Protest Against the WTO in Seattle
The people assembled in the streets of Seattle were labor unionists and environmentalists, lumber workers and forest activists, students and teachers, farmers and cheese makers, Germans and Ukrainians, Africans and Asians, North Americans and Latin Americans, gays and straights, human rights activists and animal right activists, indigenous people and white urban professionals, children and elders. Some wore business suits, some overalls, some wore sea turtle costumes, some leather and piercings, some wore almost nothing at all (Reed 2005). A very diverse group joined together in Seattle, Washington in November of 1999 to fight against the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its unfair policies. Despite the differences in nationality, race, religion, and ideals of the crowd in Seattle, tens of thousands of people formed one united front in the fight for global equality. Through a strong network of organizations, revolutionary technology, and alternate media coverage, activists of the global justice movement banded together through diversity to form one collective identity. Although music was not an integral part of this movement, the creativity that shined in Seattle, added to this already strong feeling of unity. Without the ability of this diverse group of nations and peoples to gather on the streets of Seattle, these revolutionary protests against the World Trade Organization would not have made such an impact on the world today.
Seattle was not the first place that anti-globalization ideas were voiced, but it was the first taste of how strong the forces against global imbalances really were. This protest was the first place where the ideas...
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As for the protest of the WTO it was a prime example of how not to organize and conduct a protest. Although no individuals were seriously hurt or killed, property damage and the shut down of the city cost millions. On the first two days of what was supposed to be a three day meeting of the WTO they were prevented from meeting by the protesters.
In an article entitled “Resisting and reshaping destructive development: social movements and globalizing networks”, P. Routledge describes neoliberal development, “Contemporary economic development is guided by the economic principles of neoliberalism and popularly termed ‘globalization’. The fundamental principal of this doctrine is ‘economic liberty’ for the powerful, that is that an economy must be free from the social and political ‘impediments,’ ‘fetters’, and ‘restrictions’ placed upon it by states trying to regulate in the name of the public interest. These ‘impediments’ - which include national economic regulations, social programs, and class compromises (i.e. national bargaining agreements between employers and trade unions, assuming these are allowed) - are considered barriers to the free flow of trade and capital, and the freedom of transnational corporations to exploit labor and the environment in their best interests. Hence, the doctrine argues that national economies should be deregulated (e.g. through the privatization of state enterprises) in order to promote the allocation of resources by “the market” which, in practice, means by the most powerful.” (Routledge)
Naomi Klein’s No Logo states that corporations have been championing globalization using the reasons that globalization allows U.S. consumers to benefit from cheaper products produced abroad, while developing nations benefit from the economic growth stimulated by foreign investments. The generally accepted belief is that governmental policies should be established in favor of the corporations to facilitate the trickling down of corporate profits to the end consumers and workers abroad. Klein, however, contends that globalization rarely benefit the workers in the developing countries.
The working class, faced with all the struggles that capitalism puts it through, is bound to revolt against the ruling class. During the 19th century, Marx states that “the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.” Today, the working class hosts manifestations and form multiple organizations to help them through their struggles. In New York, the Occupy Wall Street movement organizes marches to demand fairer laws, such as universal health
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Peaceful protests were the most prominent form of civil rights activities during the sixties, and often proved successful, given time. “Peaceful but relentless protest was more effective than violent action” (Lindop 30), the legendary civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. argued. One form of this protest manifested itself through James Farmer, who formed the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE for short), conceived the bril...
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“Inequality, conflict, and regulatory corruption are all part and parcel of capitalism, history has borne this out numerous times unless someone steps in to break them up, monopolies are the natural result of unbridled capitalism.” Author John Perkins, also known as the ‘economic hitman’ describes his role as a highly paid professional who helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the world out of trillions of dollars by providing them more money in which they could not pay back and later, taking over their economies in exchange of natural resources such as oil. In the epilogue of his book “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” he expresses his thoughts on taking ownership and changing the system by avoiding products that were manufactured by overworked laborers by developing boycotts to end labor standards and the promotion of it. Even though their is obvious economic growth in the U.S., Grassroots boycott can affect the policies of multinational corporations by avoiding products that are made by mistreated workers and help reduce self-destruction of the overall global empire because people who live in poverty do not benefit from a “voluntary trade,” the ecosystem is dying out, and greed is built in the system of the third world.
The 1999 Seattle protests brought the apparent proliferation of anti-globalization grassroot sociopolitical movements into the limelight of the world stage. Transnational social movements (TSMs), international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), as well as the loose transnational activist networks (TANs) that contain them—all these came to be seen as an angry and no less potent backlash that's directed at the powerful states and increasingly towering economic IGOs such as the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank. In the field of international relations, some regard this as a prophetic watershed event that signals the weakening and perhaps even collapsing of the state-centric system of international relations, while many others insist that Seattle is but an eventually insignificant episode in the book of globalization and state power, as evidenced by the Doha success.
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For the first time, causing many to wonder, “What is globalization exactly, and why are the protesters so against it? “ “What are the mysterious institutions the WTO, the IMF, and the Bank- that the media keep? “ “And what could be so problematic about free
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