Henry C.K. Liu
Dennis R Redmond wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Apr 1999, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > Trade Organization meeting this November. It says Seattle's city council
> > has voted "to make the city a global-investment-treaty-free zone." Seattle
> > is home to Boeing and Microsoft, two companies with massive global sales
> > that thrive on the tightened intellectual property restrictions and
> > pried-open trade regimes embodied in WTO/MAI-style treaties. Can any
> > northwesterners on the list enlighten me on how the locals reconcile this?
>
> I can't speak for the SeaTac zone, but down here in Orgzone, the thing is
> that you have massive economic polarization, combined with low
> unemployment. So high-tech is booming, the raw materials/timber sector is
> on life support, while agribiz is somewhere in between. Back in the
> Eighties, conservatives could argue that the Japanese were buying up the
> planet; in the early Nineties, Nippon-bashing was replaced by homophobia
> (the infamous OCA, which tried to criminalize homosexuality via a state
> ballot measure). But now, with Asia in the tank, Oregon farmers getting
> clobbered by declining Pacific sales, and those juicy software
> surplus-rents, I think folks have the incentive as well as the wherewithal
> to protest against the Fat Cats. Note that the anti-free trade thing is
> closely tied to the anti-NAFTA struggle; so low unemployment makes it
> easier for the locals to see Latino/Asian immigrants as plucky pioneers
> like themselves. The politics of austerity are turning into the politics
> of prosperity, which is good news for working people, and for the Left in
> general.
>
> -- Dennis