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1. The WTO Is Fundamentally Undemocratic
The policies of the WTO impact all aspects of society and the
planet, but it is not a democratic, transparent institution. The
WTO rules are written by and for corporations with inside
access to the negotiations. For example, the US Trade
Representative gets heavy input for negotiations from 17
Industry Sector Advisory Committees. Citizen input by
consumer, environmental, human rights and labor
organizations is consistently ignored. Even simple requests for
information are denied, and the proceedings are held in secret.
Who elected this secret global government?
2. The WTO Will Not Make Us Safer
The WTO would like you to believe that creating a world of free
trade will promote global understanding and peace. On the
contrary, the domination of international trade by rich countries
for the benefit of their individual interests fuels anger and resentment
that make us less safe. To build real global security, we need
international agreements that respect peoples rights to democracy
and trade systems that promote global justice.
3. The WTO Tramples Labor and Human Rights
WTO rules put the rights of corporations to profit over human
and labor rights. The WTO encourages a race to the bottom in
wages by pitting workers against each other rather than promoting
internationally recognized labor standards. The WTO has ruled
that it is illegal for a government to ban a product based on the
way it is produced, such as with child labor. It has also ruled that
governments cannot take into account non commercial values
such as human rights, or the behavior of companies that do
business with vicious dictatorships such as Burma when making
purchasing decisions. The WTO has more power to punish
countries that violate its rules than the United Nations has to
sanction violators of international human rights standards.
4. The WTO Would Privatize Essential Services
The WTO is seeking to privatize essential public services such as
education, health care, energy and water. Privatization means
the selling off of public assetssuch as radio airwaves or schools
to private (usually foreign) corporations, to run for profit rather
than the public good. The WTOs General Agreement on Trade
in Services, or GATS, includes a list of about 160 threatened
services including elder and child care, sewage, garbage, park
maintenance, telecommunications, construction, banking,
insurance, transportation, shipping, postal services, and tourism.
In some countries, privatization is already occurring. Those least
able to pay for vital servicesworking class communities and
communities of colorare the ones who suffer the most.
5. The WTO Is Destroying the Environment
The WTO is being used by corporations to dismantle hard-
won local and national environmental protections, which are
attacked as barriers to trade. The very first WTO panel ruled
that a provision of the US Clean Air Act, requiring both domestic
and foreign producers alike to produce cleaner gasoline, was illegal.
The WTO declared illegal a provision of the Endangered Species
Act that requires shrimp sold in the US to be caught with an
inexpensive device allowing endangered sea turtles to escape. The
WTO is attempting to deregulate industries including logging,
fishing, water utilities, and energy distribution, which will lead
to further exploitation of these natural resources.
6. The WTO is Killing People
The WTOs fierce defense of Trade Related Intellectual
Property rights (TRIPs)patents, copyrights and
trademarkscomes at the expense of health and human lives.
The WTO has protected for pharmaceutical companies
right to profit against governments seeking to protect their
peoples health by providing lifesaving medicines in countries
in areas like sub-saharan Africa, where thousands die every
day from HIV/AIDS. Developing countries won an
important victory in 2001 when they affirmed the right to
produce generic drugs (or import them if they lacked
production capacity), so that they could provide essential
lifesaving medicines to their populations less expensively.
Twelve Reasons to Oppose
the World Trade Organization
The World Trade Organization is writing a constitution for the entire globe. The trade ministers and corporate
CEOs who control the WTO would like you to believe that its purpose is to inspire growth and prosperity for all.
In reality, the WTO has been the greatest tool for taking democratic control of resources out of our communities
and putting it into the hands of corporations. An international movement is growing to oppose the corporate rule
of the WTO and replace it with a democratic global economy that benefits people and sustains the communities
in which we live. And importantly, we are winning!
Unfortunately, in September 2003, many new conditions
were agreed to that will make it more difficult for countries
to produce those drugs. Once again, the WTO
demonstrates that it favors corporate profit over saving
human lives.
7. The WTO is Increasing Inequality
Free trade is not working for the majority of the world. During
the most recent period of rapid growth in global trade and
investment (1960 to 1998) inequality worsened both
internationally and within countries. The UN Development
Program reports that the richest 20 percent of the worlds
population consume 86 percent of the worlds resources while
the poorest 80 percent consume just 14 percent. WTO rules
have hastened these trends by opening up countries to foreign
investment and thereby making it easier for production to go
where the labor is cheapest and most easily exploited and
environmental costs are low.
8. The WTO is Increasing Hunger
Farmers produce enough food in the world to feed everyone
yet because of corporate control of food distribution, as
many as 800 million people worldwide suffer from chronic
malnutrition. According to the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, food is a human right. In developing
countries, as many as four out of every five people make
their living from the land. But the leading principle in the
WTOs Agreement on Agriculture is that market forces
should control agricultural policiesrather than a national
commitment to guarantee food security and maintain
decent family farmer incomes. WTO policies have allowed
dumping of heavily subsidized industrially produced food
into poor countries, undermining local production and
increasing hunger.
9. The WTO Hurts Poor, Small Countries in Favor of Rich
Powerful Nations
The WTO supposedly operates on a consensus basis, with equal
decision-making power for all. In reality, many important
decisions get made in a process whereby poor countries
negotiators are not even invited to closed door meetings and
then agreements are announced that poor countries didnt even
know were being discussed. Many countries do not even have
enough trade personnel to participate in all the negotiations or
to even have a permanent representative at the WTO. This
severely disadvantages poor countries from representing their
interests. Likewise, many countries are too poor to defend
themselves from WTO challenges from the rich countries, and
change their laws rather than pay for their own defense.
10. The WTO Undermines Local Level Decision-Making and
National Sovereignty
The WTOs most favored nation provision requires all WTO
member countries to treat each other equally and to treat all
corporations from these countries equally regardless of their track
record. Local policies aimed at rewarding companies who hire
local residents, use domestic materials, or adopt environmentally
sound practices are essentially illegal under the WTO. Developing
countries are prohibited from creating local laws that developed
countries once pursued, such as protecting new, domestic
industries until they can be internationally competitive. California
Governor Gray Davis vetoed a Buy California bill that would
have granted a small preference to local businesses because it was
WTO-illegal. Conforming with the WTO required entire
sections of US laws to be rewritten. Many countries are even
changing their laws and constitutions in anticipation of potential
future WTO rulings and negotiations.
11. There are Alternatives to the WTO
Citizen organizations have developed alternatives to the
corporate-dominated system of global economic governance.
Together we can build the political space that nurtures a
democratic global economy that promotes jobs, ensures that
every person is guaranteed their human rights to food, water,
education, and health care, promotes freedom and security,
and preserves our shared environment for future generations.
12. The Tide is Turning Against Free Trade and the WTO!
International opposition to the WTO is growing. Massive
protests in Seattle of 1999 brought over 50,000 people
together to oppose the WTOand succeeded in shutting
the meeting down. When the WTO met in 2001, the Trade
negotiators were unable meet their goals of expanding the
WTOs reach. The WTO met in Cancn, Mexico this past
September 1014, and met thousands of activists in protest
and scoring a major victory for democracy. Developing
countries refused to give in to the rich countries agenda of
WTO expansion - and caused the talks to collapse!
GET INVOLVED!!
*EDUCATE your community and connect with local
corporate issues through bringing speakers, videos, and books
like GXs Globalize This! The Battle Against the World Trade
Organization and Corporate Rule, available on our website.
*TRAVEL to Miami to protest the proposed Free Trade Area
of the Americas. Contact us at 415-255-7296 or
deborah@globalexchange.org to order an Action Pack and
check out www.globalexchange.org for more information.
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Published by the Working Group on the
WTO / MAI, July 1999
Printed in the U.S. by Inkworks, a worker-
owned union shop
ISBN 1-58231-000-9
The contents of this pamphlet may be
freely reproduced provided that its source
is acknowledged.
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this system sidelines environmental
rules, health safeguards and labor
standards to provide transnational
corporations (TNCs) with a cheap supply
of labor and natural resources. The WTO
also guarantees corporate access to
foreign markets without requiring that
TNCs respect countries domestic
priorities.
The myth that every nation can grow by
exporting more than they import is central
to the neoliberal ideology. Its proponents
seem to forget that in order for one
country to export an automobile, some
other country has to import it.
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What do the U.S. Cattlemens Associa-
tion, Chiquita Banana and the Venezu-
elan oil industry have in common? These
big business interests were able to
defeat hard-won national laws ensuring
food safety, strengthening local econo-
mies and protecting the environment by
convincing governments to challenge the
laws at the World Trade Organization
(WTO).
Established in 1995, the WTO is a
powerful new global commerce agency,
which transformed the General Agree-
ment on Tarriffs and Trade (GATT) into
an enforceable global commercial code.
The WTO is one of the main mecha-
nisms of corporate globalization. While
its proponents say it is based on free
trade, in fact, the WTOs 700-plus
pages of rules set out a comprehensive
system of corporate-managed trade.
Indeed, the WTO has little to do with the
18th Century free trade philosophy
developed by David Ricardo or Adam
Smith, who assumed neither labor nor
capital crossed national borders.
Under the WTOs system of corporate-
managed trade, economic efficiency,
reflected in short-run corporate profits,
dominates other values. Decisions
affecting the economy are to be confined
to the private sector, while social and
environmental costs are borne by the
public.
Sometimes called the neoliberal model,
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of its current rules before negotiating

new agreements.This booklet explains
what the WTO is, how it is damaging
the public interest, how corporations
and some governments want to expand
WTOs powers, and what you can do.
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The WTO is the international organiza-
tion charged with enforcing a set of trade
rules including the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT), Trade Related
Intellectual Property Measures (TRIPS),
General Agreement on Trade in Services
(GATS), among others. WTO was estab-
lished in 1995 in the Uruguay Roundof
GATT negotiations.
Prior to the Uruguay Round, GATT
rules focused primarily on tariffs and
quotas. Consensus of GATTmembers
was required to enforce the rules. The
Uruguay Round expanded GATT rules
to cover what is known in trade jargon
as non-tariff barriers to trade. These
are food safety laws, product stan-
dards, rules on use of tax dollars,
investment policy and other domestic
laws that impact trade. The WTOs
rules limit what non-tariff policies
countries can implement or maintain.
