Paul Hawken's WTO experience
Paul Hawken (a leading environmental businessman and new-economic theorist) has come up with a stunning WTO story,
integrating the scene on the street with the issues in question, moving to a very dramatic conclusion.
When I was able to open my eyes, I saw lying next to me a young man, 19, maybe 20 at the oldest. He was in shock,
twitching and shivering uncontrollably from being tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed at close range. His burned eyes were
tightly closed, and he was panting irregularly. Then he passed out. He went from excruciating pain to unconsciousness on
a sidewalk wet from the water that a medic had poured over him to flush his eyes -- like a young boy in bed.
This is what I remember about the violence. There was almost none until police attacked demonstrators that Tuesday in
Seattle. Michael Meacher, environment minister of the United Kingdom, said afterward, "What we hadn't reckoned with was
the Seattle Police Department who single-handedly managed to turn a peaceful protest into a riot." There was no police
restraint, despite what Mayor Paul Schell kept proudly assuring television viewers all day. Instead, there were rubber
bullets, which Schell kept denying all day. In the end, more copy and video was given to broken windows than broken
teeth.
As I tried to find my way down Sixth Street after the tear gas and pepper spray, I couldn't see. Anita Roddick found and
guided me. When your eyes fail, your ears take over. I could hear acutely. What I heard was anger, dismay, shock. For
many people, including the police, this was their first direct action. Demonstrators who had taken non-violent training
were astonished at the police brutality. I heard young voices, incredulous, stunned. The demonstrators were students,
their professors, clergy, lawyers, and medical personnel. They held signs against Burma and violence. They dressed as
butterflies.
More than 1,500 non-governmental organizations registered with the World Trade Organization. More than 700 organizations
and between 40,000 and 60,000 people took part in the protests. These groups and citizens sense a cascading loss of
human and labor rights in the world. Seattle was not the beginning but simply the most striking expression of citizens
struggling against a worldwide corporate-financed oligarchy -- in effect, a plutocracy. Oligarchy and plutocracy are not
polite terms. They often are used to describe "other" countries where a small group of wealthy people rule, but not the
"first world" -- the United States, Japan, Germany, or Canada. The World Trade Organization, however, is trying to
cement into place that corporate plutocracy. Already, the world's top 200 companies have twice the assets of 80 percent
of the world's people. And this polarization and concentration of wealth is increasing. Global corporations represent a
new empire whether they are aware of it or not. With massive amounts of capital at their disposal, any of which can be
used to influence politicians and the public as and when deemed necessary, they threaten and diminish all democratic
institutions are diminished and at risk. Corporate free market policies subvert culture and community, a true tyranny.
The American Revolution occurred because of crown-chartered corporate abuse, a "remote tyranny" in Thomas Jefferson's
words. To see Seattle as a singular event, as did most of the media, is to look at the battles of Concord and Lexington
as meaningless skirmishes.
But the mainstream media, consistently problematic in their coverage of any type of protest, had an even more difficult
time understanding and covering both the issues and activists in Seattle. No charismatic leader led. No religious figure
engaged in direct action. No movie stars starred. There was no alpha group. The Ruckus Society, Rainforest Action
Network, Global Exchange, and hundreds more were there, coordinated primarily by cell phones, emails, and the Direct
Action Network. They were up against the Seattle Police Department, the Secret Service, and the FBI -- to say nothing of
the media coverage and the WTO itself.
Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and author of an elegy to globalization entitled "The Lexus and the Olive
Tree," angrily wrote that the demonstrators were "a Noah's ark of flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unions and
yuppies looking for their 1960s fix." Not so. They were organized, educated, and determined. They were human rights
activists, labor activists, indigenous people, people of faith, steel workers, and farmers. They were forest activists,
environmentalists, social justice workers, students, and teachers. And they wanted the World Trade Organization to
listen. They were speaking on behalf of a world that has not been made better by globalization. Income disparity is
growing rapidly. The difference between the top and bottom quintiles has doubled in the past 30 years. Eighty-six
percent of the world's goods go to the top 20 percent, the bottom fifth get 1 percent. The apologists for globalization
cannot support their contention that open borders, reduced tariffs, and forced trade benefit the poorest three billion
people in the world. Globalization does, however, create the concentrations of capital seen in northern financial and
industrial centers -- indeed, the wealth in Seattle itself. Since the people promoting globalized free trade policies
live in those cities, it is natural that they should be biased. Despite Friedman's invective about "the circus in
Seattle," the demonstrators and activists who showed up there are not against trade. They do demand proof that shows
when and how trade -- as the WTO constructs it -- benefits workers and producers abroad, as well as workers in
developing nations. And that proof is simply non-existent. ______________________
Earlier that day, November 30, I had walked toward the Convention Center with Randy Hayes, the founder of Rainforest
Action Network. As soon as we turned the corner on First Street and Pike Avenue, we could hear drums, chants, sirens,
roars. As we approached Fifth, police stopped us. We could go no farther without credentials. Ahead of us were thousands
of protesters. Beyond them was a large cordon of gas-masked and riot-shielded police, an armored personnel carrier, and
fire trucks. On one corner was Niketown. On the other, the Sheraton Hotel, through which there was a passage to the
Convention Center. The cordon of police in front of us tried to prevent more protestors from joining those who blocked
the entrances to the Convention Center. Randy was a credentialed WTO delegate. He showed his pass to the officer who
thought it looked like me. The officer joked with us, kidded Randy about having my credential and then winked and let us
both through. The police were still relaxed at that point. Ahead of us crowds were milling and moving. Anarchists were
there, maybe 40 in all, dressed in black pants, black bandanas, black balaclavas, and jackboots, one of two groups
identifiable by costume. The other was a group of 300 children who had dressed brightly as turtles in the Sierra Club
march the day before. The costumes were part of a serious complaint against the WTO. When the United States attempted to
block imports of shrimp caught in the same nets that capture and drown 150,000 sea turtles each year, the WTO called the
block "arbitrary and unjustified." Thus far in every environmental dispute that has come before the WTO, its three-judge
panels, which deliberate in secret, have ruled for business, against the environment. The panel members are selected
from lawyers and officials who are not educated in biology, the environment, social issues, or anthropology.
Opening ceremonies for the World Trade Organization's Third Ministerial were to have been held that Tuesday morning at
the Paramount Theater near the Convention Center. Police had ringed the theater with Metro buses touching bumper to
bumper. The protesters surrounded the outside of that steel circle. Only a few hundred of the 5,000 delegates made it
inside, as police were unable to provide safe corridors for members and ambassadors. The theater was virtually empty
when U.S. trade representative and meeting co-chair Charlene Barshevsky was to have delivered the opening keynote.
Instead, she was captive in her hotel room a block from the meeting site. WTO Executive Director Michael Moore was said
to have been apoplectic.
Mayor Paul Schell stood despondently near the stage. Since no scheduled speakers were present, Kevin Danaher, Medea
Benjamin, and Juliet Hill from Global Exchange went to the lectern and offered to begin a dialogue in the meantime. The
WTO had not been able to come to a pre-meeting consensus on the draft agenda. The NGO community, however, had drafted a
consensus agreement about globalization -- and the three thought this would be a good time to present it, even if the
hall had only a desultory number of delegates. Although the three were credentialed WTO delegates, the sound system was
quickly turned off and the police arm-locked and handcuffed them. Medea's wrist was sprained. All were dragged off stage
and arrested. It mirrored how the WTO has operated since its birth in 1995. Listening to people is not its strong point.
WTO rules runs roughshod over local laws and regulations. It relentlessly pursues the elimination of any strictures on
the free flow of trade, including how a product is made, by whom it is made, or what happens when it is made. By doing
so, the WTO is eliminating the ability of countries and regions to set standards, to express values, or to determine
what they do or don't support. Child labor, prison labor, forced labor, substandard wages and working conditions cannot
be used as a basis to discriminate against goods. Nor can environmental destruction, habitat loss, toxic waste
production, and the presence of transgenic materials or synthetic hormones cannot be used as the basis to screen or stop
goods from entering a country. Under WTO rules, the Sullivan Principles and the boycott of South Africa would not have
existed. If the world could vote on the WTO, would it pass? Not one country of the 135-member states of the WTO has held
a plebiscite to see if their people support this concept. The people trying to meet in the Green Rooms at the Seattle
Convention Center were not elected. Even Michael Moore was not elected.
