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MUMIA ON WTO PROTESTS

Just another form of imperialism

The following is exerpted from an article written by political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal from death row.

The specter of tens of thousands of workers, environmentalists, human -rights activists and anarchists seizing the streets of Seattle was a stirring sight indeed. Their opposition to the antidemocratic, corporation-heavy World Trade Organization earned them the enmity of the corporate media and the vocal condemnation of corporate politicians.

The WTO, the successor organization to the GATT-General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, functions as a virtual shadow government, in fact a super-government, that rides roughshod over the national and state concerns seeking to protect the wages of workers, insure environmental standards, and protect collective bargaining gains.

To the extent that the WTO consists of a collection of governments, it in fact protects corporate interests: the primary interest of capital, over and above all other interests. In this context, the demonstrations were a welcome and powerful corrective, expressing the views of the many, not protecting the interests of the few.

Much can be said about the much-maligned anarchists that rocked the mid-city by attacking the shimmering edifices of capital. The press leaped at the opportunity to call them "thugs" or "hooligans" who were involved in "violence." What is missing from the reportage, of course, is that those young folks attacked property, not other beings.

Meanwhile, the state, through its police, attacked persons, kicking them, gassing them, beating them and jailing them. What, one wonders, is the greatest form of "violence"? But, in the world projected by the corporationist media, state violence isn't real violence. Only individuals who are unaffiliated with the state can therefore be truly violent.

What madness!

The WTO is the unelected, privately dominated body that undermines democracy by its very existence. And all must submit to this economic power, despite local, national and/or regional laws to the contrary. For the only "law" that they respect is the primacy of profit. Capital makes the rules; labor dances to their tune.

Consider, how very quickly (overnight in fact!) Seattle cops created what was termed a so-called "Protest Free Zone" in the very heart of a major American city, to "protect" the interests of foreigners, diplomats and businessmen, of some 50 square blocks! A "protest free zone" is by necessity a "First Amendment-Free Zone," with the word "free" meaning as little as the term used in discussing "free trade."

In what part of the United States does the U.S. Constitution not apply? In whose interest was this cordon sanitaire established? The citizens of Seattle, or the moneyed gentry of global capital?

Seattle revealed the fault line underlying the lie of the great economic "miracle" of the 1990s. It revealed the justifiable fears and anxieties at the heart of millions of American workers. It revealed who politicians work for. It revealed the nature of the police. It can, it should be, a beginning.

Copyright © 1999 workers.org