-
A global system of enforceable rules
is being created where corporations
have all the rights, governments have
all the obligations, and democracy is
left behind in the dust.
Now the worlds transnational compa-
nies want more a new Millennium
Round of further WTO negotiations
which would accelerate the economic
race to the bottom by expanding the
WTOs powers.
But this concepts failure goes beyond
this inherent sham: the lose-lose nature
of export-led growth was exposed in the
aftermath of the East Asian financial
crisis of 1998. When the IMF compelled
Asian countries to try to export their
way out of their crises, the U.S. became
the importer of last resort. U.S. steel-
workers lost jobs to a flood of steel
imports, while workers in Asia remained
mired in a terrible depression.
The neoliberal ideological underpinning
of corporate-managed trade is pre-
sented as TINA There Is No Alter-
native an inevitable outcome rather
than the culmination of a long-term
effort to write and put into place rules
designed to benefit corporations and
investors, rather than communities,
workers and the environment.
The top trade officials of every WTO
member country are meeting in Seattle
at the end of November. If you havent
bought the public relations campaign on
TINA and want to help change the
rules, join your fellow citizens on the
Road to Seattle and Beyond. To start
with, the WTO must assess the effects
Currently there are 134 member countries
in the WTO and 33 nations with observer
status. Officially, decisions in the WTO
are made by voting or consensus. How-
ever, developed countries, especially the
so-called QUAD countries (U.S., Canada,
Japan and the European Union), repeat-
edly have made key decisions in closed
meetings, excluding other WTO nations.
The WTOs lack of democratic process
or accountable decision-making is epito-
mized by the WTO Dispute Settlement
Process. The WTO allows countries to
challenge each others laws and regula-
tions as violations of WTO rules. Cases
are decided by a panel of three trade bu-
reaucrats. There are no conflict of inter-
est rules and the panelists often have little
appreciation of domestic law or of gov-
ernment responsibility to protect workers,
the environment or human rights. Thus,
it is not surprising that every single envi-
ronmental or public health law challenged
at WTO has been ruled illegal.
WTO tribunals operate in secret. Docu-
ments, hearings and briefs are confiden-
tial. Only national governments are al-
lowed to participate, even if a state law is
being challenged. There are no outside
appeals.
Once a final WTO ruling is issued, losing
countries have a set time to implement
one of only three choices: change their
law to conform to the WTO requirements,
pay permanent compensation to the win-
ning country, or face non-negotiated trade
sanctions. The U.S. official position is that
ultimately, laws must be changed to be
consistent with WTO policy.
C^5C C^5C C^5C C^5C C^5C: On behalf of its oil industry,
Venezuela challenged a U.S. Clean Air
Act regulation that required gas
refiners to produce cleaner gas. The
rule used the 1990 actual performance
data of oil refineries required to file with
EPA (mostly U.S. refineries) as the
starting point for required improve-
ments for refineries without reliable
data (mostly foreign). Venezuela
claimed this rule was biased against
foreign refiners and took the case to
the WTO.
KC5U|t KC5U|t KC5U|t KC5U|t KC5U|t: A WTO panel ruled against
the U.S. law. In 1997, the EPA
When the WTO was created, con-
cerned citizens and public interest
organizations warned that the combina-
tion of the WTOs pro-industry rules and
powerful enforcement would pose a
threat to laws designed to protect
consumers, workers, and the environ-
ment. Almost five years later, there is a
clear record: the cases settled under
WTO rules show the WTOs bias
against the public interest.
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changed the clean air rules to give
foreign refiners the choice of using an
individual baseline (starting point). The
EPA acknowledged that the change
creates a potential for adverse environ-
mental impact.
should have the right to enact laws that
support their choices. Instead, the WTO
empowers its tribunals to second-guess
whether health and environmental rules
have a valid scientific basis.
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C^5C C^5C C^5C C^5C C^5C: The U.S. challenged a Euro-
pean Union ban on the sale of beef
from cattle that have been raised with
certain artificial growth hormones.
KC5U|t KC5U|t KC5U|t KC5U|t KC5U|t: In 1998, a WTO appellate
panel ruled against the EU law, giving
the EU until May 13, 1999 to open its
markets to hormone-treated beef.
|v||C^t|CN |v||C^t|CN |v||C^t|CN |v||C^t|CN |v||C^t|CN: The ban on artificial
hormones applies equally to European
farmers and foreign producers. If
European consumers and governments
are opposed to the use of artificial
hormones and are concerned about
potential health risks or want to promote
more natural farming methods, they
|v|.|C~I|CN |v|.|C~I|CN |v|.|C~I|CN |v|.|C~I|CN |v|.|C~I|CN: Refiners from Venezuela
and other countries will use the indi-
vidual baseline option only if it gives
them a weaker starting point, and thus
lets them sell dirtier gasoline in the
U.S., which would deteriorate air
quality. The WTO gives businesses a
special avenue to challenge policies,
like the Clean Air rules, which have
withstood domestic challenges.
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C^5C C^5C C^5C C^5C C^5C: Four Asian nations challenged
provisions of the U.S. Endangered
Species Act forbidding the sale in the
U.S. of shrimp caught in ways that kill
endangered sea turtles.
KC5U|t KC5U|t KC5U|t KC5U|t KC5U|t: In 1998, a WTO appellate
panel decided that while the U.S. is
allowed to protect turtles, the specific
way the U.S. tried to do so was not
allowed under WTO rules. The U.S.
government is now considering ways
to change the law to comply with
WTO.
|v||C^t|CN |v||C^t|CN |v||C^t|CN |v||C^t|CN |v||C^t|CN: It is possible to catch
shrimp without harming turtles by
fitting shrimp nets with inexpensive
turtle excluder devices. U.S. law
requires domestic and foreign shrimp
fishermen to use turtle-safe methods.
The goal of saving turtles could be
undercut by the WTOs second-
guessing of how U.S. policy should be
implemented, given the most inexpen-
sive, effective means has been ruled
WTO-illegal.
7
C^5C C^5C C^5C C^5C C^5C: The U.S. argued that European
trade preferences for bananas from
former European colonies in the
Caribbean unfairly discriminate against
bananas grown by U.S. companies in
Central America.
KC5U|t KC5U|t KC5U|t KC5U|t KC5U|t: In 1997, a WTO panel decided
that European preferences for Carib-
bean bananas are WTO-illegal. The
EU proposed a new policy that the U.S.
claims still violates WTO rules. The
U.S. was granted authority by the WTO
to impose $200 million in trade sanc-
tions against European imports until the
EU changes the policy to suit WTO
demands.
|v||C^t|CN |v||C^t|CN |v||C^t|CN |v||C^t|CN |v||C^t|CN: The Caribbeans tiny
share of the EU market for bananas is
the major source of revenue and jobs in
some Caribbean nations where moun-
tainous terrain rules out other crops. If
Europe abandons its policy to comply
with the WTO, some 200,000 small
farmers in very poor countries could
lose their livelihoods.
Officials in small Caribbean nations
worry that implementation of the WTO
ruling will destabilize their economies
and democracies. The U.S. drug czar
noted that the policy change could
make these countries more vulnerable
to drug trafficking.
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Different countries and interests have
different agendas for the WTOs Seattle
Ministerial meeting. There are three sets
of issues: First, many WTO agreements
(Agriculture, Intellectual Property, Ser-
vices) have built-in reviews set for
specific time periods. These reviews do
not necessarily require new deregulation
talks. The second category includes
committments made at past WTO
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ministerial meetings to conduct future
negotiations on agriculture and ser-
vices. The key question that will be
resolved during this year is whether a
third category of new issues will be
moved into the WTO. Inclusion of
these new issues, such as invest-
ment, competition policy and govern-
ment procurement, would expand the
power of the WTO further than ever
before.
&e1~c &e1~c &e1~c &e1~c &e1~c cn&&M&~1e cn&&M&~1e cn&&M&~1e cn&&M&~1e cn&&M&~1e
R|PS /OREEMEN R|PS /OREEMEN R|PS /OREEMEN R|PS /OREEMEN R|PS /OREEMEN
The Trade-Related Intellectual Property
Agreement (TRIPS) sets enforceable
global rules on patents, copyrights and
trademarks.
The pharmaceutical industry exercised
heavy influence onTRIPS negotiations.
As a result, the final TRIPS pact
requires countries to adopt U.S.-style
intellectual property laws, such as
those granting monopoly sales rights to
individual patent holders for extended
time periods. TRIPS requires nations
like India, Argentina and Brazil to
abandon many policies that help them
to develop local pharmaceutical pro-
duction and make drugs affordable and
available to poor consumers.
Pharmaceutical companies hope that
new WTO intellectual property negotia-
tions will enable them to tighten the
rules even further, with developing
countries losing the modest options left
to make essential medicines, including
those for prevention and treatment of
HIV/AIDS, more available.
E SPS /OREEMEN E SPS /OREEMEN E SPS /OREEMEN E SPS /OREEMEN E SPS /OREEMEN
The WTOs Agreement on Sanitary and
Phytosanitary Standards (SPS Agree-
ment) sets constraints on government
policies relating to food safety (bacterial
contaminants, pesticides, inspection,
labeling) and animal and plant health
(imported pests, diseases).
The SPS agreement goes well beyond
forbidding discrimination between
domestic and foreign goods. It also sets
limits on the level of safety a country
can choose, even it applies it equally to
domestic and foreign goods. For
instance, the SPS rules undercut
countries use of the Precautionary
Principle, which calls for policies to err
on the side of precaution when there is
not yet scientific certainty about poten-
tial threats to human health and the
environment. The SPS rules, on the
other hand, err on the side of protecting
trade flows at all costs.
Beef Hormone. The Precautionary
Principle was eviscerated in the WTOs
Beef Hormone ruling. The SPS Agree-
ment puts the burden of proof on
countries to scientifically demonstrate
that something is dangerous before it
can be regulated. The WTO dispute
panel declared that the European Union
lacked sufficient scientific proof that
artificial hormone treated beef can
threaten human health. The EU must
eliminate the ban or face trade sanc-
tions.
