Doug Henwood wrote:
> [Careful readers might note some uncanny parallels between these two
> texts, filed from a woodsy retreat hundreds of miles south of the
> action. "Not out of churlishness," of course.]
>
> <http://www.counterpunch.org/>
> December 3, 1999
>
> Here's a might-have-been for you. All day long, Tuesday, November 30,
> the street warriors in downtown Seattle vindicated their pledge to
> shut down the first day of the WTO talks, in itself a rousing
> victory. Locked-down Earth-First!ers, Ruckus Society agitators,
> anarchists and other courageous troublemakers sustained baton
> charges, tear gas and rubber bullets, hopefully awaiting
> reinforcement from the big labor rally taking place around the space
> needle, some fifteen or twenty blocks from downtown. As the morning
> ticked away and the cops got rougher, the street warriors kept
> asking, "Where are the labor marchers?", expecting that at any moment
> thousands of longshoremen and teamsters would reinforce them in the
> desperate fray.
>
> But the absent legions of labor never showed. Suppose they had.
> Suppose there had been 30,000 to 40,000 protesters around the
> convention center, vowing to keep it shut all week. Would the cops
> have charged such a force? Downtown could have been held all night,
> and perhaps President Bill would have been forced to make his
> welcoming address from SeaTac or from the sanctuary of his ardent
> campaign funder, the Boeing Company. That would have been a
> humiliation for imperial power of historic proportions, like the
> famous greeting the Wobblies organized to greet president Woodrow
> Wilson after the breaking of the Seattle general strike in l9l9 when
> workers and their families lined the streets, block after block,
> standing in furious silence as the President's motorcade passed by.
> Wilson had his stroke not long thereafter.
>
> This might-have been is not posed out of churlishness, but to
> encourage a sense of realism about what is possible in the struggle
> against the trading arrangements now operative in the WTO.
>
> Take organized labor, as embodied in the high command of the AFL-CIO.
> As these people truly committed to the destruction of the WTO? Of
> course they aren't. It was back in February of this year that the
> message came down from AFL-CIO HQ that rallying in Seattle was fine,
> but the plan was not to shut down the WTO. Labor's plan was to work
> from the inside. As far as any street action was concerned, the deals
> were cut long ago. Labor might huff and labor might puff, but when it
> comes to the WTO what labor wants, in James Hoffa's phrase, is a seat
> at the table.
>
> And what does this seat at the table turn out to be? At Seattle those
> labor chieftains were willing to settle for a truly threadbare bit of
> window dressing, in the shape of a working group which will, in the
> next round of WTO talks, be sensitive to labor's concerns. Here's the
> chronology. The present trade round will ponder the working group's
> mission and composition and make recommendations for the next round
> of trade talks. Then, when the next round gets under way, the working
> group will perhaps take form. Guess what? It's at least 20l4AD before
> the working group is up and running.
>
> Sweeney's AFL-CIO isn't against the WTO. Sweeney himself is
> physically fading into the woodwork. One well informed-friend of
> CounterPunch used the brutal comparison (in health terms) of Boris
> Yeltsin. Gerry Shea, Sweeney's head of government affairs and the man
> essentially running the show at l6th St in Washington, has no
> ideological posture on the issue, and listens closely to his old
> friend David Smith, who heads the AFL-CIO's public policy department
> and who is a zealous free trader, cerebellum thickly stuffed with
> neo-liberal hokum.
>
> There are unions -- the autoworkers, steelworkers, teamsters,
> machinists, UNITE -- which have rank and file members passionately
> concerned about "free trade" when, as a in the case of teamsters, it
> means Mexican truck drivers coming over the border at $2 an hour. But
> how many of these unions are truly ready to break ranks and holler
> Death to the WTO? For that matter, how many of them are prepared to
> think in world terms, as the capitalists do? Take the steel workers,
> the only labor group which, in the form of the Alliance for
> Sustainable Jobs and the Environment, took up position in downtown
> that Tuesday morning (and later fought with the cops and endured tear
> gas themselves). But on that same day, November 30, the Moscow
> Tribune ran a story reporting that the Clinton administration has
> effectively stopped all cold-rolled steel imports from Russia by
> imposing penalty duties of l78 per cent. Going into winter those
> Russian working families at Severstal, Novolipetsk and Magnitogorsk
> are facing tougher times than ever. The Moscow Tribune's report, John
> Helmer, wasn't in doubt why: "Gore must try to preserve steel company
> and steel worker support."
