Differences between sixties' protests and the Seattle demonstrations
Epstein, Barbara
THE UNEXPECTED size and militance of last year's mobilization against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle, the police attack on overwhelmingly nonviolent demonstrators, the tear gas in...
...The debate over the powers of the WTO stands in for differences over whether the defense of democracy requires a strengthened nation-state or is best pursued by new international organizations...
...The war in Vietnam was being conducted by liberals in power who defended it with their own cold war rhetoric...
...Young people of color also may have doubts about consensus politics in the context of a majority white movement...
...The WTO has enormous power over the policies of not only its member nations but any COMMENTS & OPINIONS nation that hopes to be admitted to the circuits of global trade...
...One of the contributions of the movements of the sixties was to expose the hollowness of cold war liberalism...
...If the Seattle mobilization was behind the movements of the sixties in respect to racial diversity, it was ahead of those movements in age diversity...
...THERE IS ONE difference between the Seattle mobilization and the movements of the sixties, especially the antiwar movement, that weighs against the prospects of a new mass movement...
...Radicals in the direct action movement and left-leaning environmental and human rights groups argued that the WTO should be abolished...
...THE EDITORS J O DISSENT / Spring 2000 COMMENTS & OPINIONS the importance of radical history...
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...history...
...The movements of the sixties were almost exclusively movements of young people in their teens, twenties, or at most early thirties...
...In fact there are major differences between the two, and many of those differences are to the advantage of the new movement...
...They are rarely enthusiastic about forgoing whatever opportunities they may have...
...it is unlikely that these will be set against each other again...
...Young people in particular could not ignore it...
...But it was the liberals who were the focus of the movement's attack...
...This would require that the WTO become more responsive to labor and other popular movements, and that its ties to corporations be loosened...
...The war in Vietnam forced itself on the attention of the American people...
...But the groups concerned with trade and international issues are overwhelmingly white, as is the direct action movement...
...Check all your figures, dates, names, etc.—they're the author's responsibility...
...But since the end of the war in Vietnam the divisions between progressive groups and labor, and for that matter among progressive groups, have weakened the left and allowed the right to dominate public discourse...
...The subculture associated with direct action encourages aloofness from corporate culture, if not dropping out...
...There is no guarantee that these views will spread, but the fact that there is a youth culture that holds such values is one of the most encouraging lessons of the Seattle mobilization...
...the Seattle mobilization was directed against the global corporations...
...There has not been a laborleft alliance in the United States since the thirties, when communists and socialists played a major role in organizing the Congress of Industrial Organizations and leftists, liberals, and trade unionists joined forces in demanding greater rights for poor and working people...
...The most important difference is that movements of the sixties, especially the antiwar movement, were directed against the state...
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...Many of those who took part in direct action in Seattle are part of a youth subculture that opposes corporate power, and capitalism generally, because it has created a society in which virtually everything has become a commodity...
...Together they put sufficient pressure on the government to shift the New Deal to the left...
...The willingness of trade unionists to ally themselves with young radicals suggests that the days when the fear of association with the left can be used to divide a movement may be over...
...Each of the movements in the anti-WTO coalition included people of a range of ages, but the fact that most of the blockaders were young, and the larger numbers of middle-aged people among the labor and mainstream environmental organizations, meant that the mobilization was not only a coalition of organizations but an alliance of generations...
...Please use inclusive language so that we don't have to make adjustments during editing...
...Many left activists of the sixties understood that the state was intertwined with the corporations...
...The movements of the sixties had something of the same effect despite rifts with labor and liberals, because their critiques of the war, and of racism and sexism, struck responsive chords, especially among youth...
...The left/liberal/labor alliance of the thirties created a national political culture in which there was room to promote egalitarian values...
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...But despite these problems, the movement's view of the liberal state as the enemy made sense...
...The growth of corporate power has not yet created the sort of crisis that thrusts whole sectors of the population into collective action in the way that the war did...
...If an anticorporate movement emerges from Seattle, it seems likely that young people will be at its forefront but that it will include people of all ages...
...But the debates among opponents and critics of the WTO over what should be done with it also stand in for disagreements with broader ramification...
...The Seattle mobilization linked labor and environmental demands...
...Look at our last few issues to see if your idea fits in...
...Clinton's aides quickly denied that he meant what he had said, but his waffling added to the legitimacy, and no doubt the influence, of the protest...
...The differences in Seattle over what should be done with the WTO and global corporations were friendly and fluid...
...Over the last few decades the division between the rich and everyone else has widened, and most people have found themselves working longer hours, in many cases at less secure jobs...
...Today's progressive movements may not come together as easily...
...But the union participation in the Seattle mobilization was largely white, and the environmental and direct action groups were even whiter...
...The second major difference between the mobilization in Seattle and the movements of the sixties, especially the antiwar movement, is that the former involved a coalition between progressive groups, including young radicals, and labor, while labor was for the most part absent from the movements of the sixties, and supported the war in Vietnam, creating the deepest rift with its progressive sometime allies in U.S...
...more mainstream environmental and human rights organizations, and trade unionists, argued for reforming the WTO...
...There were young people of color among the blockaders, but on the whole they tend not to be drawn to this movement...
...Some among these groups want the powers of the WTO restricted...
...In Seattle, relations among trade unionists, environmentalists, and direct actionists seem to have been governed by a spirit of respect and mutual support that I do not remember from the sixties...