Exotic Pests. Invasive exotic spe-
cies, such as the Asian Long-Horn
Beetle, are second only to habitat loss
2
Food Lobeling. The WTO declared an
obscure agency Codex Alimentarius
(an agency known to have a thick
corporate presence) as the arbiter of
food safety standards for the world. This
move was seen as a significant threat to
hard-won consumer protections. Even
worse, the Clinton Administration now
argues that SPS rules restrict a countrys
right to label products with information
that consumers care deeply about, such
as the production method (e.g. organic)
or genetic manipulation. This would
dramatically limit consumers right to
know.
as a cause of species extinction and
cost the U.S. economy approximately
$123 billion annually. Under SPS rules,
governments must prove that a particu-
lar pest or exotic species could be
harmful before applying safeguards
intended to keep it out. Yet scientists
agree that it is impossible to predict all
forms of damage posed by all insects or
pest plants. Without the precautionary
principle, forests have to be infested
and devastated by beetles before a
safeguard can be applied.
O/ O/ O/ O/ O/S S S S S: |N wSE SER\|CE? : |N wSE SER\|CE? : |N wSE SER\|CE? : |N wSE SER\|CE? : |N wSE SER\|CE?
Services, as in goods and services,
includes nearly all economic activity not
involving manufactured goods, raw
materials or farm products. Since
many services, such as patient care or
teaching, require person-to-person
interaction, it used to be almost a
truism that services would remain
localized. No longer. Today banking,
insurance, and data management have
all become part of the global economy.
Since 1987, U.S. services exports
have more than doubled, reaching
$239 billion last year.
- U.S. Dept. of Commerce
The General Agreement on Trade in
Services (GATS) is one of 15 Uruguay
Round agreements enforced under the
WTO. GATS calls for continuing
negotiations, although major telecom-
munications and financial services
deregulation agreements have already
been completed in the past four years,
further services talks are still on the
WTOs built-in agenda. Indeed, the
industry and now U.S. Trade Represen-
tative Charlene Barshefsky are calling
for new coverage of health and educa-
tion under WTO rules. Explicit coverage
under GATT terms of water and water
systems, including municipal drinking
water, may also be included on the
GATS agenda.
GATS terms include commitments by
each country to deregulate each service
sector. Further financial service
deregulation is one of the back doors
to slip parts of the MAI into the WTO.
There would be no value to labeling
where there can be no perceived
benefit to the public other than that
some sector of the public thinks it is
their right to know.
- Arnold Foudin, USDA
The entire Agriculture Agreement,
including SPS, has a built-in review.
Instead of launching further deregulation
talks, the SPS agreement should be
reviewed with a view to changing it to
protect our environmental, health and
safety laws.

-
E /OREEMEN N E /OREEMEN N E /OREEMEN N E /OREEMEN N E /OREEMEN N
/OR|Cd| /OR|Cd| /OR|Cd| /OR|Cd| /OR|Cd|dRE dRE dRE dRE dRE
The Uruguay Round Agreement on
Agriculture set rules on international
food trade and on domestic ag policy.
These rules have accelerated the rapid
concentration of agribusinesses and
undercut poor countries ability to
maintain food self-sufficiency through
subsistence agriculture.
The agreement assumes that rather
than being self-sufficient in food,
countries will buy their food in interna-
tional markets using money earned
from exports. However, many less
developed countries face low commod-
ity prices for their limited range of
exports. During the WTOs first four
years, the prices of agricultural com-
modities fell to record lows, while food
prices remained high. This system can
hurt both farmers and consumers and
paves the way for TNCs to dominate
markets, especially in poor countries.
Rules are needed to address the rapid
concentration in agribusiness. A small
handful of companies trade virtually all
the worlds corn, wheat, and soybeans.
For example, were Cargill to succeed in
its current bid to buy Continentals grain
operations, it would control more than
40% of all U.S. corn exports, a third of
all soybean exports and at least 20% of
wheat exports. This increased consoli-
dation has led to near monopoly
conditions in both the farm supply
industry and in the food processing and
distribution systems.

~&v e ~&v e ~&v e ~&v e ~&v eeU&e eU&e eU&e eU&e eU&e
M/| |N E w M/| |N E w M/| |N E w M/| |N E w M/| |N E w
The Multilateral Agreement on Invest-
ment (MAI) aimed to set strict global
rules limiting governments right and
ability to regulate currency speculation,
investment in land, factories, services,
stocks, and more. It was negotiated in
secret for two years at the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Devel-
opment (OECD), a club of 29 of the
worlds richest countries. Negotiations
were pushed by TNCs and major
business lobbies worldwide.
In 1997, the deal started to unravel
when activists exposed the potential
corporate power grab. By December
1998, the OECD threw in the towel and
ceased negotiations. Now many OECD
countries, led by the EU, want to revive
the MAI by putting it in the WTO.
The MAI would have:
! ! ! ! ! forbidden consideration of
company or country human
rights, labor or environmental
records as investment criteria
! ! ! ! ! prevented governments from
promoting local economic
development by granting big
foreign corporations new abso-
lute rights to enter markets
and get preferential treatment.
! ! ! ! ! banned certain investment condi-
tions altogether, such as requir-
ing recycled or domestic content
in manufacturing or hiring local
workers
7
The Clinton Administration has made it
a priority to have a forest products
agreement signed in Seattle. The
proposed Global Free Logging Agree-
ment would expand global consump-
tion of paper, pulp and other wood
products by 3-4% says industry. It also
could restrict certain pro-environmental
government policies. It could pose a
major threat to endangered forests,
O| O| O| O| O|B/| |REE B/| |REE B/| |REE B/| |REE B/| |REE
| || ||OO|NO OO|NO OO|NO OO|NO OO|NO
/OREEMEN /OREEMEN /OREEMEN /OREEMEN /OREEMEN
! ! ! ! ! forbid regulating hot money
speculation - the very cause of
the devastating Asian financial
crises.
The MAI even included provisions
empowering foreign corporations to sue
national governments in MAI tribunals
for monetary compensation if they
believed government policies undercut
their future profits.
Local officials realized how the MAI
would jeopardize their ability to serve
their communities. Many city councils,
such as San Francisco, Seattle,
Geneva and others rallied against the
MAI by passing local resolutions
declaring their communities MAI Free
Zones. It will take the continued
alliance of activists, local governments
and unions to prevent the MAI from
being reborn at the WTO.
ecosystems or biodiversity. Eliminating
tariffs on forest products will result in
an increase in consumption and logging
at a time when the worlds native
forests are facing extinction. According
to the World Resources Institute, nearly
one-half of the worlds original forest
cover is gone. Of the remaining original
forests, most is severely degraded,
while only 22% remains as large tracts
of relatively undisturbed frontier forests.
It is critical that the international
forest products industry set aside
parochial interests and join together
to support a WTO trade liberal-
ization agreement in [forest
products] this year.
- W. Henson Moore, President
and CEO of the American
Forest & Paper Association
The negotiations could also threaten
important environmental rules
that the WTO considers to be non-tariff
barriers to trade: for example, the
federal ban on the export of raw logs
from most public lands which was
created to protect endangered forests.
Popular eco-labeling or certification
policies (such as those in Arizona, New
York and Tennessee) which require
tropical rainforest wood purchased by
government to be sustainably har-
vested, could also be considered non-
tariff barriers.
The Clinton Administration should be
living up to its pro-environment
rhetoric by writing trade agreements
that protect forests and ecosystems
CMPE||N P||CY CMPE||N P||CY CMPE||N P||CY CMPE||N P||CY CMPE||N P||CY
TNCs view efforts by governments to
foster local economic development by
restricting TNCs access to local markets
as being an anti-competitive practice.
With support from the European Union,
TNCs want new absolute rights to enter
and operate in any country to be agreed
in the proposed WTO Millennium Round.
Proponents cynically argue that local
firms, especially in developing countries,
will benefit by becoming more efficient
when facing competition from abroad. In
reality, removing governments ability to
avoid monopolization of markets by huge
TNCs will only lead to more of the
takeovers, mergers and other consolida-
tion of industry that is undermining real
competition.
Now some countries want these rules to
become compulsory for all WTO mem-
bers (and for the states, provinces, and
regions within each country) in the
proposed Millennium Round of negotia-
tions. Government procurement dwarfs
current trade flows in dollar value.
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|cq.e|~:.or p~eec .r :|c 3e :o e.ppor:
:|c ~r:.-~p~r:|c. no.cncr: .r o.:|
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o.c.cr, :|.e :.nc :|c ~cc:c corpor~:.ore
.ec :|c h :o pro:cc: :|c.r .r:crce:e. h.:|
!. crco.r~qcncr:, :|c 5.'. ~r ~p~r
c|~||crqc :|c |~. ~: :|c h ~e ~ ..o|~:.or
o :|c h qo.crrncr: proc.rcncr: p~c:.
Local, state and federal governments use
government procurement to achieve
domestic policy goals from increasing
local employment to awarding public
contracts to firms owned by women or
minorities to spur economic development
in these groups. In the U.S., thanks to
federal government set-aside programs,
23% of firms owned by women of color
have some sales to the government.
TNCs are attacking these programs and
policies as interfering with the free
market. If TNCs get their way, govern-
ment purchasers will join the race to the
bottom.
The Uruguay Round even included
rules on how governments can spend
our tax dollars. Under these rules,
governments cannot take political,
social, environmental, or justice issues
into account when deciding what or
from whom to buy. Basically, the rules
forbid all non-economic considerations,
such as preferences for recycled paper
or bans on products from certain
nations. However, unlike all of the other
rules enforced by WTO, not every
country was required to sign on to the
procurement rules which cover 26
countries and some U.S. states.
O\ERNMEN PRCdREMEN O\ERNMEN PRCdREMEN O\ERNMEN PRCdREMEN O\ERNMEN PRCdREMEN O\ERNMEN PRCdREMEN
rather than pursuing a Global Free
Logging Agreement.
3 2
When the WTO countries meet in Seattle,
they will finalize a Ministerial Declaration
that will announce the future WTO agenda.
At the end of the previous Round, WTO
members agreed to form committees to
consider agriculture, services and intellectual
property rights (now called the built-in
agenda). Now some countries want to add
investment (the MAI), procurement and
competition policy, calling for the launch of a
Millennium Round of negotiations. What-
ever future negotiations might be agreed,
further deregulation favoring private interests
can be anticipated.
The European Union wants to launch a
Millennium Round at Seattle. The U.S.
favors the more limited built-in agenda.
