Trade summit protesters train in Vancouver
Up to 50,000 protesters, including many local activists, hope to bring the World Trade Organization Seattle summit to a halt.
Doug Ward Vancouver Sun
Thousands of Canadians are gearing up to join protests aimed at disrupting the upcoming World Trade Organization summit in Seattle in an effort to stem the tide of globalization.
More than 5,000 delegates, 3,000 reporters and photographers and as many as 50,000 demonstrators are expected to arrive in Seattle for the WTO conference, set for Nov. 29 to Dec. 3.
About 200 young people attended an anti-WTO teach-in Thursday at the University of B.C. where they discussed non-violent civil disobedience.
They listened to a law student from Seattle discuss what rights Canadian protesters would have if they are arrested.
"There are going to be demonstrations and actions every day from Nov. 28 to Dec. 3," said activist Bryce Gilroy-Scott, a speaker at the UBC teach-in.
"There are hundreds of groups in the U.S. and Canada plus international networks that are planning to do stuff."
Many of these groups hope to make "conditions on the streets of Seattle such that the WTO can not go on," he added.
Much of downtown Seattle is expected to be virtually shut down on Nov. 30 -- the date set for a mass protest march.
Seattle police are closing many of the downtown streets on Nov. 30 so that anti-WTO demonstrators can march from the Seattle Center, down Fourth Avenue to the convention centre where the WTO conference is being held.
The Seattle round of WTO meetings, involving trade ministers from 135 countries, will be the largest international trade conference ever held in the U.S.
And the demonstrations being organized for the WTO's arrival are expected to be the largest ever held in the U.S. against free trade.
Opponents of globalization, the increasingly free movement of goods and corporations between nations, have warned that environmental standards, human rights and even individual countries' sovereignty are at stake because, they say, governments are becoming less capable of holding corporate entities accountable within their jurisdictions.
Posters urging Vancouver activists to attend the protests began appearing in September on cafe windows along Commercial Drive, Vancouver's traditional hotbed of left-wing activism.
The UBC teach-in, which was attended by New Democratic Party leadership candidate Joy MacPhail and Vancouver mayoral candidate David Cadman, is just one of many anti-WTO meetings that have been held in Vancouver.
A larger anti-WTO conference is being held tonight and Saturday at Robson Square.
Vancouver activists say the Seattle protest will have far more demonstrators than the protests that greeted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference here in 1997.
Canadians who are arrested at the WTO protests could have trouble getting back into the U.S. in the future, said Paul Richmond, a Seattle law student speaking at the UBC teach-in.
Richmond said that a legal-support network has been set up to help protesters who are arrested.
"They're calling it the rally of the millennium," said Steve Staples, a Vancouver staffer at the nationalist Council of Canadians.
Staples said that anti-free trade activists have been buoyed by the collapse of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment and the refusal by the U.S. Congress to give President Bill Clinton "fast track authority" to negotiate trade deals.
"The wheels are coming off the cart of globalization and the movement. People are feeling that the momentum is on our side and it's all being focused on Seattle."
The B.C. Federation of Labour, the B.C. Teachers Federation and other labour groups will be sending people to the Seattle rally.
Seattle was chosen as host of the WTO summit because Washington state -- the home of Boeing, Microsoft and a strong agricultural sector -- is one of the most trade-dependent states in the U.S. Almost every prominent politician, Democrat and Republican, is a big free-trade booster.
But Seattle also has a strong labour movement and a tradition of liberal and left-wing activism.
"This is a progressive community that really hasn't had much to react to recently," said Todd Putnam of the Seattle-based People for Free Trade Free.
"But now we are seeing a sleeping giant being woken up."
Putnam said there will be plenty of street theatre along with talk about trade. "There will be street performers and firebreathers and the whole nine yards. It will be part festive, part political."
Free trade, as embodied by the North American Free Trade Agreement and the WTO, remains a thorny issue in the U.S. An innocuous resolution welcoming the WTO to Seattle was nearly defeated by King County council. The same council has also voted to oppose the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, a trade pact expected to be on the WTO's Seattle agenda.
Putnam said that the goal of most groups involved is to gain the attention of the public and the WTO officials -- not to shut down the city.
Putnam said there are some young activists who "intend to create a bit of mayhem but that's not part of our agenda."