PROTESTERS: We demand the immediate release of all held without charges! We also demand a public apology for the violent actions taken against a nonviolent action! Shut down the WTO!

ERIC: My name is Eric, and we are in downtown Seattle. And today, you know, it’s split into several protests. There are hundreds of people surrounding here, demanding the release of the 500 people who were illegally arrested last night for nonviolently demonstrating against the WTO. Today, we’re showing up for prisoner support. We’re still speaking out against the WTO, but we’re also saying that we were not violent. It was law enforcement who was violent.

PROTESTERS: This is what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!

PROTESTER: I think every American who’s concerned about democracy, his place or her place is here today. And it’s like the Battle of Concord or Lexington. The British might win, but the Minutemen are pouring out of the hills. They’re here. They’re not going anywhere. They’re going to stay. It’s as if the body politic in America has been comatose for 20 or 30 years, and suddenly the patient has risen and thrown off his blankets. And we’re that patient. Let’s take the government back. Let’s take the media back. Let’s exercise our rights. It’s ours. This is not an oligarchy. It’s a democracy.

PROTESTERS: This is what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!

AMY GOODMAN: This is Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. And we, like thousands of others, are sleepless in Seattle. Welcome to Democracy Now!

As protests continue on the streets of Seattle for a fourth day, a large crowd yesterday blocked the main entrance to the city jail, demanding the release of about 500 people who were arrested on Wednesday during demonstrations against the World Trade Organization. Meanwhile, hundreds of Seattle residents also took to the streets to protest police crackdowns in the neighborhood of Capitol Hill, where officers trying to break up anti-WTO demonstrations also ended up tear-gassing and abusing residents themselves. The Seattle mayor, Paul Schell, has acknowledged that some officers committed excesses and has promised an investigation. The city remains in a state of emergency as trade ministers and other delegates limp into the final day of this round of trade negotiations.

Juan, the scene continues to be quite remarkable as the World Trade Organization negotiations limp along.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, Amy. It’s been an amazing week, a historic week. It can be said, as we have said here several times this week, that only a few days ago, 95% of the American people had never heard of the WTO, and this week, it became the topic of conversation at every dinner table, on every talk show and the front pages of every newspaper in America. And the activities outside this convention center brought an unprecedented spotlight on this important, powerful and largely obscure and secret organization. And as a result, I think that all public discourse in this country and around the world has benefited, and there is much more attention to what is going on inside the WTO, to the enormous issues that that world body continues to confront and to many of the complaints of civil society, the poorer nations and of the labor movement around the world and environmentalists to its impact on world affairs.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, Juan, yesterday, I had a chance to talk to the Jamaican ambassador to the United States, who had come to a news briefing of Democratic congressmembers. By the way, there have been news briefings throughout the day inside the convention center. And following the Democratic congressmembers, Republican congressmembers spoke. I have to say, you couldn’t have told the difference between both, what they call pro-free trade groups. You wouldn’t have known there were two parties. But the Jamaican ambassador to the United States asked the question about the Caribbean Basin Initiative, and afterwards, I asked him about how the negotiations were going. And he said, well, while the opening ceremony — while the opening ceremony was delayed, that they were able to continue their negotiations.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, and that has continued. And I attended several of the sessions, one where Secretary of Commerce Daley was in a symposium sponsored by America Online, by Sun Microsystems, by many of the major corporations, was talking, interestingly, about an issue that has gotten very little attention, which is the whole question of the internet’s role in world commerce and e-commerce. And interestingly enough, it’s the position of the United States that there should be a moratorium on nations attempting to tax or to put tariffs on e-commerce, and because — and he said it bluntly — he said the longer a moratorium occurs, the more that those who are involved, the companies and the corporations that are involved in e-commerce, will be able to stake out a larger and larger market, because most of the other countries in the world, especially in the Third World, are barely into developing e-commerce as a form of trade in the world.