Some developing countries are strongly
opposed to further negotiations since
deregulation and privatization have hurt
them. They oppose a new Round and call for
a turn-around of the WTO, a theme which is
being echoed by a growing consensus of
activists worldwide, see www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/
1 11 11& & & & & c1c~: c1c~: c1c~: c1c~: c1c~:
Educate yourself and others about the
WTO! Check out the contact list of web-
pages listed on pages 23-25 for additional
information.
Write your Member of Congress, both
your Senators and local elected officials.
Urge them to oppose the launch of a new
round of WTO negotiations in
Seattle and to endorse an assess-
ment of the WTOs record to date.
Urge members of Congress to sign
Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Dear
Colleague letter demanding WTO
review and repair.
Contact the U.S. negotiators
and tell them why you think we
should conduct an assessment of
the WTO rather than expand it.
Make sure to mention that you
oppose any investment negotia-
tions in the WTO.
U.S. Trade Representative (the
agency in charge of WTO talks) is
Charlene Barshefsky, phone: 202-
395-6890, fax: 202-395-4549
White House: John Podesta
202-456-1414
Vice President Gore:
202-456-1111
Write a letter-to-the-editor
about why we need to assess
WTOs current record, not expand
its reach further. Find sample
letters on the web-pages listed on
page 23.
Sign and circulate the interna-
tional organizational sign-on letter
opposing a new round of negotia-
tions and demanding a WTO
assessment (www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/).
Participate in days-of-action
against a Millennium Round.
More information will be posted on
the web-sites on page 23.
v v v v v1 11 11e U= rcn 1& e U= rcn 1& e U= rcn 1& e U= rcn 1& e U= rcn 1&
v1c ~ e& v1c ~ e& v1c ~ e& v1c ~ e& v1c ~ e&11L&? 11L&? 11L&? 11L&? 11L&?
2 22
Organize a Teach-In, town hall
meeting, debate etc. on the WTO and
globalization. Focus on local conse-
quences. Invite proponents and oppo-
nents of so-called free-trade.
Come to Seattle for the ministerial
meeting! The meeting will take place
from November 29 through December
3, and will include a major international
Teach-In organized by the International
Forum on Globalization (IFG) the
weekend before, street festivities,
education, cultural activities, protests
and much more. Contact People for a
Fair Trade Policy (Seattle based toll-
free at 1-877-STOP-WTO or 786-7986)
or www.tradewatch.org
cc~1 cc~1 cc~1 cc~1 cc~1 c1e c1e c1e c1e c1e
The World Trade Organization
www.wto.org, Geneva, Switzerland,
(+ 41 22) 739 51 11
General
"Public Citizens Global Trade Watch.
www.tradewatch.org, Washington, DC
(202) 546-4996
"International Forum on Globalization
(IFG). www.ifg.org, San Francisco,
CA, (415) 771-3394
Agriculture and Food Policy
"Institute for Agriculture and Trade
Policy. www.iatp.org, Minneapolis,
MN (612) 870-3405
"National Family Farm Coalition.
Washington, DC (202) 543-5675
Developing Country Perspective
Third World Network.
www.twnside.org.sg, Penang, Malaysia,
+ 60-4-2266728.
" 50 Years Is Enough Network,
www.50years.org, (202)-463-2265
Economic/Political
"Alliance for Democracy. www.afd-
online.org, Washington, DC (202) 244-
0561
"The Preamble Center.
www.preamble.org, Washington, DC
(202) 265-3263
"United for a Fair Economy.
www.stw.org, Boston, MA (617) 423-
2148
Environment
"American Lands Alliance.
www.americanlands.org, Washington,
DC (202) 547-9230.
"Center for International Environmental
Law. www.econet.apc.org/ciel.,
"Friends of the Earth. www.foe.org,
"Pacific Environment and Resources
Center (PERC). www.pacenv.org,
Oakland, CA (510) 251- 8800
"Sierra Club. www.sierraclub.org,
(202) 778-9721
" Defenders of Wildlife.
www.defenders.org, 202-682-9400
2 2-
/ / / / /5 5 5 5 55 55 55)4 )4 )4 )4 )4; ;; ;;
Millennium Round- name given by
European Union officials to their call for
broad new trade negotiations they hope
will be agreed at the 1999 WTO Minis-
terial and launched thereafter.
OECD- Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development de-
scribes itself as an intergovernmental
organization comprising 29 advanced
economies from Europe, North
America, and the Pacific Region. Until
the MAI talks, OECD has served as a
think tank for rich countries.
IMF- The International Monetary Fund
is one of the three Bretton Woods
organizations set up after World War II
along with GATT and the World Bank.
The IMFs original role was to help with
short-term cash crunches relating to
trade finanacing. In recent decades the
IMF has morphed into providing long-
term loans to developing countries on
the condition that these countries
reorganize their laws and economies to
prioritize servicing debt, for instance by
cutting government spending and
liberalizing trade and investment rules.
IPRs- Intellectual property rights are
ownership rights on designs, formulas,
information, or processes. IPRs include
patents (exclusive rights to sell a
product or use a process for manufac-
turing a product); copyrights to creative
material such as books or films; and
trademarks to brand names. The WTO
TRIPs agreement requires countries to
grant strong protection of IPRs.
Labor
"AFL-CIO (American Federation of
Labor and Congress of Industrial
Organizations). www.aflcio.org/
front.htm. Washington, DC, (202) 637-
5000
"International Brotherhood of Team-
sters. www.teamster.org, Washington,
DC (202) 624-6800
"United Autoworkers of America
(UAW). www.uaw.org, Washington, DC
(202) 828-8500
"United Steelworkers of America.
www.uswa.org, Washington, DC, (202)
778-4384
Womens Organizations
" Womens Edge, Washington, DC,
www.womensedge.org, (202) 884-8394
" Womens International League for
Peace and Freedom, Washington, DC
(202) 546-6727
Religious Organizations
Womens Division, GBGM United
Methodist Church, Washington, DC,
womendivdc@igc.org, (202) 488-5660
Seattle
WTO Host Committee of People for Fair
Trade, Seattle, WA,
www.tradewatch.org,
1-877-STOP-WTO (786-7986)
Small Business
United States Business and Industry
Council (USBIC) Educational Founda-
tion. www.usbusiness.org, Washington,
DC, (202) 728-1985
2
2
principle has been attacked under WTO
rules requiring governments to have
scientific evidence to regulate imports
of potentially dangerous products.
Uruguay Round- The most recent past
multi-sectoral GATT trade negotiations
started in 1986. It established the WTO
and included a major expansion of
GATT into new issues such as ser-
vices, IPRs and some investment
issues.
TRIPS- Trade Related Intellectual
Property Rights. See page 11.
GATS- General Agreement on Trade
in Services. See page 14.
SPS- Sanitary and Phytosanitary
Standards. See page 12.
MAI- Multilateral Agreement on
Investment. See page 16.
TRIMS- Trade Related Investment
Measures. See MAI page 16.
GMOs- Genetically modified organ-
isms are animals, plants or microor-
ganisms scientists create by manipulat-
ing genetic material. GMOs often are
developed by inserting genes from one
species into another.
Single undertaking- A round of trade
talks including multiple sectors in which
various issues are bargained off for
each other. At the end of negotiations,
countries either accept or reject the
entire package; they cannot select
parts of the deal a la carte.
Early Harvest- Unlike a single under-
taking, this negotiating strategy calls for
specific issues or pieces of a broad
negotiation to be harvested early by
signing an agreement on one of the
issues under negotiation before the
entire negotiation is complete.
Director General- Title given to the
head of the World Trade Organization.
Tariffs- Taxes on imported products set
as a percentage of the products value.
They are collected at the importing
countrys border. GATT negotiations
over the past 50 years have lowered
tariffs on most products.
NTMs or NTBs - Non tariff measure
or Non-tariff barrier is trade terminol-
ogy for any government policy that is
not a tariff but may affect trade.
Precautionary Principle- Well-ac-
cepted principle that in cases of scien-
tific uncertainty, governments should
take action erring on the side of protect-
ing health and the environment. This
27 2
TNCs- Transnational Corporations.
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v1c eccL&1e v1c eccL&1e v1c eccL&1e v1c eccL&1e v1c eccL&1e
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Alliance for Democracy
Americans for Democratic Action
American Lands Alliance
Association of State Green Parties
Defenders of Wildlife
50 Years Is Enough Network
Friends of the Earth
International Brotherhood of
Teamsters
Institute for Agriculture and Trade
Policy
Pacific Environment and Resources
Center
The Preamble Center
Public Citizen
United Steelworkers of America,
District 11
Womens Division, GBGM United
Methodist Church
Womens International League for
Peace and Freedom
A Be tte r Worl d
I s Pos s i bl e !
