About Resistance to the WTO

Derail DOHA, Save the Climate*

david — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:38:04 -0500

There’s something surreal about the ongoing World Trade Organization talks in Geneva, which aim at coming up with a new agreement to bring down tariffs in order to expand world trade and resuscitate global growth. In the face of the looming specter of climate change, these negotiations amount to arguing over the arrangement of deck chairs while the Titanic is sinking.

Indeed, one of the most important steps in the struggle to come up with a viable strategy to deal with climate change would be the derailment of the so-called “Doha Round.”

Copenhagen: Seattle Grows Up

david — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:05:41 -0500

by NAOMI KLEIN

This article appeared in the November 30, 2009 edition of The Nation.
November 11, 2009

The other day I received a pre-publication copy of The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle, by David Solnit and Rebecca Solnit. It's set to come out ten years after a historic coalition of activists shut down the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, the spark that ignited a global anticorporate movement.

Lessons for Copenhagen from Seattle via Addis Ababa

david — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 01:50:21 -0500

By Patrick Bond

23 October 2009

The decade since the Seattle World Trade Organisation (WTO) fiasco taught civil society activists and African leaders two powerful lessons. First, working together, they have the power to disrupt a system of global governance that meets the Global North’s short-term interests against both the Global South and the longer-term interests of the world’s people and the planet.

Second, in the very act of disrupting global malgovernance, major concessions can be won.

Seattle + 10: Time to declare our independence from Wall Street.

david — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 01:05:28 -0500

by David Korten
posted Jul 15, 2009
At this stage of history, one of two things is possible: Either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community interests guided by values of solidarity and sympathy and concern for others, or alternatively there will be no destiny to control.
—Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent

Seattle WTO Ten Years: Global/Local Days of Action: Nov 27 - Dec 5, 2009

david — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 01:01:54 -0500

Our World is NOT for Sale!

Grassroots activists and organizations around the globe are planning local, regional and international actions/events to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the WTO demonstrations in Seattle, the 7th WTO Ministerial in Geneva (Nov 30-Dec 2), and the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (Dec 7-18)
http://www.wiserearth.org/group/seattle10

Why Seattle Still Matters: 1999 WTO Protests Exposed Deep Flaws in Global Capitalism That Remain Unaddressed

david — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:05:03 -0500

By John Tarleton
From the November 20, 2009 issue of the Indypendant

It was still pitch dark outside and a thin, cold mist was in the air when the affinity groups charged with blockading Sixth Avenue and Union Street met for the last time. Scouts reported that the coast was clear. Sitting in the wooden pews of an old downtown Seattle church we reviewed our target once more. After days of nervewracking preparation, we were ready to do our part to shut down the World Trade Organization (WTO).

SEATTLE WTO SHUTDOWN 9 YEAR ANNIVERSARY: 5 LESSONS FOR TODAY

david — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 13:24:24 -0500

By David Solnit
November 30, 2008

What lessons can we learn from the shutdown of the 1999 WTO
Ministerial in Seattle 9 years ago today and from the last decade and
a half of global justice organizing as we face today's major crises
under an Obama Administration? This was the question a group of
organizers from different parts of the last decades of global justice
organizing responded to last week at a forum in New York City put
together by Deep Dish TV, an independent video/media pioneer. Here are
my thoughts.

Nine years ago today:

Let's Renegotiate NAFTA and the WTO Agreement

david — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 20:57:22 -0500

By Mark Weisbrot, AlterNet
September 30, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/101027/

INDIA'S NARMADA VALLEY PEASANTS OPPOSE WTO

david — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:15:15 -0400

While people power takes over Seattle:
Rally in Anjad, India with Hundred Bullock Carts

NARMADA VALLEY PEASANTS OPPOSE
WTO AND GLOBALISATION

By Sanjay Sangvai, Dec. 2, 1999

The Impact of the “Battle In Seattle”

david — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:53:51 -0400

by Mark Engler

The 1999 protests against the WTO were dramatic enough to inspire a new feature film, but did they actually make a difference?

Nine years after the World Trade Organization came to Seattle, a new feature film sets out to dramatize the historic protests that the institution’s meetings provoked. The issue that Battle in Seattle filmmaker Stuart Townsend seeks to raise, as he recently stated, is “[what it takes] to create real and meaningful change.”