The Seattle Times / Editorial
WHAT has it mattered to America that thousands came to Seattle a year ago to protest the World Trade Organization?
It surely mattered to the left, a political force that had been hardly visible for years. A well-organized and financed effort brought together a "red-green" alliance of protesters to Seattle, trained them, deployed them, and bailed them out of jail. Organized as the Direct Action Network, it aimed to shut down the WTO's Seattle Ministerial and for one day, it did.
The movement had formed in Europe, but it was in Seattle that it won a global pennant. But it did not sell the average American on its anti-capitalist and anti-industrial critique of "globalization."
The precise measure of its success was the vote for Ralph Nader. The Green Party supporters were highly motivated; Seattle probably had more yard signs for Nader than for Gore and Bush combined. In the 7th Congressional district, where a vote could be cast against trade Democrat Jim McDermott without electing a Republican, anti-WTO campaigner Joe Szwaja won almost 20 percent. But Nader won less than 3 percent nationwide, even though in most states a Nader vote was "safe."
The other group protesting the WTO was the 35,000 union supporters who paraded lawfully and respectfully. Most of them voted for Al Gore, standard-bearer of one of America's two great parties, both of which support trade and the WTO. Gore's difference with the Republicans is that he wants the WTO to pursue human rights, labor standards and environmental values in trade agreements. That is not a crusade against globalization, but a broadening of it. Few WTO governments want anything to do with Gore's idea, however.
Economic and cultural globalization rolls on. Business' newest form, the dot-com, zips electronically across national frontiers. The WTO also goes on. It failed to start a "Seattle Round" of general trade talks, but that was the doing of poor-country trade ministers, not the protesters. The WTO has gone ahead with talks on farm products and services. No nation has left the the WTO, and this year five nations--Jordan, Georgia, Albania, Croatia and Oman--have joined it. China won America's blessing to join, despite opposition from the Nader left, the Buchanan right and the AFL-CIO.
What remains of the great protest? An awareness. The WTO protests have prodded people in development agencies and international business to think twice about what they do, and the system in which they work. They will probably not give up doing what they do - nor should they - but they are on notice that they will be challenged.
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