Alte rnati ve s To
E conomi c
Global i zati on
s uxx.vs ov .x uv coxi xc vv v ov1
ns 1 uv .i1 v vx.1 i vv s coxxi 1 1 v v ov
1 uv i x1 v vx.1 i ox.i v ovux ox ci on.i i z .1 i ox
Release Date of Full Publication: Spring 2002
Drafting Committee:
John Cavanagh, Chair
Sarah Anderson
Debi Barker
Maude Barlow
Walden Bello
Robin Broad
Tony Clarke
Randy Hayes
Colin Hines
Martin Khor
David Korten
Jerry Mander
Helena Norberg-Hodge
Sara Larrain
Simon Retallack
Vandana Shiva
Victoria Tauli-Corpus
Lori Wallach
report summary
cu.v 1 v v ou1 i i xv ov
v ui i vv v ov1
uuv s v vi xc : oo:
i x1 vouuc1 i ox 4
A. Global Resistance
B. Different Worlds
C. Transformational Imperative
Box A. Commentary: Conflicting Paradigms (Khor)
D. Economic Democracy
E. Global Governance
F. Building Momentum
i . cvi 1 i quv ov v coxoxi c ci on.i i z .1 i ox 6
A. Key Ingredients and General Effects
1. Pillars of Globalization
Box B. National Laws as Impediments to Free Trade (Mander)
Box C. Export-Oriented Production:
Intrinsic Negative Consequences (Mander)
2. Beneciaries of Globalization
Box D. Global Economic Apartheid (Broad, Cavanagh)
B. Bureaucratic Expressions of Globalization
1. World Bank
2. International Monetary Fund
Box E. Argentina (Anderson)
3. World Trade Organization
Box F. Effects on the Third World (Bello)
C. Conclusions
i i . 1 v x v vi xci v i v s v ov uv xo cv.1 i c .xu 8
s us 1.i x.ni v s o ci v 1 i v s
A. New Democracy
B. Subsidiarity
C. Ecological Sustainability
Box G. Sustainable Chile (Larrain)
D. Common Heritage
E. Human Rights
F. Jobs/Livelihood/Employment
G. Food Security/Food Safety
H. Equity
I. Diversity
Box H. Cultural Diversity (Barlow)
J. Precautionary Principle
Box I. Canada: Citizens Agenda (Clarke)
1
i i i . i s s uv s ox coxxoui v i c.1 i ox ov 1 uv coxxoxs 10
A. The Tradition of The Commons
1. Europe
2. Indigenous Peoples
Box J. Living Alternatives (Corpuz)
3. Asia
Box K. No Patents on Life Forms (Shiva)
4. Global Commons vs. National/Local Commons
B. The Modern Commons
1. Duty of Governments in the Modern World
2. Basic Human Rights: Economic and Political
3. Intrinsic Rights of Nature
4. Against Commodication of Basic Services
C. An Afrmative Agenda
i v. 1 uv c.s v v ov s uns i ui .vi 1 s : 12
ni .s .w.s v vox 1 uv ci on.i 1ow.vu 1 uv i o c.i
A. Understanding Subsidiarity
B. The Road to the Local
C. Focus on Investment and Finance Issues
1. Capital
2. Taxation
3. New Rules on Investment
D. Critiques of Localization and Subsidiarity
v. vv i cxi xc i x covv ov.1 v v owv v 14
A. Addressing Corporate Power
1. Corporate Responsibility
2. Corporate Accountability
3. Corporate Removal
4. Corporate Re-chartering
5. Corporate Restructuring
6. Corporate Dismantling
B. Tackling Corporate-State Collusion
1. Eliminate Corporate Welfare, Special Corporate Rights, and the Mechanisms by
Which Corporations Exert Influence over Public Policy
2. Policies to Rebuild Economies Responsive to Human Needs
vi . .i1 v v1 v vx.1 i vv ovvv v.1 i xc s ss 1 v xs : 15
v xv vcs, .cvi cui1 uvv , 1 v.xs v ov1, .xu x.xuv.c1 uvi xc
A. Energy Systems
1. The Promise of Alternative Energy Systems
B. Transportation Systems
1. Subsidies
2. The Private Car
3. Ecocities
2
Box L. Curitiba, Brazil (Retallack)
C. Agriculture and Food Systems
1. Actions and Policies Toward Alternative Solutions
Box M. Cuban Organic Agriculture (Retallack)
D. Manufacturing Systems
vi i . v vox nvv 1 1ox wo ous 1ow.vu .i1 v vx.1 i vv s 18
A. Unify Global Governance Under a Restructured United Nations
B. Weaken or Dismantle Bretton Woods Institutions
1. The WTO: Reform or Reject?
2. World Bank and IMF
C. Strengthen the Countervailing Powers of Other International Organizations
Box M. Alternative Policies for Southern Economies (Khor)
D. New Global Institutions
1. Create an International Insolvency Court
2. Create an International Finance Organization
3. Create Regional Monetary Funds
4. Replace the WTO
5. Create an Organization for Corporate Accountability
coxcius i oxs
Bibliography/Resources
Notes
3
I
n January 1999, the International Forum on Globalization (IFG)initiated a process to dene
alternatives to the current model of corporate globalization. Over the past three years, some
two dozen of our board members and key associates have held regular meetings to discuss and
prepare drafts of crucial ingredients of viable alternative systems. This document is an execu-
tive summary of a 250-page document that represents the present status of this process.
The nal report, which will be published in spring 2002, offers a broad menu of viable options
that are consistent with a new set of operating principles for international society. The princi-
ples and proposals are not meant as nal arguments for any specic system. Our plan is to dis-
tribute the document among the many thousands of citizen and public policy groups on all
continents that are engaged in these issues.
We will then begin a three-year process that will include meetings in every region among
interested groups to further rene these ideas, expand and/or modify them for local conditions, seek
general consensus on as many points as possible, and then republish a new document that may
also include clear and more specic steps to take us from here to there. We welcome all responses.
The following are summaries of the upcoming full version of the IFGs alternative report.
i x1 vouuc1 i ox
A. Global Resistance Society is at a crucial crossroads. A peaceful, equitable and sustainable future
depends on the outcome of escalating conflicts between two competing visions: one corporate, one dem-
ocratic. The schism has been caught by media images and stories accompanying recent meetings of
global bureaucracies like the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), the World Bank, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and numerous other gatherings of
corporate and economic elites, such as the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, (although in
2002 it will meet in New York City).
Over the past ve to ten years, millions of people have taken to the streets in India, the Philippines,
Indonesia, Brazil, Bolivia, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, France, Germany,
Italy, the Czech Republic, Spain, Sweden, England, New Zealand, Australia, Kenya, South Africa, Thailand,
Malaysia and elsewhere in massive demonstrations against the institutions and policies of corporate
globalization. All too often the corporate media have done more to mislead than to inform the public on
the issues behind the protests. Thomas Friedman, The New York Times foreign affairs columnist, is typi-
cal of journalists who characterize the demonstrators as ignorant protectionists who offer no alterna-
tives and are unworthy of serious attention.
The claim that the protestors have no alternatives is as false as the claims that they are anti-poor, xeno-
phobic, anti-trade, and have no analysis. In addition to countless books, periodicals, conferences, and
individual articles and presentations setting forth alternatives, numerous consensus statements have been
carefully crafted by civil society groups over the past two decades that set forth a wealth of alternatives
[ r e p o r t s u m m a r y ]
4
with a striking convergence in their beliefs about the underlying values human societies can and should
serve. Such consensus statements include a collection of citizen treaties drafted in Rio de Janeiro in 1992
by the 18,000 representatives of global civil society who met in parallel to the ofcial meetings of the
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). A subsequent initiative pro-
duced The Earth Charter, scheduled for ratication by the UN General Assembly in 2002 the product
of a global process that involved thousands of people. In 2001 and 2002, tens of thousands more gath-
ered in Porto Alegre, Brazil, for the rst annual World Social Forum on the theme Another World Is
Possible to carry forward this process of popular consensus building toward a world that works for all.
B. Different Worlds The corporate globalists who meet in posh gatherings to chart the course of cor-
porate globalization in the name of private prots, and the citizen movements who organize to thwart
them in the name of democracy and diversity are separated by deep differences in values, world view,
and denitions of progress. At times it seems they must be living in wholly different worlds which in
many respects they are.
Corporate globalists inhabit a world of power and privilege. They see progress everywhere because from
their vantage point the drive to privatize public assets and free the market from governmental interfer-
ence appears to be spreading freedom and prosperity throughout the world, improving the lives of peo-
ple everywhere, and creating the nancial and material wealth necessary to end poverty and protect the
environment. They see themselves as champions of an inexorable and benecial historical process
toward erasing the economic and political borders that hinder corporate expansion, eliminating the
tyranny of inefcient and meddlesome public bureaucracies, and unleashing the enormous innovation
and wealth-creating power of competition and private enterprise.
Citizen movements see a starkly different reality. Focused on people and the environment, they see a
world in deepening crisis of such magnitude as to threaten the fabric of civilization and the survival of
the species a world of rapidly growing inequality, erosion of relationships of trust, and failing plane-
tary life support systems. Where corporate globalists see the spread of democracy and vibrant market
economies, citizen movements see the power to govern shifting away from people and communities to
nancial speculators and global corporations dedicated to the pursuit of short-term prot. They see cor-
porations replacing democracies of people with democracies of money, self-organizing markets with cen-
trally planned corporate economies, and diverse ethical cultures with cultures of greed and materialism.
C. Transformational Imperative In a world in which a few enjoy unimaginable wealth, 200 million
children under ve are underweight due to a lack of food. Fourteen million children die each year from
hunger-related disease. A hundred million children are living or working on the streets. Three hundred
thousand children were conscripted as soldiers during the 1990s and six million were injured in armed
conflicts. Eight hundred million people go to bed hungry each night. Human activity most particu-
larly fossil fuel combustion is estimated to have increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide
to their highest levels in 20 million years. According to the WorldWatch Institute, natural disasters
including weather related disasters such as storms, floods, and res affected more than two billion
people and caused in excess of $608 billion in economic losses worldwide during the decade of the 1990s
more than the previous four decades combined.
D. Economic Democracy Humanity has reached the limits of an era of centralized institutional power
and control. The global corporation, the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank are structured to concen-
5
trate power in the hands of ruling elites shielded from public accountability. They represent an outmoded,
undemocratic, inefcient and ultimately destructive way of organizing human affairs that is as out of step
with the needs and values of healthy, sustainable and democratic societies as the institution of monarchy.
The current and future well being of humanity depends on transforming the relationships of power within
and between human societies toward more democratic and mutually accountable modes of managing human
affairs that are self-organizing, power-sharing, and minimize the need for coercive central authority.
E. Global Governance The concern for local self-reliance and self-determination have important impli-
cations for global governance. For example, in a self-reliant and localized system the primary authority
to set and enforce rules must rest with the national and local governments of the jurisdictions to which
they apply. The proper role of global institutions is to facilitate the cooperative coordination of national
policies on matters where the interests of nations are inherently intertwined as with action on global
warming.
F. Building Momentum Growing public consciousness of the pervasive abuse of corporate power has
fueled the growth of a powerful opposition movement with an increasingly impressive list of achieve-
ments. Unied by a deep commitment to universal values of democracy, justice, and respect for life this
alliance functions with growing effectiveness without a central organization, charismatic leader, or
dening ideology taking different forms in different settings.
In India, popular movements seek to empower local people through the democratic community control
of resources under the banner of a million strong Living Democracy Movement (Jaiv Panchayat). In
Canada, hundreds of organizations have joined in alliance to articulate a Citizens Agenda that seeks to
wrest control of governmental institutions back away from corporations. In Chile, coalitions of environ-
mental groups have created a powerful Sustainable Chile (Sustenable Chile) movement that seeks to reverse
Chiles drift toward neoliberalism and re-assert popular democratic control over national priorities and
resources. The focus in Brazil is on the rights of the poor and landless. In Bolivia it takes the form of a
mass movement of peasants and workers who have successfully blocked the privatization of water. In
Mexico, the Mayan people have revived the spirit of Zapata in a movement to conrm the rights of
indigenous people to land and resources. Farmers in France have risen up in revolt against trade rules
that threaten to destroy small farms. The construction of new highways in England has brought out
hundreds of thousands of people who oppose this desecration of the countryside in response to global-
izations relentless demand for ever more high speed transport.