But while the Global Exchange was temporarily silenced, the Direct Action Network's plan was working brilliantly on the
outside of the Convention Center. The plan was simple: insert groups of trained non-violent activists into key points
downtown, making it impossible for delegates to move. DAN had hoped that 1,500 people would show up. Close to 10,000
did. The 2,000 people who began the march to the Convention Center at 7 a.m. from Victor Steinbrueck Park and Seattle
Central Community College were composed of affinity groups and clusters whose responsibility was to block key
intersections and entrances. Participants had trained for many weeks in some cases, for many hours in others. Each
affinity group had its own mission and was self-organized. The streets around the Convention Center were divided into 13
sections and individual groups and clusters were responsible holding these sections. There were also "flying groups"
that moved at will from section to section, backing up groups under attack as needed. The groups were further divided
into those willing to be arrested, and those who were not. As protestors were beaten, gassed, clubbed, and pushed back,
a new group would replace them. Throughout most of the day, using a variety of techniques, groups held intersections and
key areas downtown. The protests were organized through a network of cell phones, bullhorns, and signals. All decisions
prior to the demonstrations were reached by consensus. Minority views here heeded and included. The one agreement shared
by all was no violence, physical or verbal, no weapons, no drugs or alcohol. There were no charismatic leaders barking
orders. There was no command chain. There was no one in charge. Police said that they were not prepared for the level of
violence, but in fact they were unprepared for a network of non-violent protestors totally committed to one task --
shutting down the WTO.
Moore and Barshevsky's frustration was shared by Madeleine Albright, the Clinton advance team, and chief of staff John
Podesta. This was to have been a celebration, a victory, one of the crowning achievements to showcase the Clinton
administration, the moment when it would consolidate its centrist free trade policies, allowing the Democrats to show
multinational corporations that they could deliver the goods. This was to have been Barshevsky's moment, an event that
would give her the inside track to become Secretary of Commerce in the Gore Administration. This was to have been
Michael Moore's moment, reviving what had been a mediocre political ascendancy in New Zealand. To say nothing of
Monsanto's moment. If the as-yet unapproved draft agenda were ever ratified, the Europeans could no longer block or
demand labeling on genetically modified crops without being slapped with punitive lawsuits and tariffs. The draft also
contains provisions that would allow all water in the world to be privatized. It would allow corporations patent
protection on all forms of life, even genetic material in cultural use for thousands of years. Farmers who have spent
thousands of years growing crops in a valley in India could, within a decade, be required to pay for their water. They
could also find that they would have to purchase seeds containing genetic traits their ancestors developed, from
companies that have engineered the seeds not to reproduce unless the farmer annually buys expensive chemicals to restore
seed viability. If this happens, the CEOs of Novartis and Enron, two of the companies creating the seeds and privatizing
the water, will have more money. What will Indian farmers have?
But the perfect moment for Barshevsky, Moore and Monsanto didn't arrive. The meeting couldn't start. Demonstrators were
everywhere. Private security guards locked down the hotels. The downtown stores were shut. Hundreds of delegates were on
the street trying to get into the Convention Center. No one could help them. For WTO delegates accustomed to an ordered
corporate or governmental world -- it was a calamity.
Up Pike toward Seventh and to Randy's and my right on Sixth, protestors faced armored cars, horses, and police in full
riot gear. In between, demonstrators ringed the Sheraton to prevent an alternative entry to the Convention Center. At
one point, police guarding the steps to the lobby pummeled and broke through a crowd of protestors to let eight
delegates in. On Sixth Street, Sergeant Richard Goldstein asked demonstrators seated on the street in front of the
police line "to cooperate" and move back 40 feet. No one understood why, but that hardly mattered. No one was going to
move. He announced that 'chemical irritants' would be used if they did not leave. The police were anonymous, black
ghosts. No facial expressions, no face. You could not see their eyes. They were masked Hollywood caricatures burdened
with 60 to 70 pounds of weaponry. These were not the men and women of the 6th precinct. They were the Gang Squads and
the SWAT teams of the Tactical Operations Divisions, closer in training to soldiers from the School of the Americas than
local cops on the beat. Behind them and around were special forces from the FBI, the Secret Service, even the CIA.
The police were almost motionless. They were equipped with U.S. military standard M40A1 double canister gas masks;
uncalibrated, semi-automatic, high velocity Autocockers loaded with solid plastic shot; Monadnock disposable plastic
cuffs, Nomex slash-resistant gloves, Commando boots, Centurion tactical leg guards, combat harnesses, DK5-H
pivot-and-lock riot face shields, black Monadnock P24 polycarbonate riot batons with TrumBull stop side handles, No.2
continuous discharge CS (orto-chlorobenzylidene-malononitrile) chemical grenades, M651 CN (chloroacetophenone)
pyrotechnic grenades, T16 Flameless OC Expulsion Grenades, DTCA rubber bullet grenades (Stingers), M-203 (40mm) grenade
launchers, First Defense MK-46 Oleoresin Capsicum (OC) aerosol tanks with hose and wands, .60 caliber rubber ball impact
munitions, lightweight tactical Kevlar composite ballistic helmets, combat butt packs, 30 cal. thirty-round mag pouches,
and Kevlar body armor. None of the police had visible badges or forms of identification.
