Big Crowd Says Hell No to the WTO!

Ten years after the Battle of Seattle, two thousand came together on a cold windy Saturday in Portland to once again say Hell No to the WTO.

Spearheaded by the Oregon Fair Trade Campaign and Jobs with Justice and backed up by 75 labor, environmental, immigrant rights and social justice organizations, the D5 mobilization against the WTO was a great success. People came from throughout Oregon and the Northwest.  JwJ Chapters in Eugene, Bend, Southern Oregon and Salem as well as Portland were well represented.

The March and rally were loud and spirited.  Teamsters and turtles were back together again as the Teamster truck led the march with protesters dressed in turtle outfits close behind.  Union locals and other organizations marched behind their colorful banners while radical cheerleaders and a rousing drum corps led us in chants and cheers. Like 1999, large puppets were sprinkled throughout the crowd.  And a contingent of unemployed workers marched behind an “Organize the Unemployed” banner

The action highlighted the role “free trade” has played in the loss of jobs, environmental destruction, “forced” migration and the erosion of workers’ rights in the developed world and super exploitation of workers in the rest of the world. 
 
In noting the link between trade and the current economic crisis, Tom Chamberlain, president of the Oregon AFL-CIO, told the crowd “What’s needed in response to the economic crisis are good-paying jobs, comprehensive banking regulations and a social safety net that Americans can count on when times get hard. WTO policies continue to pose a serious threat to all those things,” He went on to say “We said it ten years ago, and we’ll keep on saying it until the message is heard: we need to end the WTO’s failed policies. Business-as-usual trade agreements are no longer acceptable.”

At the rally, Ken Allen, Executive Director of AFSCME Council 75 fired up the crowd and talked about his travels to China as part of a Port of Portland delegation.  Ken related the story of how one of the Chinese reps meeting with the delegation bragged about how US manufacturers relocating plants in China wouldn’t have to worry about those pesky unions.  The rep didn’t know that the delegation included labor leaders.  Ken asked to talk with the president of a union “representing” the workers at one of the factories visited.  The leader told him that the function of unions was social.  Ken described the role of unions in the US to the Chinese union leader which the leader found very interesting.

With the climate talks coming up in Copenhagen, one rally speaker described how the WTO and other trade agreements place significant limitations in addressing the issue of climate change.

The D5 Mobilization against the WTO march and rally was part celebration and part protest.  We were there to protest the attempt by the corporate big boys and their government allies to further expand the WTO and its job killing, democracy trashing, race to the bottom agenda.  And we were there to celebrate and reenergize the movement of movements that came together in Seattle 1999 to carry on the fight for a just and sustainable economy.

Ten years ago, thousands of us from Portland and throughout Oregon traveled to Seattle to say Hell No to the WTO.  Portland Jobs with Justice was probably the only organization heavily involved in both the labor march and the civil disobedience that eventually shut down the WTO.  This led to the collapse of talks from which the WTO expansion drive has never recovered.