These are only a few examples of the popular initiatives and actions in defense of democratic rights that
are emerging all around the world. Together these many initiatives are unleashing ever more of the cre-
ative energy of humanity toward building cooperative systems of sustainable societies that work for all.
cu.v 1 v v i
cvi 1 i quv ov v coxoxi c ci on.i i z .1 i ox
The alternatives offered in this report grow from the widespread damage inflicted by economic global-
ization over the past ve centuries as it passed from colonialism and imperialism through post-colonial,
export-led development models. The driving force of economic globalization since World War II has
been several hundred large private corporations and banks that have increasingly woven webs of produc-
6
tion, consumption, nance, and culture across borders. Indeed, today most of what we eat, drink, wear,
drive, and entertain ourselves with is the product of globe-girdling corporations.
A. Key Ingredients and General Effects Economic globalization (sometimes referred to as corpo-
rate-led globalization), features several key ingredients:
! Corporate deregulation and the unrestricted movement of capital;
! Privatization and commodication of public services, and remaining aspects of the global
and community commons, such as bulk water and genetic resources;
! Integration and conversion of national economies (including some that were largely self-reliant)
to environmentally and socially harmful export-oriented production;
! Promotion of hyper-growth and unrestricted exploitation of the planets resources to fuel the growth;
! Dramatically increased corporate concentration;
! Undermining of national social, health and environmental programs;
! Erosion of traditional powers and policies of democratic nation-states and local communities
by global corporate bureaucracies;
! Global cultural homogenization, and the intensive promotion of unbridled consumerism.
1. Pillars of Globalization: The rst tenet of economic globalization, as now designed, is the need to inte-
grate and merge all economic activity of all countries within a single, homogenized model of development;
a single centralized system. A second tenet of the globalization design is that primary importance is given
to the achievement of ever more rapid, and never ending corporate economic growth hyper growth
fueled by the constant search for access to natural resources, new and cheaper labor sources, and new
markets. A third tenet concerns privatization and commodication of as many traditionally non-com-
modied nooks and crannies of existence as possible seeds and genes for example. A fourth important
tenet of economic globalization is its strong emphasis on a global conversion to export-oriented produc-
tion and trade as an economic and social nirvana.
2. Beneciaries of Globalization: The actual beneciaries of this model have become all too obvious. In the
United States, for example, we know that during the period of the most rapid globalization, top corporate
executives of the largest global companies have been making salaries and options in the many millions of
dollars, often in the hundreds of millions, while real wages of ordinary workers have been declining. The
Institute for Policy Studies reports that American CEOs are now paid, on average, 517 times more than
production workers, with that rate increasing yearly. The Economic Policy Institutes 1999 report says
that median hourly wages are actually down by 10 percent in real wages over the last 25 years. As for
lifting the global poor, the U.N. Development Programs 1999 Human Development Report indicated that
the gap between the wealthy and the poor within and among countries of the world is getting steadily
larger, and it named inequities in the global trade system as being one of the key factors.
B. Bureaucratic Expressions of Globalization Creating a world that works for all must begin with
an effort to undo the enormous damage inflicted by the corporate globalization policies that so badly dis-
tort economic relationships among people and countries. The thrust of those policies is perhaps most
dramatically revealed in the structural adjustment programs imposed on low and intermediate income
countries by the IMF and the World Bank two institutions that bear responsibility for enormous social
and environmental devastation and human suffering. Structural adjustment requires governments to:
! Cut government spending on education, healthcare, the environment, and price subsidies for basic
necessities such as food grains, and cooking oils in favor of servicing foreign debt.
7
! Devalue the national currency and increase exports by accelerating the plunder of natural
resources, reducing real wages, and subsidizing export-oriented foreign investments.
! Liberalize nancial markets to attract speculative short-term portfolio investments that create
enormous nancial instability and foreign liabilities while serving little, if any, useful purpose.
! Increase interest rates to attract foreign speculative capital, thereby increasing bankruptcies of
domestic businesses and imposing new hardships on indebted individuals.
! Eliminate tariffs, quotas and other controls on imports, thereby increasing the import of consumer
goods purchased with borrowed foreign exchange, undermining local industry and agricultural pro-
ducers unable to compete with cheap imports, which increases the strain on foreign exchange
accounts, and deepening external indebtedness.
The World Bank and the IMF, along with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade
Organization (GATT/WTO) are together known as the Bretton Woods institutions the collective
product of agreements reached at an international gathering held in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire,
in July, 1944, to create an institutional framework for the post-World War II global economy.
C. Conclusions The Bretton Woods institutions have a wholly distorted view of economic progress and
relationships. Their embrace of unlimited expansion of trade and foreign investment as measures of eco-
nomic progress suggests that they consider the most advanced state of development to be one in which
all productive assets are owned by foreign corporations producing for export; the currency that facilitates
day-to-day transactions is borrowed from foreign banks; education and health services are operated by
global corporations on a for-prot, fee-for-service basis; and most that people consume is imported.
When placed in such stark terms, the absurdity of the neoliberal ideology of the Bretton Woods insti-
tutions becomes obvious. It also becomes clear who such policies serve. Rather than enhance the life of
people and planet, they consolidate and secure the wealth and power of a small corporate elite, the only
evident beneciaries, at the expense of humanity and nature. In the following section, we outline the
principles of alternative systems that posit democracy and rights as the means toward sustainable com-
munities, dignied work, and a healthy environment.
cu.v 1 v v i i
1 v x v vi xci v i v s v ov uv xo cv.1 i c
.xu s us 1.i x.ni v s o ci v 1 i v s
The current organizing principles of the institutions that govern the global economy are narrow and
serve the few at the expense of the many and the environment. Yet, it is within our collective ability to
create healthy, sustainable societies that work for all. The time has come to make that possibility a real-
ity. Sustainable societies are rooted in certain core principles. The following ten core principles have
been put forward in various combinations in citizen programs that are emerging around the world.
A. New Democracy The rallying cry of the amazing diversity of civil society that converged in Seattle
in late 1999 was the simple word democracy. Democracy flourishes when people organize to protect
their communities and rights and hold their elected ofcials accountable. For the past two decades,
global corporations and global bureaucracies have grabbed much of the power once held by govern-
ments. We advocate a shift from governments serving corporations to governments serving people and
communities, a process that is easier at the local level but vital at all levels of government.
8
B. Subsidiarity Economic globalization results rst, and foremost, in de-localization and disempower-
ment of communities and local economies. It is therefore necessary to reverse direction and create new
rules and structures that consciously favor the local, and follow the principle of subsidiarity, i.e., what-
ever decisions and activities can be undertaken locally should be. Whatever power can reside at the local
level should reside there. Only when additional activity is required that cannot be satised locally, should
power and activity move to the next higher level: region, nation, and nally the world.
C. Ecological Sustainability Economic activity needs to be ecologically sustainable. It should enable
us to meet humans genuine needs in the present without compromising the ability of future generations
to meet theirs, and without diminishing the natural diversity of life on Earth or the viability of the
planets natural life-support systems.
D. Common Heritage There exist common heritage resources that should constitute a collective birth-
right of the whole species to be shared equitably among all. We assert that there are three categories of
such resources. The rst consists of the shared natural heritage of the water, land, air, forests, and sheries
on which our lives depend. These physical resources are in nite supply, essential to life, and existed long
before any human. A second category includes the heritage of culture and knowledge that is the collective
creation of our species. Finally, basic public services relating to health, education, public safety, and
social security are modern common heritage resources representing the collective efforts of whole
societies. They are also as essential to life in modern societies as are air and water. Justice therefore
demands that they be readily available to all who need them. Any attempt by persons or corporations to
monopolize ownership control of an essential common heritage resource for exclusive private gain to the
exclusion of the needs of others is morally unconscionable and politically unacceptable.
E. Human Rights In 1948, governments of the world came together to adopt the United Nations
Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which established certain core rights, such as a standard of
living adequate for ...health and well-being..., including food, clothing, housing and medical care, and
necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment. Traditionally, most of
the human rights debate in the United States and other rich nations has focused on civil and political
rights as paramount. We believe that it is the duty of governments to ensure these rights, but also to
guarantee the economic, social and cultural rights of all people.
F. Jobs/Livelihood/Employment A livelihood is a means of living. The right to a means of livelihood
is therefore the most basic of all human rights. Sustainable societies must both protect the rights of work-
ers in the formal sector and address the livelihood needs of the larger share of people who subsist in what
has become known as the non-material, or informal sector (including small-scale, indigenous, and arti-
sanal activities) as well as those who have no work or are seriously underemployed. Empowering workers
to organize for basic rights and fair wages is vital to curb footloose corporations that pit workers against
each other in a lose-lose race to the bottom. And, the reversal of globalization policies that displace small
farmers from their land and sherfolk from their coastal ecosystems are central to the goal of a world
where all can live and work in dignity.
G. Food Security and Food Safety Communities and nations are stable and secure when people
have enough food, particularly when nations can produce their own food. People also want safe food, a
commodity that is increasingly scarce as global agribusiness rms spread chemical- and biotech-intensive
agriculture around the world.
9
H. Equity Economic globalization, under the current rules, has widened the gap between rich and
poor countries and between rich and poor within most countries. The resulting social dislocation and
tension are among the greatest threats to peace and security the world over. Greater equity both among
nations and within them would reinforce both democracy and sustainable communities. Reducing the
growing gap between rich and poor nations requires rst and foremost the cancellation of the illegiti-
mate debts of poor countries. And, it requires the replacement of the current institutions of global gov-
ernance with new ones that include global fairness among their operating principles.
I. Diversity A few decades ago, it was still possible to leave home and go somewhere else where the
architecture was different, the landscape was different, the language, lifestyle, food, dress, and values
were different. Today, farmers and lmmakers in France and India, indigenous communities worldwide,
and millions of people elsewhere, are protesting to maintain that diversity. Tens of thousands of commu-
nities around the world have perfected local resource management systems that work, but they are now
being undermined by corporate-led globalization. Cultural, biological, social, and economic diversity are
central to a viable, dignied, and healthy life.