AMY GOODMAN: And these corporate meetings are really what the World Trade Organization is about. You know that among the people who get to be inside and in even the places that are, for example, closed to the outside, the press, are people who have made donations to the Seattle host organization in the coming of the World Trade Organization negotiations to Seattle. So, there are people at different levels, you know, pledging $50,000 — these are corporations — $100,000, $200,000. If you pledge $250,000, a quarter of a million dollars, you get to have four representatives in on some of the meetings — if anyone has any doubt about who’s represented and who isn’t.

But yesterday, Juan, we were talking about this picture that we see outside as the secret negotiations take place inside: thousands of people protesting what they call an undemocratic, faceless organization. Well, yesterday, there was a public news conference that was held by the U.S. trade representative, who is heading up all of these negotiations at the World Trade Organization, Charlene Barshefsky. Not one of the protesters — not one of the reporters really directly addressed the protests outside. But afterwards, on the team on the dais was the secretary of agriculture, Dan Glickman, and I did get a chance to ask him a question.

AMY GOODMAN: Secretary Glickman, two questions. One, as you know, tens of thousands of people have marched in the streets in an unprecedented protest —

AGRICULTURE SECRETARY DAN GLICKMAN: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: — since the Vietnam War. Hundreds of them, thousands were tear-gassed, hundreds pepper-sprayed and shot with rubber bullets, something we have hardly ever seen in this country. Number one, do you condemn the tactics that were used against the protesters? But number two, a more philosophical question, and that is, their complaint, their major argument, is that democracy is subverted by a secretive, unelected body like the World Trade Organization. So, this is the question: Do you think that more states of emergency, like were imposed in Seattle, will have to be imposed in order to support the World Trade Organization?

AGRICULTURE SECRETARY DAN GLICKMAN: First of all, I can’t answer most of those questions, because I’m the secretary of agriculture, and most of my time has been focused on trying to deal with the problems that farmers and ranchers are facing. I will tell you the one — 

AMY GOODMAN: Many farmers were tear-gassed.

HANDLER: Let him answer the question, please.

AGRICULTURE SECRETARY DAN GLICKMAN: One of the — one of the key things the administration is pursuing is more transparency in the WTO process, which means is that we’re going to try to conduct this process democratically. That’s a — the president talked about that twice yesterday in both speeches. I was with him. And it’s certainly something that I think everybody on this panel believes in very strongly.

HANDLER: OK, thanks very much. We’ve got to get going.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman after the news conference of Charlene Barshefsky, where, by the way, she talked about consensus of the World Trade Organization, that they were moving in that direction. Juan, you’ve been talking about the public face of the Clinton administration and what has been happening behind the scenes.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, yes. One interesting thing, of course, was the announcement that President Clinton made on the issue of parallel importing, and the United States suddenly changed its position and said that it would be supporting parallel importing, and basically to allow African countries to be able to get AIDS medicines at sharply reduced prices. Interestingly enough, Doctors Without Borders held a press conference at the convention center yesterday where they basically said that they applauded the move of President Clinton, that it was going to help many countries around the world; however, they said that had it not been for the AIDS activists that have been dogging Vice President Gore wherever he went on the campaign trail, they suspected this decision would not have been made. And they remarked that at the same time that the administration was doing this in regards to AIDS drugs, it was concurrently challenging about 90 different patent provisions of farmers — of countries around the world, patent laws, and had in essence created a SWAT team, that the FDA has created a SWAT team that goes country by country, checking out all the laws of every country in the world for any problems that they might create for United States pharmaceuticals, so that the position of Doctors Without Borders is this step is a good step; however, there are still major problems in terms of access, of affordable access of essential medicines to hundreds of millions of people in the Third World.

