AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!, Resistance Radio. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we go to KUOW, which is a Seattle public radio station. It is early in the morning there, and students and a teacher have gathered from Seattle’s Nova High School, and they’ve issued a challenge to the Seattle media who covered the meetings last week of the World Trade Organization and the protests outside. These students are taking a class on economic globalization, and they were in the streets.

We’re joined now by their teacher, Joe Szwaja, a social studies and government teacher at Nova High School in Seattle; Savahn Rosinbum, who is a 12th grade student in Joe Szwaja’s class; and Nicole Bade, who is an 11th grader also taking the class.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now!

JOE SZWAJA: Thank you, Amy. Good to be here.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I’d like to begin with Joe Szwaja. During the protests in Seattle, I ran into several students from Nova High School. In fact, they told me that about half the high school had turned out for the protests and that they had all been studying the World Trade Organization for months and knew about the protests for quite some time. What’s been going on at Nova High School that so many students are much more aware than a lot of our political leaders?

JOE SZWAJA: Well, thank you. Well, we are a small, democratically run high school in Seattle, so students have a lot of input and say over what’s taught. And some students were very interested in studying about the WTO, because it seemed like it was this huge thing that was going to come to Seattle. And I felt that since it was an organization and issue that affects everybody so much around the world, that we should study it. So we have taken the last few months to look at it in detail, look at the issues of substance with respect to the WTO. And we also incorporated street theater into it. We had the students learn about how to make puppets and how to do a street theater fashion show, illustrating some of the issues of the WTO.

So, yeah, after studying it for a few months and inviting people from both sides to a teach-in, our students were part of the very peaceful protest on Monday. They exhibited their very large street theater with puppets and also did a fashion show about some of the — we called it a sweat — “no sweat” fashion show. It had a little play about the sweatshop practices around the world, but also positive alternatives that people can buy, where they can buy things that are not as exploitative to workers. That happened on Monday. On Tuesday — and that was part of the class, officially, I should say, our presentation.

On Tuesday, when we knew it was going to be a lot more sticky, I was there as a private individual. I wasn’t there officially as a Nova teacher. But our students had learned a lot about it, and many of them were there. And I was there with them, trying to keep it as peaceful as possible. And, you know, I was proud of how our students had really studied a lot about it and knew a lot about the issues — more, judging from the media coverage, than perhaps some of the reporters, I think, they knew. And I was proud of how peaceful they were.

AMY GOODMAN: Savahn Rosinbum, what happened to you on Tuesday morning? Where did you go? And why were you in the streets?

SAVAHN ROSINBUM: Well, I went down with the students’ rally. First we went through Garfield and tried to get as many kids out there, out from that school, as we could. And then we went down to the all-school student rally, marching through the streets for at least a couple miles to downtown and joined up with the AFL-CIO march. After that — 

AMY GOODMAN: There was an all-schools protest?

SAVAHN ROSINBUM: Yeah, there was an all-school student rally. College students and high school students and even middle school students joined together, marching through the streets, making music, chanting. And then we went downtown and heard from students all around the world speaking of why they were protesting the WTO.

AMY GOODMAN: And then what happened, Nicole Bade?

NICOLE BADE: Well, at that point, I had prepared a street theater. I’m a member of DAN, the Direct Action Network, and so I’d been using some of their facilities. And we did our street theater, and it got a really, really great reception. This was up at Seattle Central Community College.

AMY GOODMAN: What did you do?

NICOLE BADE: And then — it was a street theater of the devil and us playing cards and betting poker chips that had, you know, various things on them, such as dolphins. So, the game went something like, “I see your dolphins and raise you sea turtles.”

JOE SZWAJA: Though, may I add, there were huge devil puppets, Amy. They were just gigantic. And they were featured in media reports from a lot of European stations who really liked them.

NICOLE BADE: And then we left that monument of the cards and the poker chips and went down, because I was in an affinity group that was — we had one puppet, and we were giving aid to people who were in lockdown down at the blockades. And we’d heard that some of the blockades were having a lot of trouble. So, then, we went down and helped them and helped a couple people block a freeway underpass, and just made sure that everyone was OK and was in good spirits. And —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this would have been around what time in the afternoon on Tuesday?

NICOLE BADE: This was actually in the morning.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Oh, in the morning. OK.

NICOLE BADE: We were — yeah, we were a flying affinity group until about 1:00, I believe, and then we decided to go down to the march and see what was going on there.

AMY GOODMAN: And what happened when you were on the frontlines and — you were near the Sheraton Center. Is that right? That’s where a lot of the delegates were, and it was right next door to the convention center that the delegates were trying to get into.