The demonstrators seated in front of the black-clad ranks were equipped with hooded jackets for protection against rain
and chemicals. They carried toothpaste and baking powder for protection of their skin, and wet cotton cloths impregnated
with vinegar to cover their mouths and noses after a tear-gas release. In their backpacks were bottled water and food
for the day ahead.
Ten Koreans came around the corner carrying a 10-foot banner protesting genetically modified foods. They were impeccable
in white robes, sashes, and headbands. One was a priest. They played flutes and drums and marched straight toward the
police and behind the seated demonstrators. Everyone heered at the sight and chanted "The whole world is watching." The
sun broke through the gauzy clouds. It was a beautiful day. Over cell phones, we could hear the cheers coming from the
labor rally at the football stadium. The air was still and quiet. We waited.
At 10 a.m. the police fired the first seven canisters of tear gas into the crowd. The whitish clouds wafted slowly down
the street. The seated protestors were overwhelmed, yet most did not budge. Police poured over them. Then came the
truncheons, and the rubber bullets. I was standing with a couple hundred people who had ringed the hotel, arms locked.
We watched as long as we could until the tear gas slowly enveloped us. We were several hundred feet from Sgt.
Goldstein's 40-foot "cooperation" zone. Police pushed and truncheoned their way through and behind us. We had covered
our faces with rags and cloth, snatching glimpses of the people being clubbed in the street before shutting our eyes.
The gas was a fog through which people moved in slow, strange dances of shock and pain and resistance. Tear gas is a
misnomer. Think about feeling asphyxiated and blinded. Breathing becomes labored. Vision is blurred. The mind is
disoriented. The nose and throat burn. It's not a gas, it's a drug. Gas-masked police hit, pushed, and speared with the
butt ends of their batons. We then sat down, hunched over, and locked arms more tightly. By then, the tear gas was so
strong our eyes couldn't open. One by one, our heads were jerked back from the rear, and pepper was sprayed directly
into each eye. It was very professional. Like hair spray from a stylist. Sssst. Sssst.
Pepper spray is derived from cayenne peppers. It is food-grade, pure enough to be used in salsa. The spray used in
Seattle is the strongest available, containing 10 percent to 15 percent Oleoresin Capsicum, with a 1.5 to 2.0 million
Scoville heat unit rating. One to three Scoville units are when your tongue can first detect hotness. (The jalape D2o
pepper is rated between 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units. The habanero, usually considered the hottest pepper in the world,
is rated around 300,000 Scoville units.) This description was written by a police officer who sells pepper spray on his
website. It is about his first experience being sprayed during a training exercise:
"The pepper spray stream then hit my eyes. It then felt as if two red-hot pieces of steel were grinding into my eyes, as
if someone was blowing a red-hot cutting torch into my face. I then fell to the ground just like all the others and
started to rub my eyes even though I knew better not too. The heat from the pepper spray was overwhelming. I could not
resist trying to rub it off of my face. The pepper spray caused my eyes to shut very quickly. The only way I could open
them was by prying them open with my fingers. Everything that we had been taught about pepper spray had turned out to be
true. And everything that our instructor had told us that we would do, even though we knew not to do it, we still did.
Pepper spray turned out to be more than I had bargained for."
The Seattle Police had made a decision not to arrest people. Throughout the day, the affinity groups created through
Direct Action stayed together. Tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper spray were used so much that by late afternoon,
supplies ran low. What seemed like an afternoon lull or standoff was because police had used up all their stores.
Officers combed surrounding counties for tear gas, sprays, concussion grenades, and munitions. As police restocked, the
word came down from the White House to secure downtown Seattle or the WTO meeting would be called off. By late
afternoon, the Mayor and Chief announced a 7 p.m. curfew, "no protest" zones, and declared the city under civil
emergency. The police were fatigued and frustrated. Over the next seven hours and into the night, the police turned
downtown Seattle into Beirut.
