The Historic Significance of Seattle.

• Author: Shiva, Vandana
• Position: World Trade Organization protests

The failure of the WTO Ministerial meeting in Seattle was a historic watershed. It demonstrated that globalization is not an inevitable phenomenon which must be accepted at all costs but a political project which can be responded to politically. 50,000 citizens from all walks of life and all parts of the world were responding politically when they protested peacefully on the streets of Seattle for four days to ensure that there would be no new round of trade negotiations for accelerating and expanding the process of globalization.

Trade Ministers from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean were responding politically when they refused to support a "contrived" consensus since they had been excluded from the negotiations being undertaken in the "green room" process behind closed doors. As long as the conditions of transparency, openness and participation were not ensured, developing countries would not be party to a consensus. This will make bulldozing of decisions difficult in future trade negotiations.

The rebellion on the streets and the rebellion within the WTO have started a new democracy movement--with citizens from across the world and the governments of the South refusing to be bullied and excluded from decisions in which they have a rightful share.

Seattle had been chosen by the US to host the Third Ministerial conference because it is the home of Boeing and Microsoft, and symbolizes the corporate power which WTO rules are designed to protect and expand. Yet the corporations were staying in the background, and proponents of free-trade and WTO were going out of their way to say that WTO was a "member driven" institution controlled by governments which made democratic decisions.

WTO has earned itself names such as World Tyranny Organization because it enforces tyrannical anti-people, anti-nature decisions to enable corporations to steal the world's harvests through secretive, undemocratic structures and processes. The WTO institutionalizes forced trade, not free trade.

The WTO tyranny was apparent in Seattle both on the streets and inside the Washington State Convention Center where the negotiations were taking place. Nonviolent protesters including young people and old women, labor activists and environmental activists and even local residents were brutally beaten up, sprayed with tear gas, and arrested in hundreds. The intolerance of democratic dissent, which is a hallmark of dictatorship, was unleashed in full force in...