A peoples’ agenda

Letter to the Editor published in the Victoria Times Colonist, 2 December 1999

I was in Seattle on November 30, along with thousands of others saying ‘no’ to the World Trade Organization and its corporate agenda.

The WTO was shut down that day as ordinary citizens filled the streets of Seattle to put forward an agenda of their own. In the days that followed, it took a declaration of martial law and over 600 arrests for WTO meetings to proceed.

Seattle was transformed into a police state. Whenever a clump of people would form, tear-gas, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and scores of club-wielding police would be sent in to disperse them.

There is a direct correlation between police dispersing pockets of peaceful protest and subsequent vandalism. It is surprising so little damage occurred, as powerless youths were forced away from a legitimate forum for voicing their anger to run frustrated through the streets.

The only people allowed in Seattle during the WTO were local business people and the trade delegates (politicians and corporate executives).

Everyone else had lost the right to walk, talk, and assemble freely. Democracy and civil liberties were suspended in favour of “free trade.”

This is corporate rule in its purest form.

Under the WTO and in Seattle, property rights are held sacred while all other rights are negotiable. Thus, under the mantra of “free trade,” the tiny few in our society who have enough money to engage in trade win a new bill of rights and freedoms.

Meanwhile, the Canadian welfare state is put on the negotiating table, and ordinary Canadians risk losing their hospitals and schools to the private sector and their forests and water to the WTO’s environmental rulings. No provision is made for workers’ rights or human rights.

The WTO does not need to be reformed. It needs to be dismantled. And beyond that, our society needs to begin democratizing its institutions and redistributing its wealth so that we can all be free.

We need a people’s agenda for the 21st century.