His current issue is the chief organizing center today of incipient American fascism. The fair trade anti-WTO protests provide him an opportunity to get a broader hearing within the working class and recruit to the Buchanan brigades shock troops eventually to be turned against the labor movement. The WTO has nothing to do with promoting free trade or the development of oppressed nations. It is a vehicle used by Washington, as the dominant imperialist nation, to organize trading policy in a world of capitalist disorder, with intensified competition and rising tensions. There is no better alternative within the framework of capitalism.
Labor needs to chart an independent working-class course.
Instead of fair trade protests against the WTO, it must champion international solidarity and back working-class struggles against U.S. bosses. Along this road a transformed labor movement can forge an alliance with farmers to fight for a workers and farmers government that can put an end to capitalism and build a society based on human needs not profit. In the Port of Seattle race, our campaign has stressed backing strikes and protests by workers and farmers that are taking place now in the United States and abroad. In office, our priorities remain the same. Puget Sound port drivers struck last summer to demand union recognition and a living hourly wage.