The city government has officially welcomed the 3,000 delegates to the World Trade Organization meeting, who like conventioneers everywhere are stoking the local economy with liberal spending on food, drink and hotel rooms. Yet it's also temporarily renaming a downtown street for a day Pine Street will be Union Way to honor labor union members who will parade down it Tuesday to protest much of what those delegates are doing. Perched on the world's economic growth machine, the Pacific Rim, few cities in the world depend on trade like Seattle. Economists estimate that one in three jobs in the city of 750,000 depends on it. Yet, with a long history of social activism, few cities are better stocked with groups that by tradition distrust trade as the system is now constructed old-style Democrats, labor union members and environmentalists.
Local politicians suggest that anyone who lives in Seattle understands there's no contradiction.
People here like trade, they just want it to have a benevolent face to respect workers and the environment. We all need to be pushing for human dignity, human rights. Today, some protesters occupied a vacant building, while several others climbed a tall construction crane downtown to unfurl a banner. At lunch time, several thousand people staged a noisy parade through downtown. Police were out in force, some on bicycles and horses, some wearing armor and shin guards for riot duty.