As the clouds of tear gas lifted
from the streets of Seattle two images emerged in the public consciousness.
The WTO, gaining instant celebrity as a powerful symbol of globalization's
discontents, was brought crashing to its knees. As the edifice toppled
it revealed an odd Lilliputian army of labor, environmental, church, and
assorted activists that had appeared out of nowhere to create a loud, colorful,
and seemingly united assault on what had been presumed to be an unassailable
new world order.
Of course the Lilliputians who came
to protest had long recognized the WTO as a key impediment to the protection
and extension of labor and environmental rights, and as a key forum in
which the national-corporate deals of neoliberalism were cut. While the
extraordinary scale and success of the Battle in Seattle may have surprised
those who had spent painstaking months planning, organizing, and navigating
the treacherous political reefs of coalition building, they knew that their
achievements were not accidental nor easily wrought.
What was achieved in Seattle - the
shut-down and subsequent chaos of the meetings, and the unity of previously
disparate and often hostile elements of resistance have been justly celebrated
in the left press. The scale, energy and creativity that fused in the streets
were extraordinary. Perhaps most significantly, from an international perspective,
was that the long dormant political consciousness of the US had finally
sparked. JosJ
BovJ
, president of the French Farmers union and infamous destroyer of McDonalds
property put it well: "Americans have been very unaware until now of the
whole issue of globalization. For those of us who live in the rest of the
world, this American ignorance has been very frustrating. The movement
has begun in Europe. It is strong and it will not weaken; and the same
is true of the movement in other regions of the world. But, until now,
the question has been: Will the people of the United States learn enough
about the struggle to join us? And now, I think, we can answer the question
by saying that, yes, the American people will be with us in this fight
against globalization." (John Nichols, "Now What: Seattle is Just a Start,"
the Progressive, January 2000)
So celebrate we should and celebrate
we have - both in the streets of Seattle, in the left press, and in the
numerous teach-ins and report-backs organized by activists returning to
their communities. However the chain of events and decisions that were
made in the heat of the moment reveal the cracks in the veneer of the supposedly
solid coalition. While the desire to luxuriate, even if briefly, in the
lap of such a huge victory is understandable, it is important to examine
these tensions. For once the heat of the moment has subsided, and the coalition
attempts to move beyond this defensive victory, confronting the internal
and external pressures of movement politics, Seattle's hair-line cracks
could quite quickly shatter into deep fault lines.
Seattle as Road Map
The tensions that emerged in Seattle
help provide a miniature road-map to the struggles that lay ahead in maintaining
the coalition and expanding its agenda. These challenges may be the greatest
for the US labor movement, still struggling to emerge from an extended
period of dormancy and cold war conservatism. What follows are a series
of snap-shots of some key events that took place on the streets that help
illuminate these challenges.
As is now widely recognized, the
key moment in Seattle was the shutdown of the WTO on the morning of November
30. The credit for this remarkable achievement goes to the uproarious but
highly organized troops of the Direct Action Network (DAN). Well before
the 20,000 (by official media accounts) labor activists had gathered at
Memorial Stadium, DAN had already achieved its immediate goal of shutting
down the opening WTO session.
Early that morning (gathering at
7 am) supporters had assembled in two predawn rallies and then marched
down to the Convention Center (marching as they had on the previous days
without permits), shutting down intersection after intersection with human
blockades, huge metal tripods with activists strung from their peaks, and
colorful constructions locked down by protesters connected by PVC piping
and duct tape. On arriving at the Convention Center they confronted delegates
getting in early and encamped themselves in sprawling dance parties that
blocked the intersections surrounding the convention center. The guiding
theme for DAN was to organize a "Carnival Against Capital." They succeeded
admirably.
As nine O'clock neared DAN activists
and supporters formed human chains in front of every entrance to the Convention
Center. The goal was literally to shut-down the inaugural session by blocking
delegates and dignitaries from entering. Remarkably, a good number of delegates
actually tried to break through the lines (a couple of suits even donned
anti-WTO buttons in a lack-luster and unsuccessful attempt to pass through
as activists). In some instances, where the chains were thinner and the
riot police presence closer, delegates managed to force their way through.
Ultimately however, so few delegates were able to enter that the opening
sessions had to be canceled. The police response to these developments
was extraordinarily brutal.
By 9 am, kids were down from pepper
spray, and rubber bullets were flying. Soon thereafter the police initiated
what would turn out to be an all week orgy of indiscriminate violence.
The police assault escalated all morning - prostate protesters gassed and
pepper sprayed in the face, percussion grenades lobbed directly into bands
of seated protesters, rubber bullets shot at point blank range into a protester's
mouth, and police riding their motor-bikes over protesters legs. The police
never arrested any of those engaging in the convention center blockages
(by Tuesday night they had only arrested some 35 protesters). Instead the
riot police poured their arsenal down on them in a sadistic ritual that
would clear an intersection and then allow it to refill.
