They came to hear the true believers fire them up over global trade issues. They also came to prepare for days, months from now, when it will be cold and dark and wet. That's Michael Dolan speaking, field organiser for the Washington, DC-based Naderite group Public Citizen. If Dolan has his way, the opening talks of the Seattle Round of World Trade Organisation consultations, set for 30 November to 3 December this year, will be a benchmark, a huge protest of corporate dominance of the global economy that will give politicians pause and CEOs cold sweat. The WTO represents over 100 countries in an unprecedented effort to globalise commerce.
Advocates see it as a means of boosting the world's economy by bringing down trade barriers.
But opponents believe the WTO is systematically gutting worker, consumer, and environmental protections, and deliberately usurping the rights of each country to make its own laws - especially when those laws might conflict with trade. Instead of donating money to the cause of organising against the trade meetings, the CTC has donated Dolan, who has spent much of the spring and summer meeting with community activists and lining up logistical support. In August, the CTC opened a storefront operation downtown that will work until December to help coordinate protests. And that's only one of the anti-WTO organising efforts under way. There will be teach-ins and alternative conferences and press conferences and rallies and marches and blockades galore.