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of SWAT teams, I did get a chance to go up to the police yesterday, because, well, to get around Seattle now, it’s very difficult, as there are whole areas that are blocked off. And at night, of course, there is curfew in different areas of the city. In fact, even the mayor referred to it as martial law. And then one of his aides told him, “Maybe you could choose a nicer word,” and he started calling it a “state of emergency.” I went up to the police. I said, “Please don’t tear-gas me. I just need to know how to get to the convention center.” And another time, went over to a SWAT team, and in asking directions, I said, “You may not be from Seattle, but…” And the point is that most — a lot of the law enforcement that’s been brought in, we’re not just talking Seattle police now. We’re talking about National Guard. We’re talking about police and security and jailers from all over the Washington state area, and maybe beyond.

But right now we’re going to turn to another group of people that are here in Washington, D.C. — that are here in Washington state, and they are women from around the world who have come to challenge global capitalism, from the rural villages in El Salvador to the farmlands of the Caribbean, rural communities in Africa, cities in Europe and many other places. Yes, women from around the world, grassroots activists who fight against poverty, illiteracy, domestic abuse, sexism and so many other social problems that disproportionately affect the female populations of their countries. As anti-WTO protesters chanted, sang and shouted on the streets of Seattle this week, this group marched in silence. The women faced off with Seattle police, their mouths taped to symbolize the silence many women and girls are subjected to in their countries, their arms locked in unity. At the World Trade Organization, they presented their demands, from economic equity for women, to safeguards for health, safety and the environment, to the protection of Indigenous knowledge from patenting by multinational corporations.

And some of them are here today with us, and right after the break, we’re going to go to them. Then, after that, we’ll be joined by the person who has trained a new generation of nonviolent resisters, and we saw them in full force here in Seattle. We’ll also speak with a paramedic who has been treating those protesters who have been brought down by the Seattle police and other law enforcement. And we’ll be speaking with a young woman who scaled a crane to unfurl a banner. You’re listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!, live from the Battle in Seattle. We’ll be back in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, live from Seattle, here with Juan González for the week as we cover the World Trade Organization ministerial meetings and the protests that have taken place outside.

We’re joined now by women from around the world to talk about globalization from the grassroots up. Jocelyn Dow is with us. She is president of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization, known as WEDO. She is founding member and executive director of Red Thread, a women’s collective in Guyana. We’re also joined by Mohau Pheko from African Trade Network in South Africa, Marta Benavides of the International Institute for Cooperation Amongst Peoples, a grassroots project in El Salvador that rebuilds ecological sustainability. Thandiwe Nkomo is with us, executive coordinator of the Organization of Rural Associations for Progress in Zimbabwe, as well as Mariama Williams, economist working on gender and trade issues in the Caribbean. She is based in Jamaica. So, we have quite a map of the world.

Let’s begin with Jocelyn Dow. You’re here today. What does the World Trade Organization have to do with you?

JOCELYN DOW: Well, it has several things to do with me. First of all, as you know, WEDO has been working for many years on the whole sustainable development agenda from the Earth Summit. And, you know, people may have now discovered the WTO in Seattle, but those of us who were working on sustainable development signaled that the end of the Uruguay Round and the birth of the WTO would, in fact, put on the pressure not only people, but the environment and everything to do with sustainability since 1992. And we are coming — you know, one of the things that is very clear is that everything that the NGOs, women, environmentalists said would come to pass has come to pass. The WTO undermines life, sustainable life in every form, economic life, the life of the planet itself, health, in that it really takes control of all processes in nations and around the globe and makes them susceptible and subverts them to the profit agenda. So, it has been really a very important thing. And more directly, of course, for women, that women who are, in fact, the producers of much of the world’s agriculture, much of the world’s wealth, who are really very silenced and very invisible in many of our national and international data, are subjected to enormous pressures because of the WTO.