As it turns out the crack-down can
be attributed in large part to a combination of "poor" planning on behalf
of the Seattle police department and calls from local, state and federal
officials to regain control of the streets. Significantly, Attorney General
Janet Reno, and an infuriated Secretary of State Madeline Albright (who
was trapped in her hotel room) were cited as key players in calling for
the crackdown. (see Mike Carter and David Postman's piece on December 16,
1999, in the Seattle Times) Their call to arms seems a likely portend for
the police response to the planned demonstrations around the IMF and World
Bank meetings in DC in April. Indeed, recent reports indicate that DC enforcement
agents were on hand during the latter half of the week, and that they have
attended post-Seattle workshops on crowd control. It seems safe to say
that, barring concerted attempts to break through police lines, protesters
won't gain the proximity to the meetings in April that they had in Seattle.
As mayhem broke out downtown, the
huge labor rally gathered in Memorial Stadium. The 20,000 strong rainbow
of labor activists and line-up of domestic and especially international
speakers was impressive. There were even some great speeches buried within
the two and a half hour rally. However, the contrast with the downtown
confrontation was physically palpable. While some labor leaders sounded
ready for battle - the UAW's Yokich proclaimed "Enough speech-making, we
all know why we are here, let's hit the streets! Let's Go!" and AFSCME's
McEntee screamed "We will fight them in Congress, we will fight them in
the courts, and we will fight them in the streets. And we will stop them"
- the call to arms sounded a little hollow. Yokich was followed by at least
another hour of speeches, while McEntee has been a key player in the AFL's
endorsement of the fair trade warrior known as Al Gore. In fact the only
labor group that matched their rhetoric with action were the west coast
Longshoreman who had shut down the entire West coast.
The limitations the rally and the
labor events of the preceding days did not lay with the rhetoric. Labor’s
international discourse has come an extraordinary distance in five short
years and it's embrace of the environmental movement, religious activists,
and international labor leadership in Seattle helped fill the void previously
dominated, by default, by Pat Buchanan's nationalistic and racist populism.
The limitations of labor’s role
in Seattle lie in its demonstrated aversion to direct confrontation, its
unwillingness to match its rhetoric with action, and in its overwhelming
bias toward centralized control and tightly managed scripts. The distance
between labor and groups such as DAN can be illustrated by contrasting
the way they dealt with the potential police confrontations that day. At
the pre-dawn rallies DAN organizers had addressed the potential for arrests
(many of their activists had gone through arrest training) and police violence.
They acknowledged that certain of the planned acts of civil disobedience
entailed higher risks of confrontation and arrest. They then set up three
flags, signifying different levels of risk, and then asked participants
to group around those flags that matched individuals' risk aversion (or
appetite!). Simple, effective, and highly democratic.
In contrast, not once during the
two and a half hours of labor speeches was any reference made to the events
unfolding downtown. Granted, the AFL line was not to shut down the WTO
but to hold a well controlled labor march. Outside of debates as to whether
these were valid goals, the question remains as to why 20,000 adults cannot
be trusted with some basic information that presumably was of some significance
given that they were about to march into the epicenter of the confrontation.
As it turns out, the leadership had apparently decided for their membership
that they should re-route the march away from the contested terrain. In
any case by the time the labor march set off few if any of its participants
were aware of the events unfolding downtown. Likewise, once the labor marchers
encountered the conflict they had no context to place it in nor had they
been given any officially sanctioned choices as to how to respond.
As the labor march approached the
convention center I was struck with how quiet 20,000 unionists could be.
Our march seemed at times almost silent, erupting sporadically into chants,
but these never lasted too long, and never quite took hold. While this
sense of quite was probably exaggerated, this derived from the stark contrast
with the DAN's raucous Carnival against Capital of the previous days. Whenever
DAN marched they were accompanied by drumming groups, dancers and giant
puppets, and a van pumping out high decibel techno alternating with chants.
While these marches had far fewer participants, the sheer energy, exuberance,
and volume of these marches registered on an altogether different plane.
Indeed as the labor march approached the Convention Center, passing through
the activists engaging in the shut-down the decibel level increased dramatically
as they enthusiastically chanted their support for the labor marchers (a
contingent of young Wobblies even burst into Solidarity Forever as we passed).
While the labor marchers were oblivious
to the confrontation they were marching toward, the effects of the war
zone hit as we entered an intersection on the approach to the convention
center. Confusion broke out among the machinist marshals as they attempted
to direct us away from the convention center. While the marshals seemed
confused, the conflicting directions were partly attributable to DAN activists
who ran through the intersection directing us toward he convention center.