That morning, it was the police commanders that were out of control, ordering the gassing and pepper spraying and
shooting of people protesting non-violently. By evening, it was the individual police who were out of control. Anger
erupted, protestors were kneed and kicked in the groin, and police used their thumbs to grind the eyes of pepper-spray
victims. A few demonstrators danced on burning dumpsters that were ignited by pyrotechnic tear-gas grenades (the same
ones used in Waco). Taunting, jeering, protestors were defiant. Tear gas canisters were being thrown back as fast as
they were launched. Drum corps marched using empty 5-gallon water bottles for instruments. Despite their steadily
dwindling number, maybe 1,500 by evening, a hardy number of protestors held their ground, seated in front of heavily
armed police, hands raised in peace signs, submitting to tear gas, pepper spray, and riot batons. As they retreated to
the medics, new groups replaced them. Every channel covered the police riots live. On TV, the police looked absurd,
frantic, and mean. No one could believe what they were seeing. Passing Metro buses filled with passengers were gassed.
Police were pepper spraying residents and bystanders. The Mayor went on TV that night to say, that as a protestor from
the '60s, he never could have imagined what he was going to do next: Call in the National Guard.
During that day, the anarchist black blocs were in full view. Numbering about one hundred, they could have been arrested
at any time but the police were so weighed down by their own equipment, they literally couldn't run. Both the police and
the Direct Action Network had mutually apprised each other for months prior to the WTO about the anarchists' intentions.
The Eugene Police had volunteered information and specific techniques to handle the black blocs, but had been rebuffed
by the Seattle Police. It was widely known they would be there, and that they had property damage in mind. To the credit
of the Mayor, the Police Chief, and the Seattle press, distinctions were consistently made between the protestors and
the anarchists (later joined by local vandals as the night wore on). But the anarchists were not primitivists, nor were
they from Eugene. They were well organized, and they also had a plan.
The black blocs came with tools (crowbars, hammers, acid-filled eggs) and hit lists. They knew they were going after
Fidelity Investments but not Charles Schwab. Starbucks but not Tully's. The GAP but not REI. Fidelity Investments
because they are large investors in Occidental Petroleum, the oil company most responsible for the violence against the
U'wa tribe in Columbia. Starbuck's because of their non-support of fair-traded coffee. The GAP because of the Fisher
family's purchase of Northern California forests. They targeted multinational corporations whom they see as benefiting
from repression, exploitation of workers, and low wages. According to one anarchist group, the ACME collective: "Most of
us have been studying the effects of the global economy, genetic engineering, resource extraction, transportation, labor
practices, elimination of indigenous autonomy, animal rights and human rights and we've been doing activism on these
issues for many years. We are neither ill-informed nor inexperienced." They don't believe we live in a democracy, do
believe that property damage (windows and tagging primarily) is a legitimate form of protest, and that it is not violent
unless it harms or causes pain to a person. For the black blocs, breaking windows is intended to break the spells cast
by corporate hegemony, an attempt to shatter the smooth exterior facade that covers corporate crime and violence. That's
what they did. And what the media did is what I just did in the last two paragraphs: Report on the desires and recount
the property damage caused by a tiny sliver of the 40,000 marchers and demonstrators.
It's not inapt to compare the carefully considered lawlessness of the anarchists with the equally carefully considered
flouting of other laws by the WTO. When the "The Final Act Embodying the Results of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral
Trade Negotiations" was enacted April 15th, 1994 in Marrakech, it was recorded as a 550-page agreement that was then
sent to Congress for passage. Ralph Nader offered to donate $10,000 to any charity of a congressman's choice if any of
them signed an affidavit saying they had read it and could answer several questions about it. Only one congressman --
Sen. Hank Brown, a Colorado Republican -- took him up on it. After reading the document, Brown changed his opinion and
voted against the Agreement. There were no public hearings, dialogue, or education. What passed is an Agreement that
gives the WTO the ability to overrule prior U.S. conventions, acts, treaties, and agreements. The WTO directly violates
"The Universal Declaration of Human Rights" adopted by member nations of the United Nations, not to mention Agenda 21,
the Convention on Biodiversity, and others. Most of the delegates to Marrakech, even the heads of country delegations,
were not included or made aware of the WTO statutes that were drafted by sub-groups of bureaucrats and lawyers, some of
whom represented transnational corporations.
The police mandate to clear downtown was achieved by 9 p.m. Tuesday night. But police, some who were fresh recruits form
outlying towns, didn't want to stop there. They chased demonstrators into neighborhoods where the distinctions between
protestors and citizens vanished. The police began attacking bystanders, witnesses, residents, and commuters. They had
completely lost control. When President Clinton sped from Boeing airfield to the Westin at 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, his
limousines entered a police-ringed city of broken glass, helicopters, and boarded windows. He was too late. The mandate
for the WTO had vanished sometime that afternoon.
