WTO weekend: A success in Pittsburgh and Cancun : Pittsburgh Indymedia

WTO weekend: A success in Pittsburgh and Cancun
by wheatpaster Friday, Sep. 26, 2003 at 12:06 PM

On September 10th to 14th, while the wealthy corporate elites from the U.S. and European Union were attempting to strong-arm third world countries in a secretive conference in Cancun, Pittsburgh held events to expose the agenda of the World Trade Organization.

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During the opening events of the fifth ministerial conference of the WTO, over 10,000 anti-globalization protestors, mostly agricultural workers, circled the processions in Cancun in an attempt to stop the meetings from taking place, or in the least bring attention to the exploitive agenda. During the demonstration, Lee Kyung-hae, president of the Korean Advanced Farmers Federation used a Swiss army knife to stab himself in the chest in traditional ritual suicide. Mr. Lee had a humble background, as he came from a family who suffered through rural poverty. After having struggled as a poor farmer for many years, Mr. Lee became involved in activism as an advocate for farmers. In his own words, Mr. Lee described the WTO as a source of "waves that destroyed our lovely rural communities.� He was 56 years old.

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As the conference took place on September 12th, The Thomas Merton Center�s Stop the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement (FTAA) campaign and the Pittsburgh Organizing Group (POG) hosted a public forum on the WTO in David Lawrence Hall at the University of Pittsburgh. Gerald Thomas of Clarion College explained the motivation behind the GATT: �The collapse of the stockmarket in the 30�s created a reason for U.S. institutions to gain more power over the world economy. These institutions (GATT and WTO) were born to ensure a certain kind of capitalism survived� which undermine and ignore third world nations development.�

Steve Donahue pointed to a Post-Gazette headline to underscore the goal of structural adjustment: �Economy is up but so is the Number of Poor�.

�Neo-liberals undo public services through fees for services,� he said, �which the poor must pay. Libraries, EMTs, Police are cut, collective bargaining undermined, public college not funded, user fees added for water, sewage, and garbage collection.�

This basic concept of the neo-liberal agenda was supported by Matt Richards of United Electrical Workers Union, Dan Kovalik attorney with the USWA, and John Laczny of SEIU.

Richards reported that the unemployment rate is at roughly 10% in the United States when those who are discouraged from work are factored in. Jobs which were once in the U.S. are now in Mexico, where the hourly rate of pay has plummeted more than 40% since U.S. corporations were given access to the workforce in 1991. �We cannot pit U.S. workers against workers internationally, said Richards, �Organized labor must organize beyond borders.�

Dan Kovalik stressed the military�s role in the WTO and corporate globalization. �Argentina, a country with killed its workers for organizing, was once held up as a model country for following neo-liberalism. That is why the world was shocked when the economy collapsed.�

Kovalik went into more depth of the violent ends to which corporations will influence the military to ensure profit into the third world: �Columbia, who receive the third highest amount of U.S. aid, killed 184 trade union leaders just last year� Their paramilitary share ammunition, troops, and intelligence under our assistance.�

Laczny focused on the structural adjustment at home, with the incredible increases in out of pocket spending for health care U.S. workers have been subjected to. �Our health care system is a virus to the rest of the world,� said Laczny, stressing that structural adjustment cannot succeed here at home in order to keep it from being pushed onto other countries, �our health care model is the classic Imperialist model of capital export.�

Dr. Jim Dwyer, a professor of Bioethics at U. of Pitt, was in agreement that defeating a neo-liberal health care system at home was the best way to combat our current international health care crisis. As corporations dislocate and divide families in the third world for labor, prostitution goes up, and in turn, AIDS is spread. As �basic health measures� are trimmed back through structural adjustment, U.S. medical companies have unregulated power over the price for medications. �Health companies actually sued South Africa for breaking WTO rules by giving out medical supplies,� reported Dwyer. The stark contrast between rich and poor countries can be found in maternal mortality rates during childbirth: �In Sweden, 5 out of every one million pregnant mothers do not live. In Mozambique, one in every one hundred die. India is second to South Africa due to the growing AIDS crisis.�

Outside of the forum, members of the Stop the FTAA campaign and POG passed out fliers on the buss trip to Miami, Florida on November 20th to 21st to protest the FTAA, and the conjoined mobilization to Fort Benning, Georgia on the 22nd and 23rd to protest the School of the Americas (SOA). With the connections between the �alphabet soup� of corporate entities and social movements more closely defined, everyone was encouraged to mobilize the next day at Carlow College to stand in solidarity with nearly 100 other cities aourond the world demonstrating against the WTO.

