San Jose Mercury News
December 3, 1999
By Elsa C. Arnett

Momentum: 1960s-style tactics, 1990s tech bring `globalism' down to the streets.

Police in full riot gear. Thousands of protesters gasping amid billowing white clouds of tear gas. Bloodied faces. Shattered store windows.

The images of disorder in Seattle this week evoked for millions of Americans eerie memories of the turbulent 1960s, when anti-Vietnam War protests and the struggles of the civil rights movement seared the nation.

But the deftly organized protests against the World Trade Organization summit were not, in fact, an echo of a tumultuous decade, historians say, but rather a groundbreaking campaign that will propel grass-roots activism and civil disobedience into the new century.

When the pepper spray dissipates, the sea-turtle advocates remove their cardboard shells and the human chain untangles arms and goes home, the protesters will have delivered at least one message: A lot of ordinary people are willing to challenge the intimidating domain of the global economy.

"The protesters managed to put squarely on the agenda the question of labor rights and environmental rights in a way that it can no longer be ignored by the American government," said Nelson Lichtenstein, a social historian at the University of Virginia.

"This was historic, cutting-edge," said Richard Flacks, a sociologist at the University of California-Santa Barbara, who helped form the radical 1960s anti-Vietnam War group Students for a Democratic Society. Flacks said the WTO protesters are nudging the public to look at the global economy through a new lens, much as the women's movement forced a reconsideration of beauty pageants, and just as everyday neighbors of nuclear power plants sounded the alarm on the trade-offs between atomic energy and public safety.

"Economics, especially global economics, has typically been seen as something that concerns business people, bankers and financiers," said Timothy Koechlin, an economist at Skidmore College in New York. "But (the protesters) have succeeded in making people realize that making corporations accountable for the waste they generate is an economic issue as well."

By dispatching 50,000 activists, hijacking the WTO meeting and stunning Seattle and much of the viewing world, the protesters connected their concerns about labor-law abuses, environmental destruction and human rights violations with eroding wages and shrinking benefits for labor in the United States. This message will go to many who may have given no thought to how the global economy affects their lives.

"Now it's not hard to put the pieces together," said Koechlin, "and it's a story that seems to sell pretty well to people."

Often stymied

Kevin Danaher, co-founder of the San Francisco-based human rights group Global Exchange, which was active in organizing the WTO protest, said his group often was stymied in getting its message across to the general public. One reason, he said, is that the message is critical of corporate power, and big corporations control most of the media.

"It was like trying to preach capitalism in Cuba," Danaher said. Elated after returning from Seattle, he said: "I think we've changed the course of history. Now President Clinton is saying that the perspective of the protesters should be considered. That is something that never would have happened before."

Many young protesters seemed most interested in attacking the consumerism pushed by big business.

"We shop like it's a sport because we're trying to fill the void," said Lisa Sontag, a student from New York, speaking before a large circle of protesters assembled at a downtown Seattle street corner. "We buy because there is a lot of pain and emptiness in our society. I want to work toward a world where there's real community, where people everywhere have a genuine concern for each other."

Despite the violence that marred the message, most protesters thought the word was trickling out.

Mark Westlund, a spokesman for the San Francisco-based environmental group Rainforest Action Network, said, "I was eating breakfast in a downtown diner this morning, and on both sides of me, there were people talking about the WTO and the concerns of the protesters."

Speaking from his cell phone in Seattle, Westlund explained, "If I am connecting in a way that the guy sitting in the diner at 6:30 in the morning is talking about something I care about, then I've done a good job." Paul Loeb, the Seattle-based author of the book "Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time," said he recognized cashiers from his neighborhood grocery store, local carpenters and local airline pilots as he waded through the protesters.

"They may not know every single detail of the WTO process, but they know that they've got some serious concerns," Loeb said, "and that was enough for them to take a sick day, or find some other way to leave work and make their presence known here."

While even those who support the goals of the demonstrators condemned the destruction by self-proclaimed anarchists, their aggression may have helped amplify the anti-WTO message.

"It could well be that the (majority of) protesters get more of a hearing than they would have gotten before all of the chaos," said Todd Gitlin, a professor of culture and sociology at New York University and author of "The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage."

No one is suggesting that the WTO protests carry the same gut-level emotional power or historical significance as the anti-war or civil rights struggles. But observers say the anti-WTO activists made a swift breakthrough into the mainstream consciousness.

So how did it happen?

The WTO protesters' successful formula had one foot in the past and one in the future. They relied on traditional tactics that served activists of previous generations: tight organization, committed members, weeklong training sessions on non-violent civil disobedience.

They also had a new weapon: technology. The Internet and e-mail enabled the predominantly small, non-profit groups with tiny budgets to orchestrate a massive protest among thousands of people in the United States and abroad. It also provided a link among about 150 chapters of various groups scattered on college campuses across the country.

Electronic organization

When the protesters finally converged in Seattle, cell phones and pagers were instrumental in coordinating and moving huge groups of people to specific intersections and blocking streets. Video cameras and digital cameras were key in feeding the latest images of police tactics to numerous Web sites.

"Technology was critical in making this all come together," said Danaher, of Global Exchange, noting that there are more than 1,000 e-mail messages awaiting him at his computer.

And not to be overlooked is another time-honored tactic in which groups with different agendas form unprecedented, unusual and sometimes uncomfortable alliances.

"The linking of groups that have rarely been in coalition before -- like labor and the environment -- is a real breakthrough in social movements in American history," said UC-Santa Barbara historian Flacks.

Gitlin, of NYU, said that by working together, "they were able to crack the silence that surrounds these issues. It will reverberate and send a signal to the world."

The main challenge confronting protesters now is how to maintain momentum. Various groups say they will use their newfound visibility to shame corporations and foreign governments into stopping human rights, labor and environmental abuses. They also hope to step up pressure on the U.S. government.

But they say it will take time, patience and commitment to make changes in world trade from the bottom up.

"Many people think that (civil rights pioneer) Rosa Parks one day just decided to sit in the front of the bus," said Loeb, author of a book on activism. "What they don't know is that she had spent the past 12 years working with the local NAACP chapter, learning about civil disobedience and preparing for that very moment."