...Though at first Oglesby and others carefully distinguished between the liberal rhetoric used 8 n DISSENT / Spring 2000 by the state to manipulate popular consent and the authentic liberal values of reformers, as the war in Vietnam expanded and anger at the government rose, these distinctions tended to slip away...
...DISSENT / Spring 2000 n I I...
...I N THE SIXTIES, especially as anger about the war intensified, differences between radicals and liberals tended to be hostile and divisive, with each side digging in its heels...
...THE COALITION that opposed the WTO in Seattle was held together by a common perception of global corporations as the main threat to environmental standards, labor and human rights, and to democracy generally...
...The Seattle mobilization, with its well-orchestrated collaboration between trade unionists and young radicals, contrasts sharply with the attack by construction workers on a New York antiwar march in May 1970...
...The mobilization in Seattle holds out the hope, for the first time in decades, of a broad and potentially powerful coalition for a more egalitarian social order...
...Those who participated in the Seattle mobilization are not likely to forget that acting in coalition enhances collective power...
...Many of the people whom I talked with, from labor, mainstream environmental movements, and the direct action movement, agreed that no one has the answer to the question of how the global economy should be reorganized, and discussion of these issues must continue...
...The impact of the mobilization resulted from the combination of two kinds of nonviolent protest: the blockade by the direct actionists, which delayed the beginning of the ministerial conference and brought media attention, and the labor march, which demonstrated the breadth of opposition to the WTO and lent the tactics of the young radicals legitimacy...
...There were differences among the various constituencies in Seattle over how far the critique of the corporations should go, and what solutions should be proposed to growing corporate power...
...The question of what demands the movement should make on the WTO has important consequences...
...The movement demanded that the state ensure equal rights...
...The Vietnam War brought together a range of progressive movements previously concerned with separate issues...
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...It is tempting for those of us old enough to remember that period to see in the Seattle mobilization, and whatever may follow it, an opportunity to replay the movements of the sixties...
...These young people want community, and they want meaningful lives in the context of an egalitarian society...
...In the streets of Seattle people felt what it is like to be part of a movement...
...And please remember that we can't consider articles unless they're accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...And there was substantial participation by public sector unions such as the Service Employees and private sector unions such as the Hotel and Restaurant Workers, both of which are quite diverse...
...In the sixties, relations between young radicals and trade unionists tended to range from edgy to confrontational...
...The exhilarating spirit of solidarity among DISSENT / Spring 2000 n 9 COMMENTS & OPINIONS the protesters in Seattle was not only a response to the police attack but also an expression of the ties built between labor and environmental groups over several years of joint opposition to free-trade legislation...
...Antiwar activists began to use "liberal" as a term of abuse and to measure their own radicalism by how far they had moved from their own recenGy liberal politics...
...the International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU) shut down the West Coast ports, from San Diego to Vancouver, in support of the protest...
...Others, including many union people, want the WTO strengthened, so that it can enforce labor standards across national boundaries...
...BARBARA EPSTEIN teaches in the history of consciousness department at the University of California, Santa Cruz...
...The movement's tendency to cast radicalism and liberalism as polar opposites made alliances between radicals and liberals difficult...
...Among others, it brought together northern white students and black activists, many of them veterans of the civil rights movement, around a shared opposition to the war...
...The tactics of the radical and the more mainstream groups were complementary...
...Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange, a left-leaning human rights organization in San Francisco, argues that the movement must drive a wedge between the state and the corporations, and put pressure on the state to defend democracy against corporate power...
...THE UNEXPECTED size and militance of last year's mobilization against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle, the police attack on overwhelmingly nonviolent demonstrators, the tear gas in the air, all invite comparisons with the movements of the sixties, especially the antiwar movement of the late sixties and early seventies...
...On the one hand, the WTO functions as a metaphor for the global corporate order as a whole, which the radicals want to dismantle, and which others hope can be brought in line with democracy...
...The environmental movement, once virtually all white, now has an environmental justice wing that is composed predominately of people of color...
...With the exception of a small number of young people given disproportionate attention by the media, these groups were united not only by their opposition to WTO and their anger at corporate power but also by their commitment to nonviolence...
...The trade unions brought the most racial diversity to the WTO protest...
...In the sixties, the civil rights movement blamed the U. S. government for the discrepancy between democratic rhetoric and the denial of the rights of citizens to blacks...
...Radical intellectuals traced corporate influences on government policy...
...The enmity of sixties radicalism to the liberal state had some unfortunate side effects...
...The ILWU is one of the nation's most racially diverse unions, due both to the number of African Americans and others who joined in the years after World War II and to a left leadership that has emphasized To Our Contributors A few suggestions: (1) Be sure to keep a copy of your manuscript...
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...But the large amounts of money that some people earn have led many to fasten their hopes on upward mobility and construct lives oriented around consumption...
...Trade unionists put on sea turtle costumes...
...in 1966 Carl Oglesby, then president of the Students for a Democratic Society, described the system that the movement opposed as "corporate liberalism," and pointed out that liberals in power were pursuing policies designed to protect the interests of corporations...
...The Seattle mobilization drew protesters from high school students through seniors, with the largest numbers in their teens through middle age...
...This approach was exemplified in Seattle, where President Clinton felt compelled to move from statements expressing vague support for the protesters to a call for a code of labor rights and sanctions against nations that violated them...
...The mobilization also drew on a widespread anger at the WTO and the corporate power that it represents, attracting many more protesters than the sponsoring organizations had expected...
Vol. 47 • April 2000 • No. 2