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On September 13th, St. Agnes Church was rocking to the sounds of the band Ouve and the dancing of an eight-foot �fat cat� puppet. People held signs reading �McGreedy�, �Taco Bell Exploits Farm Workers� and �Exxon and WTO: Living in Iraq, Married in Qatar�. The Tritus Family Singers, also known as Etta Cetera and Ann Delusia, sang the true folktale of water wasted in the U.S. and its privatization by Bechtel in South America.

Tricia Murajda, an instructor in the Sociology Department at Pitt and a contributing organizer of the event, spoke of Authentic Labor Front, one of the only independent unions in Mexico who secured the only secret ballot in Mexico�s history, drove 26 hours to get to Cancun. They mobilized because indigenous peoples are being kicked off their land so that big corporations can take over: �What doesn�t fit into their perfect �rational� free-hand-of-the-economy equasion, are the concepts of justice compassion and a respect of humanity and our natural environment.�

Edith Wilson of the Western PA Coalition to Close the SOA talked of the �muscle behind corporate globalization� the School of the Americas. �Since Turkey did away with all the Kurds, they don�t need funding for a paramilitary anymore. Now that funding is going to train paramilitary in South America.� She further explained the products of Fort Benning lessons in �torture tactics� include the al Qaeda, General Noriega, and Saddam Hussein, and the executioners of Archbishop of San Salvador Oscar Romero. Beth Shepherd spoke on behalf of the Stop the FTAA campaign, asking for the crowd to get on the bus to Miami and Georgia in November.

David Meieran of United for Peace and Justice as well as a contributing organizer of the event, explained corporations in our own backyard are responsible for these actions made in the WTO. Exxon/Mobil, just one of the corporations who decide on the U.S. positions in the World Trade Organization, were targeted in the speech: ��An unabashed supporter of free-trade, (Exxon/Mobil) was the second largest contributor to the Bush campaign. Their profits have since quadrupled, while it is estimated that the occupation will cost every American household $1,000 over the next year� We will be marching to a few corporations that exemplify the links between globalization, environmental devastation, militarism, and the denial of basic human rights to immigrants, working people, and the poor.�

Activists left St. Agnes Church on a creative �Tour of Greed�, stopping at an Exxon/Mobil station, a Starbucks, Blockbuster, McDonalds, and Taco Bell. Activists of all ages carried signs, shouted into a megaphone, and carried a coffin to symbolize the deaths WTO regulations have caused. While police surrounded marchers throughout Oakland, the marchers remained on the sidewalk and squarely focused on their adversary: the businesses behind corporate-managed global trade.

Besides Exxon/Mobil, Starbucks was targeted for their mistreatment of the agricultural workers who grow coffee at substandard wages, as well as use of milk containing a Bovine Growth Hormone, which has high risks of cancer.

Viacom, owner of Blockbuster Video and a corporation with a seat on the U.S. WTO panel, are seeking regulations that label laws which stimulate media diversity, localism and the public interest as �barriers of trade�.

McDonald�s were targeted for promoting low wages to workers and discouraging unionization while pushing low quality �junk food� to the world, with a CEO who speaks openly of �Global Domination�.

Taco Bell refuses to take responsibility for its Florida tomato growers, who treat tomato pickers slightly better than prisoners. Their genetically modified taco shells contain corn deemed unfit for human consumption.

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The systematic devastation of agricultural workers and the environment as exemplified by Taco Bell were the focal point of WTO talks throughout the fifth ministerial conference. The meeting on September 14th, the final day of the conference, talks completely collapsed. The United press International reported: �The seeds of failure were sown in the past year and a half with the passage of the U.S. farm bill and the failure by the European Union meaningfully to tackle the farm subsidies enshrined in the Common Agricultural Policy.�

CNN reported: �Delegates from many poor countries celebrated Sunday what they called a victory against the West, and an increasingly powerful alliance of poor but populous farming nations said they had found a new voice to rival the developed world. �The developing countries have come into their own,� said Malaysia's minister for international trade and investment, Rafidah Aziz. �This has made it clear that developing countries cannot be dictated to by anybody.��

In Pittsburgh and on the streets of Cancun, activists rejoiced. In a time of increasing unemployment and structural adjustment in Pittsburgh as well as throughout the U.S., activists must embrace each hard earned victory. �It�s a great thing that the WTO meetings were generally unsuccessful,� said Murajda, �but on the horizon we have the FTAA and Plan Pueblo Panama, so it�s important to continue to stand in solidarity with those resisting and voice our resistance from our locality.