In the Caribbean, for instance, where I come from, the entire issue of bananas. As you know, bananas, the Caribbean has a relationship to its former colonizers. At the independence, we were given what were called preferential arrangements to deal with transition, in a sense, and to make our economies workable. Bananas became the secondary crop after sugar, for which the Caribbean was noted. And after Mr. Clinton came to power, having gotten, of course, funding from Chiquita, what happened is that our entire trade regime of our preferential tariff to Europe was taken to the WTO dispute panel to say that a preferential entry of bananas into the Europe was in fact a violation of the WTO rules. And interestingly enough, last night, our foreign minister from Guyana and our chief trade negotiator from the Caribbean was very clear in saying that if anything shows what the WTO is about, it is that action, because here was the U.S. government carrying to the dispute panel of the WTO a trade mechanism for a produce that is not produced in the United States, but represents the work of U.S. firms in Latin America — Dole, Chiquita and Del Monte. And as a result of that, many people in the Caribbean, many women, many farmers, are going to be out of work.

AMY GOODMAN: In fact, yesterday, members of the Caribbean and African delegation spoke. And your chief negotiator, the trade negotiator from Guyana, talked about what these negotiations mean.

SIR SHRIDATH RAMPHAL: I have a deeper concern. I’m concerned that a real tragedy is being played out in Seattle in a very important area of internationalism. This should not be a game about enhancing corporate profits. This should not be a time when big countries, strong countries, the world’s wealthiest countries, are setting about a process designed to enrich themselves. The WTO was designed to create fair trading conditions for the whole world.

JOCELYN DOW: Yes, that’s Sir Shridath Ramphal. He was, as you know, secretary general of the commonwealth for two terms. He was, at one time, the foreign minister of Guyana. He is an extremely experienced international negotiator and public official at the international level. And he was livid with rage at what he calls, really, and what we all believe is, this frank abuse of the small by the mighty for every single crumb on the table. It’s not about the size of the pie. They are willing to take the crumbs out of your plate.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I’d like to move on and ask Marta Benavides — you’ve come here from El Salvador, from the International Institute for Cooperation Among Peoples. How does the WTO impact upon the people of El Salvador? And what do you think has been accomplished this week throughout the process of the uprising of civil society?

MARTA BENAVIDES: I think the WTO is a kind of process. It’s a process that is affecting everybody in the world and the whole planet. But it’s also affecting those who are not born yet. It’s considered like the constitution for the new millennium, really. These are setting the basis of how we are going to relate amongst each other and with the planet and what’s going to happen with the quality of life of people and planet. So, from that perspective, it affects everybody.

In terms of El Salvador, what’s happening is that due to the peace efforts that we are making now in El Salvador, we really need a condition that is allowing us to have better quality of relations amongst ourselves. And with the WTO setting up a new world order, what’s happening is that there is a lot of instability in El Salvador. And right now, for example, the educational system has been affected so deeply that in El Salvador right now it’s vacation, because its vacation time is according to the coffee planting seasons. And so, people are picking coffee. The people are having to register their kids back in school. This is public school. And mothers are crying and very upset, because right now, due to this new world order, people have to pay 60 colones per month for each child, and they don’t have it, because the per capita income in El Salvador is still not more than $150 for those who have stable jobs.

And so, these are conditions that I think around the world we have to see, because it’s not a matter of rich countries and poor countries. It’s a matter of a process for enrichment and a process of impoverishment. And I think this is very, very important for everybody to know, because sometimes people in the North, they say, “This is the rich North, and we are very fortunate to be here.” I think that all of us have to think what’s going on, because what happens in the North affects the South, and vice versa. All these problems that we are seeing with nature, like, say, in North Carolina, are very much related to what for centuries has been going on in the unequal relations amongst nations.

AMY GOODMAN: Mohau Pheko of the African Trade Network in South Africa, specifically in South Africa, how does globalization affect women?

MOHAU PHEKO: I think that what we’ve seen is the undermining of the sovereignty of our state in terms of healthcare. We’ve seen how this has undermined, in fact, how the minister of health is unable to actually decide what sorts of AIDS drugs to purchase. We’ve also seen the dismantling of the textile and clothing industry, where thousands of women have lost jobs. And for every job that is lost, five to 10 people are affected by this. We’ve also seen a movement of women into the informal sector. We’ve also seen the lack of decision-making by our governments in terms of having to sell their rights to multinational corporations in the municipalities, where now there’s the sale of water, the sale of electricity, the sale of telephone companies, and at a very accelerated rate.

