(Note: Following is the presentation by Tony Mazzocchi, national organizer of the Labor Party, to the November 28 Labor Party reception held in Seattle just prior to the WTO Ministerial meeting.)
Dear Sisters and Brothers:
I am glad to bring greetings from the national Labor Party to all the sisters and brothers from the world over who have united, probably for the first time in a very long time, to attempt to prevent this apocalypse of global privatization and domination of everything that exists in the world.
This week is incredible: It is the first time the American people will have ventilated this organization -- the World Trade Organization - about which they know very little.
The very existence of the WTO, with all its ramifications, is the reason we need a Labor Party. I am consistently amazed that my brothers and sisters in the American labor movement, after all that has been done to them, continue to support the very politicians who have brought this about. I never cease to be amazed by the gullibility of folks who should know better.
As I have reflected many times, if we had gone to the bargaining table with the same niceties with which we go as the labor movement into the political arena we'd probably still be making a nickel an hour. It's just incredible that organized labor still buys the promises and exhortations of the existing political order, when it so dramatically clear that this order is responsible for the dramatic situation facing American workers.
This evening we can say as we look around us that this is the beginning of a new movement to take back the country. And this goes not only for us in this country, but for workers all around the world who are fighting to take back their countries.
The events happening this week pose for us the need to peel back this layer of obfuscation about what the WTO is all about. Our task is to reveal to the American people all the implications that are in store for them with the WTO.
I am also involved with the Committee for Responsible Genetics, which very few people might know about in the labor movement though many of us in labor have been connected with that committee.
We are dealing not only with the privatization of the world and its economies, but as the Committee has pointed out, the WTO would allow the privatization of life forms itself. When you realize that the WTO can impact the very life forms, it's astounding. This is something most of us never thought we would ever envision.
We have the opportunity today to work with the diverse groups that have come together in Seattle to fight the WTO to really reveal the nature of the political parties that exist, as well as their role in supporting and pushing through this corporate globalization.
I look at this week as an opportunity to vigorously protest the very existence of the WTO, but also to let workers know about the platform of the Labor Party. The Labor Party has made it clear that we are not for reforming the WTO; we're for the elimination of the WTO.
I applaud the letter by Brother Chuck Mack that was read by Brother Ed Rosario of the San Francisco Labor Council just moments ago. Brother Mack's letter pulls no bones in his critique of labor's role in relation to the WTO.
The Labor Party is the only political alternative today, the only mechanism we have to organize working people politically. And working people are ready.
If we don't do it, you know what the ugly options are: The Pat Buchanans of the world are going to do it. And they, of course, are not an option of any sort for working people.
I look forward to being on the barricades with you this week. I think this is a very important moment. Seattle gave birth at other moments in our history to other movements. Seizing the world back from the global corporations - that shot that is going to be heard around the world - is going to be fired here in Seattle.