>
> As the preceding item suggests, there's no such thing as "free
> trade". The present argument is not about trade, for which (except
> for maybe a few bioregionialists in Ecotopia) all are in favor in
> some measure. The argument is about how trade is to be controlled,
> how wealth is to be made and distributed. The function of the WTO is
> to express in trade rules the present balance of economic power on
> the world held by the big corporations, which see the present WTO
> round as an opportunity to lock in their gains, to enlist its formal
> backing in their ceaseless quest for cheap labor and places to dump
> their poisons.
>
> So ours is a worldwide guerilla war, of publicity, harassment,
> obstructionism. It's nothing simple, like the "Stop the War" slogan
> of the l960s. Capitalism could stop that war and move on. American
> capitalism can't stop trade and survive on any terms it cares for.
>
> We truly don't want a seat at the table to "reform" trade rules,
> because if we get one, then sooner or later we'll be standing
> alongside Global Exchange's Medea Benjamin proclaiming that Nike,
> which pays its workers less than 20 cents an hour, has made "an
> astounding transformation", and in Seattle actually defending Nike's
> premises from well-merited attack by the street warriors. Capitalism
> only plays by the rules if it wrote those rules in the first place.
> The day the WTO stipulates the phase-in of a world minimum wage of $3
> an hour is the day the corporations destroy it and move on. Anyone
> remember those heady days in the l970s of the New World Economic
> Order when third world countries were going to get a fair shake for
> their commodities? We were at a far more favorable juncture back
> then, but it wasn't long before the debt crisis had struck, the NWEO
> was dead and the mildly progressive UN Commission on Trade and
> Development forever sidelined. Publicity, harassment,
> obstructionism...Think always in terms of international solidarity.
> Find targets of opportunity. South Africa forces domestic licensing
> at cheaper rates of AIDS drugs. Solidarity. The Europeans don't want
> bio-engineered crops. Fight on that front. Challenge the system at
> the level of its pretensions. Make demands in favor of real free
> trade. Get rid of copyright and patent restrictions and fees imposed
> on developing nations. Take Mexico. Dean Baker, of the Center for
> Economic and Policy Research reckons that Mexico paid the industrial
> nations last year $4.2 billion in direct royalties, fees and indirect
> costs. And okay, let's have real free trade in professional services,
> with standardization in courses and tests so that kids from Mexico
> and elsewhere can compete with our lawyers, accountants and doctors.
>
> A guerilla war, without illusions or respectable ambitions. Justice
> in world trade is by definition a revolutionary and utopian aim.
>
> -----
>
> "Trade Wars, Trade Truths"
> Alexander Cockburn
> Beat the Devil
> The Nation, 20 December 1999
>
> Here's a might-have-been for you. All day long, Tuesday, November 30,
> the street warriors in downtown Seattle vindicated their pledge to
> shut down the first day of the WTO talks, in itself a rousing
> victory. Earth-First!ers chained together, Ruckus Society agitators,
> anarchists and other courageous troublemakers sustained baton
> charges, tear gas and rubber bullets, hopefully awaiting
> reinforcement from the big labor rally taking place around the Space
> Needle, some fifteen blocks from downtown. As the morning ticked away
> and the cops got rougher, the street warriors kept asking, "Where are
> the labor marchers?" expecting that at any moment thousands of
> machinists and Teamsters would reinforce them in the desperate fray.
>
> But the legions of labor never showed. Suppose they had. Suppose
> there had been 30,000 to 40,000 protesters around the Convention
> Center, vowing to keep it shut all week. Would the cops have charged
> such a force? Downtown might have been held all night, and perhaps
> President Bill would have been forced to make his welcoming address
> from SeaTac airport or from the sanctuary of his ardent funder,
> Boeing. That would have been a humiliation for imperial power of
> historic proportions, like the famous scene the Wobblies organized to
> greet Woodrow Wilson after the Seattle general strike had been broken
> in 191 - workers and their families lining the streets block after
> block, standing in furious silence as his motorcade passed by. Wilson
> had his stroke not long after.