______________________
Over the next few days, a surprised press corps went to work and spun webs. They created myths, told fables. They vented
thinly veiled anger in columns, and pointed guilt-mongering fingers at brash, spoiled white kids who did not understand
the issues. Supposedly, anarchists led by anarcho-primitive John Zerzan from Eugene ran rampant. Misguided demonstrators
held self-canceling views. Protestors were against trade. Patricia King, one of two Newsweek reporters in Seattle,
called me from her hotel room at the Four Seasons and wanted to know if this was the '60s redux. No, I told her. The
'60s were primarily an American event; the protests against the WTO are international. Who are the leaders? she wanted
to know. There are no leaders in the traditional sense. But there are thought leaders, I said. Who are they? she wanted
to know. I began to name some, including their writings, area of focus, and organizational affiliations: Martin Khor and
Vandana Shiva of the Third World Network, Walden Bello of Focus on the Global South, Maude Barlow of the Council of
Canadians, Tony Clarke of Polaris Institute, Jerry Mander of the IFG, Susan George of the Transnational Institute, David
Korten of the People-Centered Development Forum, John Cavanagh of the Institute for Policy Studies, Lori Wallach of
Public Citizen of the International Society for Ecology and Culture, Mark Ritchie of the Institute For Agriculture and
Trade Policy, Anuradha Mittal of Institute for Food & Development Policy, Helena Norberg-Hodge of the International Society for Ecology and Culture, Owens Wiwa of the
Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, Chakravarthi Raghavan of the Third World Network in Geneva, Debra Harry
of the Indigenous Peoples Coalition Against Biopiracy, Jose Bove of the Confederation Paysanne Europ'enne, Tetteh
Hormoku of the Third World Network in Africa, Randy Hayes of Rainforest Action Network. Stop, stop, she said. I can't
use these names in my article. Why not? Because Americans have never heard of them. Instead, Newsweek editors put the
picture of the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynksi, in the article because he had, at one time, purchased some of John
Zerzan's writings.
Between 40,000 and 60,000 people came to Seattle to demonstrate. What a majority of media projected onto the marchers
and activists, in an often-contradictory manner, was that the protesters are afraid of a world without walls; that they
want the WTO to have even more rules; that they blame the WTO for the world's problems; that they are opposed to global
integration; that they have been duped by Pat Buchanan; that they are against trade; that they are ignorant and
insensitive to the world's poor; that they want to tell other people how to live D6the list is long and tendentious.
Some of the mainstream media also assigned blame to the protesters for the meeting's outcome. But ultimately, it was not
on the streets that the WTO broke down. It was inside. It was a heated and rancorous Ministerial, and the meeting ended
in a stalemate, with African, Caribbean, and some Asian countries refusing to support a draft agenda that had been
negotiated behind closed doors without their participation. With that much contention inside and out, one can rightly
ask whether the correct question is being posed. The question, as propounded by corporations, is how to make trade rules
more uniform. The proper question, it seems to me, is how do we make trade rules more differentiated so that different
cultures, cities, peoples, places, and countries benefit the most.
"Civilizations in decline are consistently characterized by a tendency toward standardization and uniformity.
Conversely, during the growth stage of civilization, the tendency is toward differentiation and diversity." -- Arnold
Toynbee, A Study of History
Those who marched and protested opposed globalization but they did not necessarily oppose internationalization of trade.
Economist Herman Daly has long made the distinction between the two. Internationalization means trade between nations.
Globalization refers to a system where there are uniform rules for the entire world, a world in which capital and goods
move at will without the rule of individual nations. Nations, for all their faults, set trade standards. Those who are
willing to meet those standards can do business with them. Do nations abuse this? Always and constantly, the US being
the worst offender. But it does provide, where democracies prevail, a means for people to set their own policy, to
influence decisions, and determine their future. Globalization supercedes the nation, the state, the region, and the
village. While eliminating nations may indeed be a good idea, the elimination of sovereignty is not.
One recent example is that of Chiquita Brands, which recently made a large donation to the Clinton administration after
the United States filed a complaint with the WTO against the European Union because European import policies favored
bananas coming from small Caribbean growers. There was no question about the policies: they restricted imports from
large multinational companies in Central America (plantations whose lands were secured by US military force during the
past century), and favored small family farmers who used fewer chemicals. It seemed like a decent thing to do, and
everyone thought the bananas tasted better. For the banana giants, this was untenable. The United States prevailed in
this WTO-arbitrated case. So who really won, and who lost? The self-sufficient farmers who were making a decent living
prior to the decision didn't win. Did the Central American employees at Chiquita Brands win? Ask the hundreds of workers
in Honduras who were made infertile by the use of Dibromochloropropane on the banana plantations. Ask the mothers whose
children have birth defects from pesticide poisoning.
