The Historic Significance of Seattle
December 10, 1999
by Vandana Shiva
The failure of the W.T.O Ministerial meeting in Seattle was a historic
watershed, in more than one way. Firstly, it has demonstrated that
globalisation is not an inevitable phenomena which must be accepted at all
costs but a political project which can be responded to politically.
50,000 citizens from all walks of life and all parts of the world were
responding politically when they protested peacefully on the streets of
Seattle for four days to ensure that there would be no new round of trade
negotiations for accelerating and expanding the process of globalisation.
Trade Ministers from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean were
responding politically when they refused to join hands to provide support to
a "contrived" consensus since they had been excluded from the negotiations
being undertaken in the "green room" process behind closed doors. As long as
the conditions of transparency, openness and participation were not ensured,
developing countries would not be party to a consensus. This is a new context
and will make bulldozing of decisions difficult in future trade negotiations.
The rebellion on the streets and the rebellion within the W.T.O. negotiations
has started a new democracy movement - with citizens from across the world
and the governments of the South refusing to be bullied and excluded from
decisions in which they have a rightful share.
Seattle had been chosen by the U.S to host the Third Ministerial conference
because it is the home of Boeing and Microsoft, and symbolises the corporate
power which W.T.O rules are designed to protect and expand.
Yet the corporations were staying in the background, and proponents of
free-trade and W.T.O were going out of their way to say that W.T.O was a
"member driven" institution controlled by governments who made democratic
decisions. The refusal of Third World Governments to rubber-stamp decisions
from which they had been excluded has brought into the open and confirmed the
non-transparent and anti-democratic processes by which W.T.O rules have been
imposed on the Third World and has confirmed the claims of the critics.
W.T.O has earned itself names such as World Tyranny Organisation because it
enforces tyrannical anti-people, anti-nature decisions to enable corporations
to steal the world's harvests through secretive, undemocratic structures and
processes. The W.T.O institutionalises forced trade not free trade, and
beyond a point, coercion and the rule of force cannot continue.
The W.T.O tyranny was apparent in Seattle both on the streets and inside the
Washington State Convention centre where the negotiations were taking place.
Non violent protestors including young people and old women, labour activists
and environmental activists and even local residents were brutally beaten up,
sprayed with tear gas, and arrested in hundreds. The intolerance of
democratic dissent, which is a hallmark of dictatorship, was unleashed in
full force in Seattle. While the trees and stores were lit up for Christmas
festivity, the streets were barricaded and blocked by the police, turning the
city into a war zone.
The media has referred to the protestors as "power mongers" and "special
interest" groups. Globalisers, such as Scott Miller of the U.S. Alliance for
Trade Expansion said that the protestors were acting out of fear and
ignorance.
The thousands of youth, farmers, workers and environmentalists who marched
the streets of Seattle in peace and solidarity were not acting out of
ignorance and fear, they were outraged because they know how undemocratic the
W.T.O is, how destructive its social and ecological impacts are, and how the
rules of the W.T.O are driven by the objectives of establishing corporate
control over every dimension of our lives - our food, our health, our
environment, our work and our future.
When labour joins hands with environmentalists, when farmers from the North
and farmers from the South make a common commitment to say "no" to
genetically engineered crops, they are not acting in their special interests.
They are defending the common interests and common rights of all people,
everywhere. The divide and rule policy, which has attempted to put consumers
against farmers, the North against the South, labour against
environmentalists had failed.
In their diversity, citizens were united across sectors and regions.
While the broad based citizens campaigns stopped a new Millennium Round of
W.T.O from being launched in Seattle, they did launch their own millennium
round of democratisation of the global economy.
The real Millennium Round for the W.T.O is the beginning of a new democratic
debate about the future of the earth and the future of it's people. The
centralized, undemocratic rules and structures of the W.T.O that are
establishing global corporate rule based on monopolies and monocultures need
to give way to an earth democracy supported by decentralisation and
diversity. The rights of all species and the rights of all people must come
before the rights of corporations to make limitless profits through limitless
destruction.
Free trade is not leading to freedom. It is leading to slavery. Diverse life
forms are being enslaved through patents on life, farmers are being enslaved
into high-tech slavery, and countries are being enslaved into debt and
dependence and detruction of their domestic economies.