A friend, who had observed the approach
of the labor march, was later able to provide an explanation for the confusion
that broke out. Based on his observations, Sweeney and the international
leaders at the head of the march had apparently decided to avoid the intersections
immediately adjacent to the Convention Center through which the march had
originally been routed. There also appeared to be some on the spot disagreement
among the leadership as to this decision. At this point the changed march
route was either not communicated or badly communicated to the marshals
and most of us ended up marching through the war zone. As it turned out,
by the time we reached the Convention Center, the police violence was at
a lull. Meanwhile, Sweeney et al were marching back to Memorial Stadium.
It should be noted that they did engage in a 5 minute sit-down. However
they blocked an intersection that evinced no signs of either WTO delegates,
traffic or police.
As parts of the labor march passed
by the Convention Center DAN was regrouping to try and halt delegates from
convening the plenary session that had been rescheduled for the afternoon.
Despite repeated pleas from DAN activists to the labor marchers to stay,
lend their support, and help avoid the escalation of police violence, labor
marched silently by. Perhaps the lowest point came when a woman manning
the SEIU PA system by the Convention Center repeatedly announced to the
labor marchers "congratulations we shut the WTO down." While the AFL's
leadership hasn't been so crass as to claim credit for a goal they never
endorsed, they have been quick to distance themselves from the downtown
confrontation. Instead of condemning the police brutality or praising the
DAN’s civil disobedience – which remained resolutely true to its goal of
no property destruction - the AFL-CIO joined in the political and media
condemnation of "violent" demonstrators. "A small group of demonstrators
received a huge amount of media attention when they engaged in violent
actions. Sweeney voiced agreement with Clinton's regrets that a few people
had given the protesters a bad name." (AFL-CIO Work in Progress, December
6, 1999)
The Limits of National Leadership
While this reaction shouldn't come
as a surprise to labor observers, the lesson should be clear. The AFL and
most internationals are not going to provide leadership in taking on the
institutions of globalization outside the parameters of partnership, nor
will they support those that engage at that level. On the other hand, the
labor activists that returned to the Convention Center on Tuesday afternoon,
and the central role played by local progressive labor leaders and rank-and-filers
in the mobilization post Tuesday, reveal the critical significance of building
local social movement unionism, and the galvanizing potential when labor
engages in street battles alongside more radical allies.
In the massive state crack-down
in the wake of Tuesday’s disruption local union activists and leaders joined
forces with DAN to take on the police and National Guard in their attempt
to enforce a 50 block no protest zone. Teamsters, Longshoreman and steelworkers,
were pulled into the fray and stood their ground in the face of violent
assaults as they tried to carry out previously planned marches and demonstrations
that now found themselves located in the no protest zone. These efforts
culminated in a march on Friday, December 3, spearheaded by the King County
Labor Council and planned in collaboration with the DAN and other community
and religious activist groups, in defiance of the no protest zone, protesting
the WTO, and demanding the release of the more than 500 jailed activists.
As a vigil was set up outside the jail, the Longshoremen began organizing
a second port shut down to win the release of the jailed activists.
Key to this local labor leadership
was: the class based confrontational activism of the west coat Longshoreman;
the pressure exerted by Teamster Local 174, a flagship TDU local, to maintain
the King County Labor Council’s coalition with DAN and the other activist
groups; and the involvement of Kaiser steelworkers, radicalized by MAXXAM’s
(Kaiser’s owner) labor and environmental abuses and their coalition building
with activist elements of the environmentalist movement. The galvanizing
impact of Seattle has since reverberated up the Steelworker hierarchy,
with the leadership inviting USAS and other student group representatives
to an all expenses paid post Seattle strategy meeting in January.
In sum, the mass mobilization and
the presence of more aggressive, less risk averse activist elements in
Seattle created an environment that was faster moving, less predictable,
and more confrontational than was comfortable for labor's leadership. While
these cracks were masked by the explosive chain of events on the streets
it is hard to envisage national leadership working in coalition with groups
such as DAN. Not only is the organizational fit poor for an AFL that appears
to place a huge premium on centralization and the maintenance of a unified
message. It is also clear that, in the physical and ideological distancing
from the direct confrontation, the labor movement at large remains very
much a contested terrain, with more conservative and cautious voices retaining
the dominant position.
On the other hand, the consciousness
raising potential of such street battles were amply demonstrated. These
conditions are not impossible to replicate. Also, the ranks of international
leadership are showing signs of dissension. Aside from the steelworkers
and Longshoremen's disagreement with the AFL's position on the WTO, UAW
President Stephen Yokich's resignation
from the AFL-CIO's Manufacturing
and Industrial Committee in protest of Sweeney's attempt to partner with
Clinton/Gore on WTO strategy, indicate that the internal AFL rifts over
globalization are widening.