Globalization leads to the concentration of wealth inside large multi-national corporations such as Time-Warner,
Microsoft, GE, Exxon, and Wal-Mart. These giants can obliterate social capital and local equity, and create cultural
homogeneity in their wake. Countries as different as Mongolia, Bhutan, and Uganda will have no choice but to allow
Blockbuster, Burger King, and Pizza Hut to operate within their borders. Even Martha's Vineyard's refusal to allow a
McDonald's could be nullified under the WTO regulations. The as-yet unapproved draft agenda calls for all governments to
open up their procurement process to multi-national foreign corporations. No longer could local governments buy
preferentially from local vendors. It could force governments to essentially privatize health and allow foreign
companies to bid on delivering national health care programs. It could privatize and commodify education, or ban
cultural restrictions to entertainment, advertising, or commercialism as a trade barrier. In addition, globalization
kills self-reliance, since smaller local businesses can rarely compete with highly capitalized firms who seek market
share instead of profits. Thus, developing regions may become more subservient to distant companies, with more of their
income exported rather than being re-spent locally.
On the weekend prior to the WTO meeting, the International Forum on Globalization held a two-day teach-in at Benaroya
Hall in downtown Seattle on just such questions of how countries can maintain autonomy in the face of globalization.
Chaired by IFG President Jerry Mander, more than 2,500 people from around the world attended. A similar number were
turned away. It was the hottest ticket in town ( but somehow that ticket did not get into the hands of pundits and
columnists. It was an extravagant display of research, intelligence, and concern, expressed by scholars, diplomats,
writers, academics, fishermen, scientists, farmers, geneticists, businesspeople, and lawyers. Beyond and before the
teach-in, non-governmental organizations, institutes, public interest law firms, farmers organizations, unions, and
councils had been issuing papers, communiqu C8s, press releases, books, and pamphlets for years. They were almost
entirely ignored by the WTO.
But something else was happening in Seattle underneath the debates and protests. In Stewart Brand's new book, "The Clock
of the Long Now -- Time and Responsibility," he discusses what makes a civilization resilient and adaptive. Scientists
have studied the same question about ecosystems. How does a system, be it cultural or natural, manage change, absorb
shocks, and survive especially when change is rapid and accelerating? The answer has much to do with time, both our use
of it and our respect for it. Biological diversity in ecosystems buffers against sudden shifts because different
organisms and elements fluctuate at different time scales(flowers, fungi, spiders, trees, laterite, and foxes(all have
different rates of change and response. Some respond quickly, other slowly, so that the system, when subjected to
stress, can move, sway, and give, and then return and restore.
The WTO was a clash of chronologies or time frames, at least three, probably more. The dominant time frame was
commercial. Businesses are quick, welcome innovation in general, and have a bias for change. They need to grow more
quickly than ever before. They are punished, pummeled and bankrupted if they do not. With worldwide capital mobility,
companies and investments are rewarded or penalized instantly by a network of technocrats and money managers who move $2
trillion dollars a day seeking the highest return on capital. The Internet, greed, global communications, and high-speed
transportation are all making businesses move faster than before.
The second time frame is culture. It moves more slowly. Cultural revolutions are resisted by deeper, historical beliefs.
The first institution to blossom under perestroika was the Russian Orthodox Church. I walked into a church near Boris
Pasternak's dacha in 1989 and heard priests and babushkas reciting the litany with perfect recall as if 72 years of
repression had never happened. Culture provides the slow template of change within which family, community, and religion
prosper. Culture provides identity and in a fast-changing world of displacement and rootlessness, becomes ever more
important. In between culture and business is governance, faster than culture, slower than commerce.
At the heart, the third and slowest chronology is earth, nature, the web of life. As ephemeral as it may seem, it is the
slowest clock ticking, always there, responding to long, ancient evolutionary cycles that are beyond civilization.
These three chronologies conflict. As Stewart Brand points out, business unchecked becomes crime. Look at Russia. Look
at Microsoft. Look at history. What makes life worthy and allows civilizations to endure are all the things that have
"bad" payback under commercial rules: infrastructure, universities, temples, poetry, choirs, literature, language,
museums, terraced fields, long marriages, line dancing, and art. Most everything we hold valuable is slow to develop,
slow to learn, and slow to change. Commerce requires the governance of politics, art, culture, and nature, to slow it
down, to make it heedful, to make it pay attention to people and place. It has never done this on its own. The
extirpation of languages, cultures, forests, and fisheries is occurring worldwide in the name of speeding up business.
