Sean Tarjoto
Prose Composition II
Prof. Goldfin
7 February 2000

	I remember turning a sidewalk somewhere in the city and seeing two separate newstand machines read, as their headlines, something like:
	"PROTEST IN SEATTLE; 400 Jailed as Police Occupy Seattle Streets” 
	"PROTESTS ERUPT OVER WTO DEMONSTRATORS CLASH WITH POLICE, DISRUPT MEETING IN SEATTLE "
	I immediately thought of my good friend, Ava Haney, who at that time was attending Lewis & Clark college in Portland, Oregon, about an 8 hour drive from what the popular media had coined, the “The Battle in Seattle”.  I’d known from a phone conversation earlier that week Ava was heading Seattle to protest against the Third Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization	
	There were already accounts of some violence, and these reports assured that it was the protesters who were the aggressors.  If this was so then there was a definitive chance that counter-measures would be used by the Seattle police force, of which all 1,300 had been mobilized to the downtown center where organizers were forming human chains, sit-ins, and plenty of effective demonstration tactics around the Washington State Convention and Trade Center.
	I called Portland.  I left a message on her machine at college, I didn't want to check her home, because I didn't know if her mother had known Ava had gone.
	The next day I received an e-mail from Ava: "Sean, I don't want you to believe what those newspapers are saying.  The only sources I've found that give an accurate report are the New York Times and a website called Indymedia.com."
	I found a website created by an independent Italian photographer who happened to be in Seattle at the time.  His photos were dramatic and graphic depictions of something resembling the numerous demonstrations that had gone awry during the 60s.  I decided to find more information about the WTO, and about the violence of the protests, but upon surfing through the usual mass media outlets, AltaVista, Yahoo, Excite, and various media websites, I discovered pictures of smiling WTO conference members, statues covered in snow outside the meeting center, reports that the conference was actually proceeding well.  The closer a source was related to the structure of the WTO, the greater the difference of the accounts.  The Washington Council on International Trade (WCIT) which was responsible for organizing the WTO meeting to take place in Seattle has on the first page of its website, a distinctly ambiguious headline, "The lessons of the past year are proving invaluable to the Council as we steer our way into 2000 with increased demands for up-to-date and accurate information."  I had discovered an interesting difference of authority, and it remained merely interesting from that point after.
	Two months later, I rekindled my interest in the events that occured in November in Seattle for the purposes of this paper. I decided to give Ava another call for an interview  and enter into some research later.  Ava had told me that she travelled to Seattle with a group of students from Lewis & Clark on the 28th of November.. They arrived  that evening, two days before the meetings would begin.  At this point, other protesters were rallying to head off the arrival of the delegates.  
	The hundred-fifty students had crowded into a small house in a nearby suburb to divide into groups of those willing to be arrested and those who wouldn’t.  Demonstration tactics and safety issues were instructed to the groups, as well as displays of encouragement and support.  Ava had joined a group whose purpose was to block an intersection by being connected to a circular-shaped strong multi-layered tube.  They would be compose an inner circle about 12 by 7 feet in area, and surround a street mural drawn in the center, while surrounding them would be a larger circle of unchained protesters who would act as runners for food and water. They'd arrived in the morning at 6 A.M., and remained in the intersection until 11 A.M.
	"About 2 blocks up we began hearing police, and concussion bombs." Ava told me.  “We started discussing what we wanted to do, and decided that we would be much more useful at another section of the protest that needed help.”
	The group moved, avoiding the police. But by then the police action had become more determined.  A story at the World Socialist Web Site reported that “One thousand Seattle police in riot gear battled demonstrators in the streets outside the convention center...” (McLaughlin 1).  The next day by 7 P.M. Mayor Schell had ordered a dusk to dawn curfew and issued a warning that all persons not engaged in business concerning the WTO would be subject to arrest.  Washington State Governor Locke dispatched two units of National Guards to assist police.  And as Peter Bradley reported in a Logistics Management and Distribution Report about a month later, “The arcane world of international trade gained a worldwide audience.”
	The sources popular in the media focused on the violence ued by police to assert control over rioting crowds.  While the organizations which had protested there claimed brutality and excessive force.  A classic Orwellian conflict had occured, and now questions needed to be asked about the unquestionable capitalism the world had been entering into (or as opponents of the WTO would claim, forced).
	One of the e-mails I’d received from Ava had the e-mail addresses and telephone numbers for the office of Seattle Mayor Paul Schell, Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper, and Washington State Governor Gary Locke, as well as a sample letter demanding the release of the 600 protesters being held.  Two days after I received the below email Chief Norm Stamper resigned from the Seattle Police Department.  

SAMPLE EMAIL (cut and paste into new message) - or express your outrage in
your own words!

Dear Mayor Schell/Governor Locke/Police Chief Stamper,

	I am shocked and outraged to see the atrocious way your administration has treated the tens of thousands of non-violent anti-WTO protesters.  It is simply unacceptable in a democratic and free society to use tear gas, pepper spray and plastic bullets against peaceful protesters who are exercising their constitutionally protected rights to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly.
	The fact that the Seattle police force continues to violate the basic civil and human rights of the hundreds of protesters still in custody is equally distasteful.  By leaving protesters on buses overnight and denying them access to food, water, medical attention and legal consul your police force has violated some of the most basic traditions upon which our legal system is based.
	I demand that you immediately release all of the protesters and drop all of the charges against them.  I also demand that you resign from your office to show your acknowledgment that your repressive treatment of non-violent protesters is an embarrassment to all Americans and the democratic principles on which this country was founded.

