!"
>
> Of course only a tiny fraction of the protesters in Seattle were violent.  Th
e
> folks I know who went there are middle aged, serious, professional.  They
> conducted workshops and prepared well-reasoned press briefings.  Their
> grievances are real and important to every person on earth.
>
> One friend there emailed Thursday morning: "There were teachers, steel worker
s,
> longshoremen, carpenters, pilots, farmworkers.  Speakers were clear that it w
as
> about working people AND the environment.  There was a colorful, well-mannere
d
> march through the city.  The sun came out.  We sang and chanted and waved our
> signs.  The only bad parts were scrambling over dumpsters and seeing smashed
> windows.  When we left the streets, back came the vandals, to be burned into
> the public mind as what the protest was about.  But what it was really about
> was a beautiful assembly of caring, concerned people with serious points to
> make."
>
> My first reaction to this travesty was to blame the demonstrators.  Couldn't
> they reign in the extremists?  Didn't they give everyone training in nonviole
nt
> engagement?  Warriors for human rights and nature should have learned long ag
o,
> from Gandhi and Martin Luther King and nuclear power protests, how to avoid t
he
> "irresponsible terrorist" label.
>
> Actually many did learn that lesson.  Another email message argued: "If we wa
nt
> to help those at the other end of the political spectrum see what we see, we
> should talk about things that are meaningful to THEM.  Like national
> sovereignty.  People who object to US troops being commanded by NATO officers
> should also be opposed to submitting the US economy to control by foreigners.
> I'd like to see a phalanx of conservatively dressed grown-ups parading with
> signs that say, 'Hands off the US economy!'"
>
> Nearly all protesters were conservatively dressed grown-ups.  But this outbur
st
> of WTO opposition was not centrally planned.  People poured in from all over
> the world.  The excitement may have attracted local rowdies who neither know
> nor care about the WTO.  My conspiracy-minded friends suspect they were
> corporate plants.  And every protest movement has its radical edge.  Not even
> Gandhi was able to control the extremists in his cause.
>
> When the cameramen can choose between activists talking earnestly about
> corporate abuse of intellectual property rights or delinquents breaking windo
ws
> on the street, what will appear on the nightly news?  Part of the problem her
e
> was the sensationalizing media, falling into another well-worn, trivializing
> reporting groove.  Cover an election like a sport event; talk about game
> strategy, not the issues before the nation.  Cover a natural disaster like so
me
> sort of statistical soap opera; keep a body count and interview sobbing
> survivors.  Cover a protest as in the '60s; emphasize the bizarre behavior an
d
> ignore the serious participants.
>
> The trade issue is an especially tough one for the major media to cover fairl
y,
> since they are themselves large corporations that have helped shape the WTO.
> They broadcast over and over the central myths of free trade.  Free trade wil
l
> make everyone better off.  As people get rich, they can afford to clean up th
e
> environment.  The larger a corporation gets, the more efficient it gets.
> What's good for General Motors (Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Boeing) is good for the
> country.
>
> None of these statements is clearly demonstrable, but all of them serve the
> interests of the privileged and powerful.  People went to Seattle to protest
> abuses of the privilege and powerful.  We can hardly expect the privileged an
d
> powerful to give us an even-handed report.
>
> The reporters, however, are only the handmaidens of the real powers, the trad
e
> ministers and the corporations who flock around the WTO helping to write its
> rules.  Maybe they are the real causes of the violence in Seattle.
>
> They are indeed, when it comes to authorship of the WTO mindset that made the
> protesters so angry: Trade Uber Alles, trade above environment, above fair
> working conditions, above full consumer information, above national
> sovereignty, above protection of health.  The powers may have inadvertently
> created the outburst they are now confronting, not just by creating the
> injustices that propelled outraged people to Seattle, but also by expecting a
nd
> warning of violence.
>
> The head of the WTO had been worrying out loud about "terrorists."  The polic
e
> were warned to prepare for the worst.  The cops were nervous; this sort of
> thing doesn't happen every day in Seattle.  A few jeers, a shot of tear gas, 
a
> scuffle, and there are the sensational shots for the evening news.  From the
> Winter Palace to Kent State, from the Bastille to the march on Selma, this is
> an old drama.  It doesn't take much to push the proletariat over the edge; th
en
> you can dismiss their cause as lawless and illegitimate.
>
> The problem is, neither causing violence nor reacting righteously against it
> will get us, the whole world of us, where we need to go.   A new layer of
> social structure is being invented here, a global government, appropriate for
> and needed by a world of rapid communication and transportation.  So far this
> government has been created entirely by the powerful, for their own benefit.
> It can't last that way.  People won't tolerate it.  And it doesn't have to be
> that way.  We can conduct orderly and profitable trade in ways that do not
> oppress workers, communities, or the environment.  We urgently need to do tha
t.
>
> We can find out how, if we stop focusing on the self-protective elites and th
e
> destructive hoodlums and start listening to the less colorful but far more
> numerous and constructive folks on both sides of the real, crucial argument.
>
> (Donella Meadows is an adjunct professor at Dartmouth College and director of
> the Sustainability Institute in Hartland, Vermont.)

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