Business itself is stressed out of its mind by rapid change. The rate of change is unnerving to all, even to those who
are benefiting. To those who are not benefiting, it is devastating. What marched in the streets of Seattle? Slower time
strode into the WTO. Ancient identity emerged. The cloaks of the forgotten paraded on the backs of our children. It is
not the fast things that will prevail. In the end, that which is slow is powerful.
What appeared in Seattle were the details, dramas, stories, peoples, and puppet creatures that had been ignored by the
bankers, diplomats, and the rich. Corporate leaders are certain they have discovered a treasure of immeasurable value, a
trove so great that surely we will all benefit. It is the treasure of unimpeded commerce flowing everywhere as fast as
is possible. It is like romantic love. Bright, shining, perfect, and unassailable. But in Seattle, quick time met slow
time. The turtles, farmers, and priests weren't invited and don't need to be because they are the shadow world that
cannot be overlooked, that will tail and haunt the WTO, and all it successors, for as long as it exists. They will be
there even if they meet in totalitarian countries where free speech is criminalized. They will be there in dreams of
delegates high in the Four Seasons Hotel. They will haunt the public relations flacks who solemnly insist that putting
the genes of scorpions into our food is a good thing. What gathered around the Convention Center and hotels was
everything the WTO left behind.
In the Inuit tradition, there is a story of a fisherman who trolls an inlet. When a heavy pull on the fisherman's line
drags his kayak to sea, he thinks he has caught the "big one," a fish so large he can eat for weeks, a fish so fat that
he will prosper ever after, a fish so amazing that the whole village will wonder at his prowess. As he imagines his fame
and coming ease, what he reels up is Skeleton Woman, a woman flung from a cliff and buried long ago, a fish-eaten
carcass resting at the bottom of the sea that is now entangled in his line. Skeleton Woman is so tangled in his fishing
line that she is dragged behind the fisherman wherever he goes. She is pulled across the water, over the beach, and into
his house where he collapses in terror. In the retelling of this story by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, the fisherman has
brought up a woman who represents life and death, a specter who reminds us that with every beginning there is an ending,
for all that is taken, something must be given in return, that the earth is cyclical and requires respect. The
fisherman, feeling pity for her, slowly disentangles her, straightens her bony carcass, and finally falls asleep. During
the night, Skeleton Woman scratches and crawls her way across the floor, drinks the tears of the dreaming fisherman, and
grows anew her flesh and heart and body. This myth applies to business as much as it does to a fisherman. The apologists
for the WTO want more-engineered food, sleeker planes, computers everywhere, golf courses that are preternaturally
green. They see no limits; they know of no downside. But Life always comes with Death, with a tab, a reckoning. They are
each other's consorts, inseparable and fast. These expansive dreams of the world's future wealth were met with perfect
symmetry by Bill Gates, Jr. the co-chair of the Seattle host committee, the world's richest man. But Skeleton woman also
showed up in Seattle, the uninvited guest, and the illusion of wealth, the imaginings of unfettered growth and
expansion, became small and barren in the eyes of the world. Dancing, drumming, ululating, marching in black with a
symbolic coffin for the world, she wove through the sulphurous rainy streets of the night. She couldn't be killed or
destroyed, no matter how much gas or pepper spray or rubber bullets were used. She kept coming back and sitting in front
of the police and raised her hands in the peace sign, and was kicked, and trod upon, and it didn't make any difference.
Skeleton Woman told corporate delegates and rich nations that they could not have the world. It is not for sale. The
illusions of world domination have to die, as do all illusions. Skeleton Woman was there to say that if business is
going to trade with the world, it has to recognize and honor the world, her life and her people. Skeleton Woman was
telling the WTO that it has to grow up and be brave enough to listen, strong enough to yield, courageous enough to give.
Skeleton Woman has been brought up from the depths. She has regained her eyes, voice and spirit. She is about in the
world and her dreams are different. She imagines a world where children do not live on streets; she believes that the
right to self-sufficiency is a human right; she imagines a world where the means to kill people is not a business but a
crime, where families do not starve, where fathers can work, where children are never sold, where women cannot be
impoverished because they are mothers and not whores. She cannot see in any dream a time where a man holds a patent to a
living seed, or animals are factories, or people are enslaved to money, or water belongs to a stockholder. Hers are deep
dreams from slow time. She is patient. She will not be quiet or flung to sea anytime soon.
© Paul Hawken, Sausalito, January 6, 2000