NICOLE BADE: Yes. What happened? Well, basically, people would link arms, or they had high-tech blockades, which — it’s metal tubing that you put your arms through, and you have a carabiner. Well, I won’t go into exactly how it works. But people were blocking the roadway, and in many cases, the delegates were very, very supportive and understanding. There were a couple cases where people got violent, and I had to calm down the situation, because I was a peacekeeper. And that was kind of difficult, a 16-year-old girl holding back big guys who are two feet taller than her. But — 

AMY GOODMAN: When did the — 

NICOLE BADE: — I was successful.

AMY GOODMAN: When did the police start tear-gassing?

NICOLE BADE: They had actually been tear-gassing since, I believe, 8:00 in the morning. And they’d been shooting rubber bullets and macing. That actually isn’t a very well-known fact. However, they didn’t start tear-gassing en masse until, I believe, 2:00 in the afternoon, when a few windows got broken up on 4th.

AMY GOODMAN: Joe Szwaja, you got attacked by the police. What happened? What was the scene where you were?

JOE SZWAJA: Well, I had just left Borders bookstore, where some people had — I had thought I was done protesting for the day and then trying to account for the students that I saw there. And I was coming out of Borders, where some people had gotten gassed there, and the tear gas had entered, then we had to leave the bookstore. So, I was trying to meet my wife across the other side of downtown Seattle, and there were a group of people that were yelling at the police and throwing things at them and, apparently, about to confront them. And there was a guy who was trying to peacefully stop them. He apparently knew some of them, was trying to dissuade them from doing this, and seemed to be able to do that. I went over there to try to help him, because it seemed like it was a really potentially bad situation. And he had his arms raised and was probably about 25, 30 feet in between the protesters and the police. As he was doing that, the police came over to him and struck him very hard in the stomach with his — when his hands were raised, with a billy club. And I tried to stop them from doing that, and they hit me on the arm with a billy club. Luckily, another police official — actually, told me later he was from the Navy, which amazed me, but he came and was able to dissuade them and tell them, “These guys are trying to stop the violence. Don’t you see?” And he took us away. I’m really thankful that he did. But it was very much an unprovoked act of violence on their part.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this occurred around what time in the day? Because —

JOE SZWAJA: That time, that was about 5:30. That was — things were really getting bad around that time. Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Right. That was right around the time, as I recall, when things really got out of control, and the police unleashed — because they had been unleashing tear gas since, as one of the students said, early in the morning. And I remember around noon at the Sheraton — 

JOE SZWAJA: Yes.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — being overcome by some tear gas. But it didn’t really get completely out of hand until around early evening.

JOE SZWAJA: That’s right. It got worse later in the day. And, you know, most of the protesters, you know, are students, and most of the protesters that I saw were, of course, very, very peaceful and trying to get out issues of substance. And, you know, we really felt like the media didn’t cover the issues of substance at all. They just — and later on, they, fortunately, did cover more of the police violence, which is a really big issue, but earlier on, they were sort of linking the protesters with some of the people who just committed violence, who were a very, very small percentage of the folks involved.

NICOLE BADE: There were about 30 of them.

JOE SZWAJA: Exactly. So, you know, we wanted to do this quiz as a way of trying to get out some of the issues of substance that the media didn’t seem to cover hardly at all.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s talk about this quiz. Again, we’re talking with a teacher and two students from Nova High School, a public high school in Seattle: Joe Szwaja, the teacher; Savahn Rosinbum and Nicole Bade, the students. Savahn, we are looking at a 10-question quiz that you have for the media about the World Trade Organization. Why the media?

SAVAHN ROSINBUM: Well, the media are who tend to inform the public. The people who weren’t at the protests were sitting at home watching it on TV. And judging by the media, you would think that it was some crazy riot downtown, whereas I, when I was downtown, found it to kind of have the elements of some sort of party almost. There were people in the streets dancing. There was tear-gassing going on, but a lot of people were just supporting the people who were doing peaceful, nonviolent lockdowns or barricades. And so, we wanted to get the issues that the people were down there protesting out of the media. And so we chose to do a quiz to try and see if the media knew what they were talking about when they were covering this enormous event.

AMY GOODMAN: What are some of your questions?

SAVAHN ROSINBUM: Well, one of our questions, the first one, is: What is the potential effect of WTO rulings on U.S. laws and policies and those of countries around the globe?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And some others?

NICOLE BADE: The second is: Name at least three examples of how the WTO rulings have already affected U.S. laws or policies.

JOE SZWAJA: Are we allowed to give the answers?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes.

JOE SZWAJA: OK. You guys want to give the answers to the first two that you started with?

SAVAHN ROSINBUM: Well, the potential effect of the WTO rulings on U.S. laws and policies is to obsolete them, to make them not relevant. It’s overturning our laws. It doesn’t have to do that, but it has the possibility and the power to do that, which I think wasn’t really brought out in the media, that our democracy and our power to make laws regarding our lives could be overturned by this large organization that isn’t really accountable to us.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And some examples of those rulings?