But I think that also what has been interesting about these negotiations in terms of Africa as a whole is the disempowerment of our governments right here at the WTO and their inability to actually access any crumbs, as somebody was saying, off the table. And this has left a lot of people disillusioned about the whole system and wondering whether we should even stay in these negotiations.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s interesting you should raise that. Though the
negotiations are led by a woman, Charlene Barshefsky, the U.S. trade representative, it is overwhelmingly men who are the trade ministers and the delegations. And you’re from South Africa. We also have a guest today from Zimbabwe, and it was one of the Zimbabwean NGOs who, though, was part of the delegation, the nongovernmental organization, who made an interesting comment about where, for example, countries from Africa and the Caribbean fit in.

YASH TANDON: There are serious concerns being expressed right now, as we are — as we’re meeting now, in various delegations from Latin America, Caribbean and Africa, who are taking note of the fact that they are being integrated into the process of globalization, being integrated without their having to have a say into the manner in which they are being integrated. In African saying, they say that you cannot have your hair combed in your absence. And Africa is finding that Africa’s hair is being combed without Africa’s being present there. This is what is happening.

AMY GOODMAN: Thandiwe Nkomo, you’re executive coordinator of the Organization of Rural Associations for Progress in Zimbabwe, a grassroots movement of some one-and-a-half million people, dedicated to eliminating all forms of rural poverty in Zimbabwe. Africa is getting its hair combed in its absence?

THANDIWE NKOMO: Yes, I do agree with Yash Tandon, because all these negotiations are done under the carpet, and we are not involved. Our governments are undermined. And we’re still, the grassroots people, who have alternatives, are not listened to. As far as I’m concerned, WTO does not want to listen to us. They are interested in enriching corporations, because we have had experiences where alternative systems work at the grassroots level and whereby we have tried to forge ahead with food security. WTO takes us back into depending on food aid. And I work with small-scale farmers. What they want is WTO to cut subsidies for exporting countries, so that they don’t kill the agricultural industry in our countries.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, but one of the interesting things that’s happened in the American press in this past week is how President Clinton has been portrayed as the good guy who is trying to bring reform to the WTO, but that the governments of the Third World are basically saying, “No, no, we don’t want labor rights. No, we don’t want more stringent controls on pollution and on the environment,” and that, in essence, that it is the nations of the Third World that are holding back the United States from reforming the body.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s interesting you should say that, because the Guyanese trade minister, who’s leading the negotiations, when asked about this point, said, “Hey, wait a second. You look at where this government has come from and where the leaders in Guyana, for example, have come from. We are from the trade union movement.” Jocelyn Dow, you, too, are from Guyana.

JOCELYN DOW: Yeah, I think, you know, Clinton, I think, is just smoke and mirrors. And really, one of the things that you are absolutely convinced of when you are here is that what a line is fed. You know, all the emotive issues are raised. You know, “We are for clean water.” “We are for clean this.” “We are for, you know, child labor — non-child labor.” And, in fact, quite the opposite obtains in country. They are forcing you into levels of work and labor that have never been part of our history or economy, just a survival mechanism. So, people are involved in survival mechanisms.

Let’s take, for instance, they talk about — let’s say you have — in Ghana, we had a very interesting case. We had a large gold mining company, Cambior, which is a Canadian company that came in. And there was this huge spill of cyanide some years ago into our water. And it was very interesting, the negotiations, when we looked at it, because one of the things that you saw was that, in fact, the standard for the water quality from the mine says it should be no different than a river in Quebec. But who the hell drinks water out of the river in Quebec? You know? So that you will find that you can have standards in negotiations that are so irrelevant. But you see, if you said now, “We need water quality so that people and Indigenous people who drink directly from the river, and that is our environmental standard,” let us say, that can then become a barrier to trade, because you are imposing a national condition on a company that is — would become a violation in the WTO.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined by Mariama Williams, economist working on gender and trade in the Caribbean with the organization Dawn Caribbean and the Institute for Law and Economics in Jamaica. You’re here to talk about equity in the World Trade Organization. Specifically in Jamaica, how does it play out?