Sincerely,

name
address
phone number

	It was at this point that I realized that there was a genuine kind of campaign here to assert damage control, and this campaign would be waged by the greater strength of the WTO against it’s opponents, those who protested at Seattle.  It was to the WTO’s advantage that half of the global media market was in some measure under their power and influence. I realized that the media coverage on Seattle I'd been seeing on television, newspapers, magazines were the same media that had, in the past, so blatantly proved themselves to be opportunisitic and, for lack of a more appropriate word, capitalizing.  “The popular press tended to focus on the size of the protest and the small number of protesters who engaged in smashing windows and other destructive acts. Lost in much of the coverage were the very serious issues that drew many to the event” (Bradley 11).
	Seattle was the most important convergence on the future of free trade and global capitalism, and this was one of the reasons that it attracted so many people; opponents and proponents.   By now, I had understood the basis behind the actions of the protesters.  I needed to find more about the World Trade Organization itself, why it had opened a conference, what were the issues behind it, and why it had failed to estimate the power of the reaction to it.
	This excerpt is taken from a simplified outline in the L.A. Times whose sources are the WTO itself, Bloomberg and Reuters.  It represents the WTO’s attempt to project an unbiased campaign.  It was published about four days after the protests began:
The WTO is a Geneva-based international body that acts as a forum for trade negotiations and as a referee in trade disputes.
It was created in 1994 as the successor to the organization known as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT, which was established after World War II. WTO was created to establish a firmer legal basis for trade and to cover a fuller range of trade issues, although GATT remains the basic rule book for the WTO.
The WTO is an intergovernmental body, with 135 member states and about 30 more candidates waiting to join. Administrative and technical support come from the WTO Secretariat in Geneva, currently headed by Director General Mike Moore.
	I learned that Seattle was the third annual mandatory meeting required by the Ministerial conference - the highest echelon of power within the WTO’s structure.  It would draw the highest international trade authorities together in a conference whose impact would be global.  It would discuss issues involving the need for developing countries to embrace the prosperity of free trade, while limiting the environmental effects that a capitalist superpower would render.  I did some economics research and understood its fundamental position to the structure of the human world.  Really, the debates at the WTO conference and the protests outside it were not only about international trade.  
They were, as Tom Hayden told some of the rallyers, about “everything”. Some protesters were against development, some against growth, some against low-wage work in poor countries, some against resource extraction, some against consumption, some against biotechnology, some against killing animals, some against highly restrictive intellectual property laws, some against property rights of any kind. just about all of them were against change without political regulation (Postrel 4). 
	The far reaching tendrils of global economics of the 21st century are capable of inserting themselves intimately into the needs of the consumer.  The markets which interest them are thoroughly and accurately involved in expanding their relationship through market surveys, shopping item records, and a complex network of information.
	A sort of symbiotic relationship exists between the advertising agencies who assemble the information the commericial powers generate.  And that information is what the commercial powers must possess to cater to their consumers.  As a result, both agencies are made stronger, and the science of economics becomes much more complete.
	What the World Trade Organization was attempting to do in November is make the decisions which would further delimit free trade and push on the globalization of capitalism.  The economic interests of the entire planet would be represented in some capacity at Seattle.  The 135 members of the WTO were supposedly there to ensure the fairness of current economic policy. Economics being the issue, however, places the power of policy in the hands of the richer nations, and out of those less developed ones, who as a result have a much poorer representation.  
	It would not be difficult for a status quo to be directed by the wealthier superpowers, in favor of the superpowers.  “Many opponents of the organization believe the rules are skewed in favor of big business and against workers and environmental protection” (Bradley 11).  All this systemized economy would not be a problem if it did not inherently reduce the humanity of its citizens and reap its resources with so little regard for some homeostasis.  
	My involvement in this project grew from a concern for a friend to an activism for a society.  The issue at hand is hardly about the welfare of one person or even a group of persons, but actually the prosperity of all persons; all people.  I cannot share the stage of the world with a starving African and not feel as if something were inherently wrong, unless I ignore that stage altogether. To do that would be far more wasteful and tragic than any damage done to my water or his grassland by any corporation. 
	The problem of globalized capitalism looms like a leviathan over every aspect of our lives.  The prosperous democracy is as inseparable from capitalism just as socialism is from Marxism.  The issue at hand seems to be an attempt at establishing some kind of balance.  A purist’s pursuit anything so easily becomes extremism, and too much of anything often proves to be disasterous.  Whether such a pursuit be socialism, capitalism, environmentalism, economics, democracy or even protest, there is the point where it becomes too massive to stand under its own pressure.  The issue of globalization involves everyone and everything, and has burst forth quite crucially; at the turn of the 21st century.

Works Cited
Bradley, Peter. “Broader agenda for WTO.” Logistics Management and Distribution 
Report. Jan 2000: 11.
Gorov, Linda. “Protests Erupt Over WTO Demonstrators Clash with Police, Disrupt 
Meeting in Seattle.” Boston Globe. 1 Dec. 1999: A1.
McLaughlin, Martin. “Police attack protesters at Seattle WTO meeting.” International 
Committee of the Fourth International. 1 Dec. 1999. <http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/dec1999/wto-d01.shtml>
Murphy, Kim. “WTO Summit: Protest in Seattle; 400 Jailed as Police Occupy Seattle 
Streets.” The Los Angeles Times. 2 Dec. 1999: 1.
Postrel, Virginia. “Seattle suprise.” Reason 31 (2000): 4-6.
“WTO Summit: Protest in Seattle; WTO Explained.” The Los Angeles Times. 2 Dec. 
1999: 23.