>
> This might-have-been is not posed out of churlishness but to
> encourage a sense of realism about the struggle against the trading
> arrangements now operative in the WTO. Take organized labor, as
> embodied in the high command of the AFL-CIO. Back in February of this
> year the message came down from AFL HQ that rallying in Seattle was
> fine, but the plan wasn't to shut down the works; it was to maneuver
> from inside. No surprise. Institutional labor is not structured to be
> the advance guard of a social movement. At the end of the day it
> wants what it has always wanted: in James Hoffa's phrase, a place at
> the table.
>
> And what does this particular seat at the table turn out to be? In
> Seattle the labor chieftains were willing to settle for a token
> footstool, in the shape of a working group that will, in the next
> round of WTO talks, be sensitive to labor and environmental concerns.
> On the current schedule, the present trade round will ponder the
> working group's role and make recommendations for the next round -
> suddenly it's 20l5 before the group is up and running.
>
> Gerry Shea, John Sweeney's assistant in charge of government affairs
> and the man running the show on this from 16th Street in Washington,
> is dedicated to staying tight with Clinton, Gore et al., and listens
> closely to his friend David Smith, head of the AFL's public policy
> department and a zealous neoliberal free-trader.
>
> There are unions—the autoworkers, steelworkers, Teamsters,
> machinists, UNITE—that have rank-and-file members passionately
> concerned about "free trade" when, as in the case of the Teamsters,
> it means Mexican truck drivers coming over the border at $2 an hour.
> But how many of these unions are truly ready to act in world terms,
> just as capitalists do? The steel workers were the only labor group
> that, as part of the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the
> Environment, stood with the street warriors in downtown that Tuesday
> morning (and later fought with the cops and endured tear gas
> themselves). On that same day, November 30, the Moscow Tribune ran a
> story reporting that the Clinton Administration has effectively
> stopped all cold-rolled steel imports from Russia by imposing penalty
> duties of l78 percent. Going into winter those Russian working
> families at Severstal, Novolipetsk and Magnitogorsk are facing
> tougher times than ever. The Moscow Tribune's reporter, John Helmer,
> wasn't in doubt why: "Gore must try to preserve steel company and
> steelworker support."
>
> As the preceding item suggests, there's no such thing as "free
> trade." The present argument is not about trade, which (except for
> maybe a few bioregionalists in my own dear home of Ecotopia) all
> favor in some measure. The argument is about how trade is to be
> controlled, how wealth is to be made and distributed. The WTO is
> simply an expression of the present balance of economic power on the
> world held by the big corporations, which see the present WTO round
> as an opportunity to lock in their gains, to enlist its formal
> backing in their ceaseless quest for cheaper labor and places to dump
> their poisons. So ours is a worldwide guerrilla war, of publicity,
> harassment, obstructionism. It's nothing simple, like "Stop the War"
> in the l960s. Capitalism could stop that war and move on. American
> capitalism can't stop trade (on its terms) and survive on any terms
> it cares for.
>
> We truly don't want a place at the table to "reform" world trade
> rules, because if we get one, then sooner or later we'll be standing
> alongside Global Exchange's Medea Benjamin proclaiming that Nike,
> which pays its workers less than 20 cents an hour, has made "an
> astounding transformation." Capitalism plays only by the rules it
> wrote in the first place. The day the WTO stipulates the phase-in of
> a Third World minimum wage of $3 an hour is the day the corporations
> destroy it and move on. Justice in world trade is by definition a
> revolutionary and utopian aim.
>
> Publicity, harassment, obstructionism - Take the opportunities as
> they come. Think always in terms of international solidarity. Find
> targets of opportunity. South Africa forces domestic licensing of
> AIDS drugs. Solidarity. The Europeans don't want bioengineered crops.
> Seize on that opportunity. Make demands in favor of real free trade.
> Get rid of copyright and patent restrictions and fees imposed on
> developing nations. Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy
> Research reckons that Mexico paid the industrial nations $4.2 billion
> in direct royalties, fees and indirect costs last year. Let's have
> real free trade in professional services, with standardization in
> courses and tests so that kids from Mexico, India and elsewhere can
> come here and compete with our lawyers, accountants and doctors.
> Challenge the system at the level of its public pretensions. A
> guerrilla war, without illusions or respectable ambitions.