NICOLE BADE: One example is the sea turtle issue, which basically the U.S. had a ban on shrimp that was caught without sea turtle safety devices, because sea turtles are endangered species. And that was challenged in the WTO, and we were found to be in violation of free trade. And so, that law was overturned. And another example is the Clean Air Act, which was not — it was not overturned, but it was drastically changed. And another example is dolphin-safe tuna.

AMY GOODMAN: And in that case, the same situation?

NICOLE BADE: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s your third question?

JOE SZWAJA: OK, I’ll read that one. The third one is: Roughly how many cases have been decided so far by the WTO’s dispute resolution panel?

AMY GOODMAN: How many?

JOE SZWAJA: The answer we got from researching that with Public Citizen was about 25 have been totally decided so far, and that kind of leads into number four, which I’ll read, as well. In cases considered by the WTO so far in which claims have been made charging that government laws or policies are barriers to trade — for example, ones relating to the environmental or consumer safety standards — how often have the claims been upheld? And we said that on this one we will allow the media to answer either with the absolute number of cases or just with the percentage. You guys want to give the answer to that?

SAVAHN ROSINBUM: Well, 100% of the claims of the challenges to laws have been upheld.

AMY GOODMAN: Which means — 

SAVAHN ROSINBUM: In all the —

AMY GOODMAN: — the laws have been overheld? That means —

SAVAHN ROSINBUM: The laws have been overturned, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Overturned, uh-huh. Well, what we’re going to do is we’re going to take your 10 questions, and we’re going to post them on our website at www.democracynow.org. We encourage people to go to it. It also has lots of articles and links to other organizations that put out information on the WTO. Did you get a chance to ask these questions of the corporate media?

JOE SZWAJA: We started. We called some of them yesterday, Amy, and we’re going to fax out the news release today and call them all, and we’re going to invite them to our class, and which is on Thursday. We’re also giving them the option to vote over the — to answer the questions over the phone. And we have a one-time offer of a ribbon and a certificate of mastery for them. We don’t have grades at our school, but we will give them, you know, some kudos if they can pass it. And we hope they educate the public about it, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m interested in question number 10. Can you read that? I don’t know the answer to it.

JOE SZWAJA: You want to read that, Nicole?

NICOLE BADE: In order to attend the welcoming dinner at Seattle’s Exhibition Hall and meet the WTO delegates, people were required to make a donation of blank, if they wanted to meet with the delegates in order to benefit the WTO. In order to actually meet with the delegates, it was a donation of $50,000.

JOE SZWAJA: Yeah, there was —

AMY GOODMAN: Minimum.

JOE SZWAJA: — a sliding scale of $5,000 to $250,000 to come in. But I guess to actually meet them, they had to pay $50,000.

AMY GOODMAN: So, were any of you kids there?

SAVAHN ROSINBUM: Well, that’s just not the kind of money my job makes.

JOE SZWAJA: Yeah, I asked them if they could — if they could postdate a check, but they said no.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to — I’d like to ask Nicole: Where do you go from here, after this enormous display of popular dissent? Where do you go from here?

NICOLE BADE: Well, actually, a lot of us are healing right now and trying to figure that out. I know a lot of people who were really, really traumatized by the police brutality and also the media’s failure to cover any of the issues, even when you had about 100,000 people out there talking about them, and we actually shut down the World Trade Organization for one day through direct action. There’s going to be meetings held in Seattle with the Direct Action Network. And we’re trying to figure out — I think there will be a lot of small protests, and potentially one annual large one, or something like that. But there will be a lot of lobbying involved.

AMY GOODMAN: Savahn — 

NICOLE BADE: So, Congress — oh, sorry.

AMY GOODMAN: I just wanted to ask Savahn — we have about 10 seconds. Has this last week changed your life?

SAVAHN ROSINBUM: Definitely. I just felt so much energy down at the protests, and I think that’s going to stay with me forever, to try and continue to promote these issues and make them known and to change them.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you all for being with us, Joe Szwaja, the social studies and government teacher of Nova High School, and his students, Savahn Rosibum, 12th grade, Nicole Bade, 11th grade. Again, we’ll post on our website at www.democracynow.org. We have a lot of people to thank, including Doug Paterson of KUOW, Mark Torres of the Pacifica Archives, Mike Dolan and Margareta and the staff at Global Trade Watch of Public Citizen, who arranged for us to be at the United Methodist Church of Seattle, the International Media Center, and particularly the Independent Media Center. Democracy Now! is produced by María Carrión and David Love. Errol Maitland is our technical director. Matthew Finch is our engineer today. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Thanks for listening.