J. Precautionary Principle All activity should abide by the precautionary principle. When a practice
or product raises potentially signicant threats of harm to human health or the environment, precau-
tionary action should be taken to restrict or ban it even if scientic uncertainty remains about whether
or how it is actually causing that harm. Because it can take years for scientic proof of harm to be estab-
lished during which time undesirable or irreversible effects may continue to be inflicted the propo-
nents of a practice or product should bear the burden of proving that it is safe, before it is implemented.
cu.v 1 v v i i i
i s s uv s ox coxxoui v i c.1 i ox ov 1 uv coxxoxs
This section grapples with one of the most pioneering yet difcult arenas in the alternatives dialogue:
the question of whether certain goods and services should not be traded or subject to trade agreements,
patents or commodication. Lengthy discussions among IFG members have claried a lot of issues, but
discussion is ongoing. The section will lay out the categories of goods and services that the drafters
believe should be subject to different kinds of restrictions in global economic commerce: goods that
come from the global or local commons, and goods which fulll basic rights and needs. The section will
then offer categories of proposed restrictions.
"##########"##########"
In a world where many resources have already been over-exploited and seriously depleted, there is con-
stant pressure by global corporations and the public bureaucracies that serve them to privatize and
monopolize the full range of common heritage resources from water to genetic codes that have thus far
remained off limits to commodication and management as corporate prot centers. Indeed, the more
essential the good or service in question to the maintenance of life, the greater its potential for generat-
ing monopoly prots and the more attractive its ownership and control becomes to global corporations.
Water, a commonly shared, irreplaceable, and fundamental requirement for the survival of all life, is a
leading example. Everywhere around the world, global corporations are seeking to consolidate their
10
ownership and monopoly control of the fresh water resources of rivers, lakes and streams for promotion
as an export commodity like computer memory or car tires. The rules of many new trade agreements
directly assist this commodication process.
Another formerly pristine area one that most human beings had never thought could or ought to be a
commodity bought and sold for corporate prots is the genetic structure of living beings, including
humans, which is now falling rapidly within the control of life science industries (biotechnology), and
coming increasingly under the purview of global trade agreements. A third area concerns indigenous
knowledge of plant varieties, seeds, products of the forest, medicinal herbs, and biodiversity itself, which
has been vital in successfully sustaining traditional societies for millennia. A fourth area is bioprospecting
currently underway by global corporations seeking genetic materials from the skin and other body parts
among native peoples. Several of these latter areas, and others, are subject to patenting (monopoly control)
by large global corporations, protected under the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement
(TRIPS) of the WTO and a similar North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) chapter. The net
result of these new corporate protections and rights over formerly non-commodied biological materials
is to make it costly, difcult or impossible for agricultural or indigenous communities to avail themselves
of biological resources that they formerly freely enjoyed.
Parallel to such efforts at privatizing and commodifying areas of the global commons is the tremendous
effort to privatize and commodify as many public services that were once taken care of within communi-
ties and then performed by local, state and national governments on behalf of all people. These services
may address such basic needs as public health and hospital care; public education; public safety and pro-
tection; welfare and social security; water delivery and purity; sanitation; public broadcasting, museums
and national cultural expressions; food safety systems; and prisons. While these areas may not have
been traditionally dened as part of the commons, in the same way as water, land, air, forests, pasture
or other natural expressions of the earth that have been freely shared within communities for millennia,
in the modern world these public services have nonetheless been generally understood to fall within the
vital fundamental rights and needs of citizens living in any nominally successful, responsible society.
If the corporate globalists have their way in negotiations at the General Agreement on Trade in Services
(GATS) of the WTO, or within the FTAA, the way will be cleared for many of these essential services to
move directly into the hands of global corporations to be operated as corporate prot centers account-
able only to the interests of their shareholders. As with corporatized healthcare in the United States, the
rich may be well served, but the vast majority of people will be unsatised, overcharged, or abandoned.
In the view of the drafters of this document, this process of privatizing, monopolizing, and commodify-
ing common heritage resources and turning public services into corporate prot centers and the protec-
tion of this process within global trade agreements, must be halted at once. There is an appropriate
place for private ownership and markets to play in the management, allocation, and delivery of certain
common heritage resources, as for example land, within a framework of effective democratically account-
able public regulation that guarantees fair pricing, equitable access, quality, and public stewardship.
There is no rightful place in any public body, process, or international agreement to facilitate the unac-
countable private monopolization of common heritage resources and public services essential to life or
to otherwise exclude any person from equitable access to such essential resources and services.
11
cu.v 1 v v i v
1 uv c.s v v ov s uns i ui .vi 1 s :
ni .s .w.s v vox 1 uv ci on.i 1ow.vu 1 uv i o c.i
It is the major conceit or gamble of the corporate globalists that by removing economic control from the
places where it has traditionally resided in nations, states, sub-regions, communities or indigenous
societies and placing that control into absentee authorities that operate globally via giant corporations
and bureaucracies, that all levels of society will benet. As we have seen, this is not true, and it is a prin-
cipal reason why so many millions of people are angrily protesting.
The central modus operandi of the globalization model is to delocalize all controls over economic and
political activity; a systematic, complete appropriation on the powers, decisions, options and functions
that through prior history were fullled by the community, region or state. When sovereign powers are
nally removed from the local and put into distant bureaucracies, local politics must also be redesigned
to conform to the rules and practices of distant bureaucracies. Communities and nations that formerly
operated in a relatively self-reliant manner, in the interests of their own peoples, are converted into
unwilling subjects of this much larger, undemocratic, unaccountable global structure.
If democracy is based upon the idea that people must participate in the great decisions affecting their
lives, then the system we nd today of moving basic life decisions to distant venues of centralized, inter-
national institutions, which display a disregard for democratic participation, openness, accountability,
and transparency, brings the death of democracy. We have reached the end of the road for that process.
Its time to change directions.
A. Understanding Subsidiarity As globalization is the intractable problem, then logically a turn toward
the local is inevitable; a reinvigoration of the conditions by which local communities regain the powers
to determine and control their economic and political paths. Instead of shaping all systems to conform
to a global model that emphasizes specialization of production, comparative advantage, export-oriented
growth, monoculture, and homogenization of economic, cultural and political forms under the direction
of transnational corporate institutions, we must reshape our institutions to favor exactly the opposite.
The operating principle for this turnaround is the concept of subsidiarity, i.e., favoring the local when-
ever a choice exists. In practice this means that all decisions should be made at the lowest level of gov-
erning authority competent to deal with it. Global health crises and global pollution issues often require
cooperative international decisions. But most economic, cultural and political decisions should not be
international; they should be made at the national, regional or local levels, depending on what they are.
Power should be encouraged to evolve downward, not upward. Decisions should constantly move closer
to the people most affected by them.
Economic systems should favor local production and markets rather than invariably being designed to
serve long distance trade. This means shortening the length of lines for economic activity: fewer food
miles; fewer oil supply miles; fewer travel-to-work miles. Technologies should also be chosen that best
serve local control, rather than mega-technologies that operate globally.
B. The Road to the Local Localization attempts to reverse the trend toward the global by discriminat-
ing actively in favor of the local in all policies. Depending on the context, the local is dened as a sub-
12
grouping within a nation-state; it can also be the nation-state itself or occasionally a regional grouping of
nation-states. The overall idea is for power to devolve to the lowest unit appropriate for a particular goal.
Policies that bring about localization are ones that increase democratic control of the economy by com-
munities and/or nation-states, taking it back from global institutions that have appropriated them:
bureaucracies and global corporations. These may enable nations, local governments and communities
to reclaim their economies; to make them as diverse as possible; and to rebuild stability into community
life to achieve a maximum self-reliance nationally and regionally in a way that ensures sustainable
forms of development.
Moving in the direction of localization will require changes in the assumptions of industrial society, and
will also require a long time and many steps. But to get our thinking started, we mention only a few points:
! Reintroduction of protective safeguards that have traditionally been used to protect domestic
(local) economies, and to aid local economic renewal.
! Changes in subsidy policy to favor vital local enterprises such as small-scale organic agriculture for
local markets, small-scale energy and transportation infrastructures.
! New controls on corporate activity, including a site here to sell here policy for manufacturing,
banking and other services, whether domestic or regional.
! Grounding capital and investment within the community; prots made locally remain primarily
local.
! Major changes in taxation policies such as increases on resource taxes for extraction and depletion
of natural capital like forests, water, minerals; and the introduction of pollution taxes.
! Increased direct public participation in policy making to help ensure equity and diversity of view-
point.
! Re-orientation of international aid and trade rules and the domestic policies that influence those
changes so that they contribute to the rebuilding of local rather than global economies.
! New competition policies such that global corporations lose access to local markets unless they
conform to all local investment rules.
C. Focus on Investment and Finance Issues Perhaps the most crucial issue concerning the viability
of a local economic system is how to channel investment capital into productive investments while pre-
venting a loss of local control to foreign owners and the economic disruption created by massive unregu-
lated flows of speculative money through international currency markets. It is important to bear in mind
that productive capital includes the natural capital of healthy forests, fertile soils, and clean rivers, and
the social capital of relationships of trust and cooperation. Too often conventional measures of economic
performance such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Product (GNP) create an illu-
sion of growing prosperity even as a country is depleting its real capital and mortgaging its future to for-
eign bankers to nance luxury imports for the rich and military armaments to keep the poor in check.
! Capital: Every country must provide a framework of rules for both foreign and domestic nance to
direct resources to areas of productive investment need and to limit predatory speculative extraction.
To this end, communities are encouraged to explore a range of options, including: the reintroduction
of exchange controls; re-regulation of banks and nance institutions so that far greater advantages
are achieved through local investment than flight; introduction of very high speed bumps that
penalize investors who move money from one asset to another with no contribution to useful pro-
ductive output.
13
D.Critiques of Localization and Subsidiarity Critics of localization fear it may bring local threats to
human rights or encourage autocracy. Of course subsidiarity is no guarantee of democracy or rights, but
makes them far more likely, as smaller communities offer much greater access to sources of power. On the
other hand, corporate globalization is intrinsically centralized, undemocratic and destructive to commu-
nity viability and democracy. In any case, the area of human rights is one in which international agreements
may continue to play a useful role. Other criticisms include loss of competitive stimuli, threats to bene-
fits from markets, encouragement of "protectionism," etc. All are discussed at length in the full document.