Labor’s Internationalism Post-Seattle
While labor's rhetoric on globalization
took a significant step forward in Seattle, it still teeters on the edge
of a protective, isolationist ideology that could quickly destroy the links
with domestic and foreign allies forged in the streets. There remain significant
challenges for labor in developing a deeper internationalist vision and
strategy:
-
While labor oversees has been very
supportive of struggles in this country, US unions have generally not reciprocated.
Until US labor generates real and broad support for overseas labor struggles,
its internationalism will remain a lopsided and ultimately unsustainable
affair. The upcoming mobilization around China's accession to the WTO is
an opportunity for labor to move beyond a defensive blocking maneuver and
to really build support for leaders of the independent labor movement such
as Han Dongfang and other human rights groups.
-
US labor needs to engage in serious
international negotiations with oversees unions and NGOs to develop a unified
position and platform of demands around the inclusion of labor rights and
environmental protections in trade treaties and other instruments of globalization.
While the third world outcry against inclusion of labor standards generally
emanates from elite quarters, important Southern activists such as Third
World Network's Martin Khor have questioned conditionality and the motivation
of Northern labor. Likewise Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange as well as
other important human rights groups inside and outside China argue that
China's accession into the WTO should be supported as it will weaken the
Chinese government's repressive authority. Right or wrong, these multiple
voices must be engaged if the post Seattle coalition is to survive and
claim itself to be truly international.
-
A core issue resolving such North-South
tensions is the need for Northern labor to convince Southern activists
that is motivated by more than narrow job protectionism. US labor could
move a long way along this path by: building on its support for Jubilee
2000 at Seattle; expanding this agenda with real demands on the IMF to
halt structural adjustment programs; work toward lowering trade barriers,
or even providing positive trade incentives, to Southern countries that
enforce base-line labor rights and environmental standards; and, promote
a broad international dialogue on the type of trading and investment system
that could benefit workers, farmers, and the environment, North and South.
Again, the IMF and World Bank Protest in April will provide an important
litmus test for the breadth of US labor's new found internationalism.
-
While ILO conventions and their enforcement
are generally recognized as toothless, they retain considerable international
symbolic and political significance. The lack of ratification of core ILO
conventions continues to weaken the US labor movement’s position around
inclusion of labor rights in trade instruments. How can US labor demand
punishment of Southern nations that lack labor rights when it hasn't managed
to secure ratification at home? Equally problematic is the unwillingness
of labor's leadership to recognize that its domestic weakness has enabled
downward leveling in US labor and product markets to exert downward pressure
on other economies, North and South. For example, the unwillingness to
confront this dynamic within the North American market, combined with US
labor’s lack of support for the Canadian labor movement in opposing the
US-Canada Free Trade Agreement delayed and possibly weakened what could
have been a more powerful bi-national coalition in opposition to NAFTA.
-
Revocation of, or at least exertion
of greater and more strategic leverage toward, national and local partnerships
with Democrats and corporate capital. If labor continues to subsume its
broader class coalitional interests to narrow gains through such failed
partnerships it will continue to undermine its ability to build and maintain
strong coalitions. The AFL's attempt to partner with Democrats around the
WTO reveals some of these contradictions and tensions. The Canadian Labour
Congress strongly rejected Sweeney's signing the letter endorsing Clinton’s
WTO negotiating position. "The struggle by unions, social justice groups
and environmentalists is about more than just winning a seat at the table,
or a 'social clause' or environmental rules." (David Bacon, 1/6/2000) Likewise,
while the AFL rejects China's entry into the WTO, it has steadfastly maintained
its support for Clinton/Gore. The contradiction in this position was painfully
obvious when Clinton signed an accord with China, two weeks before the
WTO meetings, paving the way for China's entry. In the latest debacle,
Al Gore, the AFL’s early pick in the Democratic Primary, is in the process
of becoming enmeshed in an environmental and human rights scandal. Gore
has become the target of environmental and human rights activists for his
huge share holding in Occidental Petroleum which is directly linked to
the environmental and human rights crisis engulfing the U'wa people of
North-East Colombia.
Much of the success of the Seattle
organizing and especially the crucial ties that were created in the wake
of the state crack-down are attributable to democratic and left activists
within more conservative labor institutions. The significance of the work
to promote progressive reform movements and support progressive staff within
these institutions was revealed by events. To the extent that Seattle is
seen as a successful model, and to the extent that left/progressive forces
can claim credit, the greater the political space next time around. The
challenge for labor activists building social movement unionism will lie
in claiming that space and pushing the labor movement to embrace the lessons
of Seattle.
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