We want a new millennium based on economic democracy not economic
totalitarianism. The future is possible for humans and other species only if
the principles of competition, organised greed, commodification of all life,
monocultures, monopolies and centralised global corporate control of our
daily lives enshrined in the W.T.O are replaced by the principles of
protection of people and nature, the obligation of giving and sharing
diversity, and the decentralisation and self-organisation enshrined in our
diverse cultures and national constitutions.
A new threshold was crossed in Seattle - a watershed towards the creation of
a global citizen-based and citizen-driven democratic order. The future of the
World Trade Organisation will be shaped far more by what happened on the
streets of Seattle and in the non-governmental (NGO) organisation events than
by what happened in the Washington State Convention Centre.
The rules set by the secretive World Trade Organisation violate principles of
human rights and ecological survival. They violate rules of justice and
sustainability. They are rules of warfare against the people and the planet.
Changing these rules is the most important democratic and human rights
struggle of our times. It is a matter of survival.
Citizens went to Seattle with the slogan " No new round, turnaround". They
have been sucessful in blocking a new round. The next challenge is to turn
the rules of globalisation and free trade around, and make trade subservient
to higher values of the protection of the earth and peoples livelihoods.
The citizens' Seattle round of the democratisation of the food system
synthesised common concerns of people from across the world to ensure that
the way we produce, distribite, process and consume food is sustainable and
equitable. In the Third World and the industrialised world, common principles
have started to emerge from peoples practises to ensure safe and healthy food
supply. These principles enable us to shift to nature-centred and
people-centred food systems.
Diversity rather than monocultures to ensure higher output per acre.
Decentralisation and localisation in place of centralisation and
globalisation.
Ecological processes instead of industrial processes of farming.
Food rights and food security rather than free-trade as the basis of
distribution.
Democratic control rather than corporate control of the food system.
Patent-free and genetic engineering free farming to ensure the respect and
protection of all species and the integrity of ecosystems and cultures. This
involves excluding life forms from TRIPS and Biosafety from W.T.O rules of
free trade.
Cultural diversity in place of the global monoculture of fast foods and
industrial food chains.
Small farms and small farmers in place of corporate farms and absentee land
owners. This involves protection of existing small farms and land reforms to
redistribite land.
Fair trade, not free trade, to ensure farmers and producers get a fair
return. Trade as a means rather than end, with global trade subservient to
values of ecological sustainability, health and social justice.
Against all odds, millions of people from across the world have been putting
these principles into practice. The post Seattle challenge is to change the
global trade rules and national food and agricultural policies so that these
practices can be nurtured and spread and ecological agriculture, which
protects small farms and peasant livelihoods, and produces safe food, is not
marginalised and criminalised. The time has come to reclaim the stolen
harvest and celebrate the growing and giving of good food as the highest gift
and the most revolutionary act.
10 Ways to Democratize the Global Economy
Citizens can and should play an active role in shaping the future of our
global economy. Here are some of the ways in which we can work together to
reform global trade rules, demand that corporations are accountable to
people's needs, build strong and free labor and promote fair and
environmentally sustainable alternatives.
1. No Globalization without Representation
Multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the World
Bank, and the International Monetary Fund create global policy with input
mainly from multinational corporations and very little input from grassroots
citizens groups. We need to ensure that all global citizens must be
democratically represented in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation
of all global social and economic policies of the WTO, the IMF, and the WB.
The WTO must immediately halt all meetings and negotiations in order for a
full, fair, and public assessment to be conducted of the impacts of the WTO's
policies to date. The WTO must be replaced by a body that is fully
democratic, transparent, and accountable to citizens of the entire world
instead of to corporations. We must build support for trade policies that
protect workers, human rights, and the environment.
Focus on the Global South
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch/Citizens Trade Campaign
Third World Network
International Forum on Globalization
2. Mandate Corporate Responsibility
Corporations have so heavily influenced global trade negotiations that they
now have rights and representation greater than individual citizens and even
governments. Under the guise of 'free trade' they advocate weakening of labor
and environmental laws -- a global economy of sweatshops and environmental
devastation. Corporations must be subject to the people's will; they should
have to prove their worth to society or be dismantled. Corporations must be
accountable to public needs, be open to public scrutiny, provide living wage
jobs, abide by all environmental and labor regulations, and be subject to all
laws governing them. Shareholder activism is an excellent tool for
challenging corporate behavior.
Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy
Campaign for Labor Rights
Transnational Research and Action Center
Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility
United Students Against Sweatshops
Student Alliance to Reform Corporations
3. Restructure the Global Financial Architecture
Currency speculation and the derivatives market move over $1.5 trillion daily
(compared to world trade of $6 trillion annually), earning short-term profits
for wealthy investors at the expense of long-term development. Many countries
are beginning to implement 'capital controls' in order to regulate the
influence foreign capital, and grassroots groups are advocating the
restructuring and regulation of the global financial architecture. Citizens
can pass local city resolutions for the Tobin Tax - a tax of .1% to .25% on
currency transactions which would provide a disincentive for speculation but
not affect real capital investment, and create a huge fund for building
schools & clinics throughout the world.
Tobin Tax Initiative
Friends of the Earth
Institute for Policy Studies
4. Cancel all Debt, End Structural Adjustment and Defend Economic
Sovereignty
Debt is crushing most poor countries' ability to develop as they spend huge
amounts of their resources servicing odious debt rather than serving the
needs of their populations. Structural adjustment is the tool promoted by the
IMF and World Bank to keep countries on schedule with debt payments, with
programs promoting export-led development at the expense of social needs.
There is an international movement demanding that all debt be cancelled in
the year 2000 in order for countries to prioritize health care, education,
and real development. Countries must have the autonomy to pursue their own
economic plans, including prioritizing social needs over the needs of
multinational corporations.
Jubilee 2000
50 Years Is Enough
End the Blockade Against Cuba
5. Prioritize Human Rights - Including Economic Rights - in Trade Agreements
The United Nations must be the strongest multilateral body - not the WTO. The
US must ratify all international conventions on social and political rights.
Trade rules must comply with higher laws on human rights as well as economic
and labor rights included in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.
We should promote alternative trade agreements that include fair trade, debt
cancellation, micro-credit, and local control over development policies.
International Labor Rights Fund
GX Corporate Accountability Campaign
HOPE for Africa Act
Alternatives for the Americas
6. Promote Sustainable Development - Not Consumption - as the Key to
Progress
Global trade and investment should not be ends in themselves, but rather the
instruments for achieving equitable and sustainable development, including
protection for workers and the environment. Global trade agreements should
not undermine the ability of each nation, state or local community to meet
its citizens' social, environmental, cultural or economic needs.
International development should not be export-driven, but rather should
prioritize food security, sustainability, and democratic participation.
Redefining Progress
Food First
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
7. Integrate Gender Perspectives in All Economic Restructuring
Women make up half the world but hold less than 5% of positions of power in
determining global economic policy, and own an estimated 1% of global
property. Family survival around the world depends on the economic
independence of women. Economic policies need to take into account women's
important role in nutrition, education, and development. This includes access
to family planning as well as education, credit, job training, policy
decision-making, and other needs.
Women's EDGE: Economic Development and Global Equality
International Center for Research on Women
Women's Foreign Policy Group
8. Build Free and Strong Labor Unions Internationally and Domestically
As trade becomes more 'free,' labor unions are still restricted from
organizing in most countries. The International Labor Organization should
have the same enforcement power as the WTO. The US should ratify ILO
conventions and set an example in terms of enforcing workers' rights to
organize and bargain collectively. As corporations increase their
multinational strength, unions are working to build bridges across borders
and organize globally. Activists can support their efforts and ensure that
free labor is an essential component of any 'free trade' agreements.
American Federation of Labor/Congress of Industrial Organizations
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
International Labor Organization
9. Develop Community Control Over Capital; Promote Socially Responsible
Investment
Local communities should not be beholden to the IMF, international capital,
multinational corporations, or any other non-local body for policy.
Communities should be able to develop investment and development programs
that suit local needs including passing anti-sweatshop purchasing
restrictions, promoting local credit unions and local barter currency, and
implementing investment policies for their city, church, and union that
reflect social responsibility criteria.
ACORN
Sustainable America
United for a Fair Economy
Alliance for Democracy
10. Promote Fair Trade Not Free Trade
While we work to reform 'free trade' institutions and keep corporate chain
stores out of our neighborhoods, we should also promote our own vision of
Fair Trade. We need to build networks of support and education for grassroots
trade and trade in environmentally sustainable goods. We can promote labeling
of goods such as Fair Trade Certified, organic, and sustainably harvested. We
can purchase locally made goods and locally grown foods that support local
economies and cooperative forms of production and trade.
Fair Trade Federation
Rural Coalition
TransFair USA
Coop America
