What the anti-WTO movement means and where it can go
Does the Western anti-WTO movement represent all the world's people who are affected by the international trading system? Probably not.
When anti-World Trade Organisation protesters took to the streets in Seattle more than two years ago, the confrontations made headlines around the world. Broadcast on television, the protests became a sort of live theatre, where a global audience watched ideological demonstration, police confrontation and looting unfold in a prosperous Western city. 'Seattle' itself became a term that brought together all the emotions that were supposed to be rallied against an organisation pushing through an international trading system that many see to be unfair for the world's poor. But where amidst a sea of white Americans were the world poor in the demonstrations? Where were the brown and black faces? And was throwing a rock at a Starbucks café or a McDonald's the proper response to a world economic system becoming increasingly rapacious?
The Seattle theatre which played itself out in November 1999 had a number of central actors, who surfaced later in Genoa and Davos and Quebec, but the most visible among them were the young participants who energised the protests. Visible, because that is what the television anchors found most appetising for ratings. Given centre stage by the media, these Seattle protesters were unusual for being predominantly young, white Americans, advocating policies supposedly benefiting developing countries. Retrospectively, these protestors seem to have been marching for a cause in which they held no personal stake. How much did they understand the impact of the system on a hill terrace farmer in Nepal, or a peasant along the Andhra Pradesh coast? By default, the students and dropouts at Seattle were stand-ins for the world's poor.