MARIAMA WILLIAMS: Well, I think it’s — the broad issue for us is that the trade liberalization has differential impact on men and women, in the same way it has differential impact on rich countries and poor countries, that these rules that are being created are being created from the standpoint that they’re reinforcing existing inequalities and inequities in the economic system and that they redound on people’s livelihood. And for us, women are, in particular, located in many economies in a precarious way. And so, in trade rules, such as reducing tariffs or giving foreign firms national treatment, those will impact on women who are small business microenterprises very differently. A huge company coming from the U.S., getting the same special — getting the same treatment as a government who may have set aside a program to help women achieve economic empowerment, would have to now reduce or eliminate that program and open that space up to a big multinational corporation as to a small microenterprise woman. And we’re saying that these things need to be addressed. The fact that the GATT — the WTO is now going into public services puts at risk water, healthcare, libraries, education. All of the things that we are fighting for in the women’s movement as basic equity issues for women and poor people around the world are at risk with these extended negotiations.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s a very important point, this issue of public service, privatizing public services. When I was at this conference with Michael Moore, the director-general of the World Trade Organization, and John Sweeney, head of the AFL-CIO, one of the labor activists, interestingly enough, the only woman who spoke out at this session, talked specifically about that issue of where this involves women, because it’s the public sector and these services.

MARIAMA WILLIAMS: And women also are predominantly workers in the public sector and in services. In the Caribbean, more and more of the jobs are in services, clerical, data processing and so forth. So that we need to really ensure and protect the vulnerable in this process. And the vulnerable is the Global South, but within the Global South and within the Global North, the most vulnerable are women, women and children. And so, we need to really pay attention that the trade policy — again, people think it’s just simply about imports and exports, but the trade policy actually impacts domestic policy. It impacts the budget that the government has. It impacts labor market processes and policies. So it has very tremendous impact with people’s life at very fundamental level. It is not an academic issue. And it’s simply not about things as removing barriers to trade. It links to everything in an economy, and that’s the point we’re trying to make.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, of course, as we have remarked often on Democracy Now!, the United Nations has reported that two-thirds of all the trade conducted in the world today is conducted between multinational corporations, and one-third of all the trade in the world today is intra-company trade of multinationals. It’s Ford Motors in Brazil shipping parts to Ford Motors in the United States. So, obviously, when you’re talking about reducing tariffs, you’re talking about lowering the cost of business for multinationals.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, this has been all too short. We do have to wrap up. And if anyone wants to give a website or a way that people get in touch with your organizations, let us know now. We will come back to you. This has been a remarkable week also in the fact that the kind of networking that has gone on here. I talked to some farmers yesterday, just on the corner, from the Midwest, and I said, “Were you at the meeting that President Clinton had with some farmers?” And they said, “No, we were meeting with European family farmers, African family farmers, Asian family farmers.” It’s that networking that may be the biggest accomplishment of the thousands of protesters that have come out this week. Any websites or phone numbers?

JOCELYN DOW: Yeah, I’ve got —

AMY GOODMAN: Jocelyn Dow?

JOCELYN DOW: WEDO@wedo.org. And we have just done a primer on the WTO called “A Gender Agenda for the WTO.”

AMY GOODMAN: And at our website, www.democracynow.org, you can get any of the other women’s contact information, and you can also get it, I bet, from the WEDO website at www.WEDO.org. I want to thank you all for being with us, Jocelyn Dow of Guyana, Mohau Pheko of South Africa, Marta Benavides of El Salvador, Thandiwe Nkomo of Zimbabwe, Mariama Williams of Jamaica. Thank you very much for joining us. You are listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!

When we come back, we will talk to activists who come straight from outside of the Seattle jail negotiating with the mayor’s office. You’re listening to Democracy Now!’s Battle in Seattle live. Stay with us.