They also came to prepare for days, months from now, when it will be cold and dark and wet. It's historic . . . That's Michael Dolan speaking, field organizer for the Washington, DC-based Naderite group Public Citizen. If Dolan has his way, the opening talks of the Seattle Round of World Trade Organization consultations, set for November 29 to December 3 this year, will be a benchmark, a huge protest of corporate dominance of the global economy that will give politicians pause and CEOs cold sweats. The WTO represents over 100 countries in an unprecedented effort to globalize commerce.
Advocates see it as a means of boosting the world's economy by bringing down trade barriers.
Instead of donating money to the cause of organizing 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. This month, 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 organizing efforts under way. There will be teach-ins and alternative conferences and press conferences and rallies and marches and blockades galore. Farm groups like the Northern Plains Resource Council, Western Sustainable Agriculture, the Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy, and the Campaign to Reclaim Rural America will be bringing outrage.