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Any citizens agenda for transforming the global economy must be rooted in a plan of action for dealing
with global corporations. By the onset of the new century, the combined sales of the worlds top 200 cor-
porations exceeded a quarter of all countries measured economic activity. And, if one listed the top 100
economic units on the planet, 51 are corporations and only 49 are countries.
A. Opposing Corporate Power There are six strategic options for taking on corporate power, ranging
from more reformist ones to more transformative ones:
Corporate Responsibility: One of the longest standing strategies has been what is frequently called the
corporate responsibility movement. The prime objective is to make corporations operate in a more
socially responsible manner, often in relation to specic environmental, labor and human rights
issues. In the past, this strategy has made use of shareholder action tactics. Similarly, the United
Nations Global Compact, launched in 2000, whereby a number of transnational corporations in vari-
ous sectors of the global economy were invited to sign a set of nine guidelines, was an exercise in
promoting voluntary corporate social responsibility. (Many people fear, however, that the compact
has undermined UN social and ecological responsibility.)
Corporate Accountability: Closely related are strategies for corporate accountability. The objective here
is to make corporations operate in a more publicly or democratically accountable manner in society
at large. Often, these strategies are pursued through legislative initiatives that seek to ensure that
U.S. corporations, for example, act in a more publicly accountable manner through their overseas
operations by establishing standards along with some enforcement mechanisms. The standards could
include: the payment of a living wage to workers; bans on mandatory overtime for workers under 18,
and pregnancy testing; and retaliation against whistle blowers; respect for basic International Labor
Organization (ILO) standards such as right to unionize, and health and safety protections.
Corporate Removal: Some activists have also developed the strategic action capacity to rid their com-
munities of unwanted transnational corporations. In India, for example, communities have developed
a signicant track record in removing corporations that abuse workers, cultural integrity, or natural
resources. Similar movements have succeeded in the Philippines.
Corporate Re-chartering: In some countries, notably the United States, citizens are now reclaiming
their right to participate in government decisions about whether or not specic corporations should
be granted the authority or licence to operate.
Corporate Restructuring: Another strategic action option emphasizes the need to change the nature
and structure of corporations today. Here, a prime target is the existence of limited liability laws.
Corporate Dismantling: Strategies are being developed to dismantle the corporation as it is presently
constituted. Such strategies aim to eliminate the publicly traded, limited liability form of corporate
14
organization with a focus on: limiting size and mobility, eliminating publicly traded shares, and
eliminating the limited liability provision as foremost destructive characteristics of the corpora-
tion. Many advocates would leave available a smaller range of other corporate forms, including
various kinds of worker-owned and/or locally owned corporations that do not have obligations to
absentee owners over all other stakeholders.
B. Tackling Corporate-State Collusion If the objective is to dismantle corporate rule, then it is also
imperative to develop strategies for confronting the corporate takeover of the state and the hijacking of
democratic governance itself. A platform for alternatives to corporate globalization must include a plan
of action for replacing corporate rule with effective forms of democratic governance. For most national
civil society alliances, this will likely require a two-pronged program of action.
1. Eliminate Corporate Welfare, Special Corporate Rights, and the Mechanisms by Which Corporations Exert
Influence over Public Policy: Corporate dominance of the political process not only deprives people of a
meaningful voice, it also excludes a voice for the local businesses that public policy should seek to favor.
While corporate executives have every right to participate in the political process as citizens, corpora-
tions themselves have no rightful place in a democratic political process except to the extent government
ofcials or citizen groups may call on them for advisory input.
Appropriate initiatives include measures to:
! Eliminate all prevailing patterns of bribery and corruption;
! Impose tight rules on big business lobbying operations;
! Eliminate corporate welfare (e.g., subsidies), rights, and special exemptions;
! Establish the liability of corporate ofcers and shareholders for corporate wrong doing.
2. Policies to Rebuild Economies Responsive to Human Needs: As corporations have appropriated public policy
to their own ends, national policy has come to favor global corporate interests over the national and
local interests of people and communities. This process must be reversed. The policy process must
respond to people and their needs and the priority of national policies must be to build national and
local economic security for all. Necessary actions include limiting corporate mobility, strengthening
local ownership and radically reforming systems of money and nance to end, or at least strictly limit,
nancial speculation, and restore the integrity of money.
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Before completing the discussion of alternative systems to the now dominant one, we must recognize
that the problems reside not only in the bureaucracies and corporations that presently deprive citizens
and nation-states of the abilities to act on our behalf. They are also exhibited as part of the fabric of the
practical operations of society, especially in its most important overarching economic sectors:
! Energy systems
! Agriculture and foods systems
! Transportation systems
! Manufacturing systems
15
It should not be surprising that in almost every country each of these overarching sectors have adopted
standards and forms of production and/or distribution that are anathema to the core principles we sug-
gest should govern society. In fact, these operating systems as presently constituted are entirely compati-
ble with the same fundamental values as the larger globalizing forces we have already described. They
are all part of a single integrated structure that is the global economy, extended right down to our
nations and communities.
A. Energy Systems There is no domain of global economic activity that does greater social, envi-
ronmental and political harm than the presently dominant energy systems, from source to waste.
Yet, ironically, there is no area so susceptible to satisfactory, short-run conversion and excellent available
alternatives.
Presently, new energy production in most parts of the world, but especially in the western industrial nations,
is based on fossil fuels: oil, coal, and natural gas, augmented in some places by large scale hydro, and nuclear
power. Production in this eld is characterized by an extremely high degree of global corporate concentration.
Currently, most of the technology needed to de-concentrate and localize energy production, achieve a
many-fold increase in energy efciency, and meet the remaining needs sustainably using photovoltaics,
biomass, geothermal, mini-hydro, wind, and other renewable energy sources is already available. This
includes technologies to convert cars, trucks, airplanes, ships and other modes of transit to hydrogen fuel
systems that increase safety and energy efciency.
None of these technologies are difcult or esoteric; in fact all are already in use in many places. For
example, Denmark already gets 15 percent of its total electricity from wind turbines. In Germany, BMW
is already operating and selling hydrogen-power cars with conventional engines that are more efcient
than gasoline-powered cars. In Japan, Mazda is converting its rotary engine to hydrogen; it will be ready
in 2002. Daimler-Chrysler, Ford, Honda, Toyota and GM are also developing hydrogen fuel cell cars.
And the Rocky Mountain Institute a major technology think tank and research institute directed by
Amory Lovins has already completed design and construction of a prototype hydrogen fuel cell hyper
car that will be inexpensive, has most of the safety and performance features of standard cars, and is
claimed to achieve the equivalent of 99 MPG using hydrogen.
B. Transportation Systems The global transportation infrastructure, built to service the global economy,
brings a multitude of negative consequences. With export production as a central feature of free trade,
there has been a massive increase in ocean shipping, highway transport, air cargo transport, rail, etc. with
a tremendous corresponding increase in infrastructure development. These latter include new highway
construction, pipelines (to move oil to fuel the transport), seaports, airports, canals, often driven through
pristine wilderness areas, or built upon coral reefs, or through indigenous lands, or rural communities.
Considerable social problems have resulted in some instances, but the environmental problems are also
crucially important, not the least of these is the dramatic acceleration of devastating climate change.
Recently, there have been a series of major ecocity conferences as urban areas try to gain control of
the major transportation systems, and other ecological and social problems caused by the present hap-
hazard sprawl design that requires longer distance transport, usually by private car (given the lack of
alternatives), and separates lifes functions: jobs are twenty miles from residences; shopping is in another
place altogether; convivial public places are largely absent.
16
It will be helpful in the long run, in order to reduce dependence on the private car, to redesign urban
environments so they are no longer spread out flat across great distances ala Los Angeles, or London,
or Bangkok. There are dozens of new ideas for altering such arrangements, beyond a changeover to the
provision of light rail, new dedicated bus lanes and bike paths that can free people from their dependence
on cars. The ultimate goal is to reduce the distance that people need to travel just as we also try to
reduce the distance, in other contexts, that goods need to travel from source to market.
C. Agriculture and Food Systems If globalized energy systems are the primary cause of the worlds
environmental and geopolitical crises, the undermining of small-scale, diversified, self-reliant, commu-
nity-based agricultural systems, and their replacement by corporate-run export-oriented monocultures
has been the primary cause of landlessness, hunger and food insecurity in the world. And it is also a
major contributing factor to global environmental devastation soil depletion, water pollution and
overuse, loss of biodiversity and many other problems. This conversion to global industrial agriculture
is increasing rapidly, as agriculture corporations spend billions of dollars annually in lobbying, advertis-
ing and public relations efforts to promote national and global trade policies that accelerate the tran-
sition to industrial agriculture systems. Such corporations argue that industrial agriculture is more
efcient than traditional farming, and that it has a better chance to feed a hungry world. And yet, all
evidence consistently shows exactly the opposite; industrial farmings so-called efciencies are sustained
only by huge government subsidies as well as high chemical inputs. And it causes far more hunger than
it solves.
To maintain a perspective on the scale and importance of this matter, it bares repeating that roughly half of
the worlds people still live directly on the land, growing their own staple foods, feeding families and commu-
nities. They use indigenous seed varieties developed over centuries. They have perfected their own organic
fertilizers, crop rotations and natural pesticide management. Their communities have traditionally shared
all elements of the local commons, including water, labor and seeds. They have been exemplary in pre-
serving the biodiversity necessary for community survival, and have fed local communities for centuries.
But they are all under assault from the corporate industrial agriculture system.
Many millions of people throughout the world are mobilizing to reverse the globalization of industrial
agriculture. Millions of farmers in India alone have protested corporate biopiracy of their biodiversity
and their seeds, and the eventual commercial patenting of indigenous seed varieties. The movement also
includes tens of thousands of farmers in Japan, the Philippines, Bolivia, Germany, France, and, most
signicantly, the growing international movement of landless peasants throughout the Third World,
who demand protection for their lands (where they still own lands) and/or a meaningful land reform
process. In Brazil, for example, the MST (Movimento Sem Terra), a landless peasant movement, has lately
won actual title to over 15 million acres of farmland that is able to serve 250,000 families. The work to
achieve a reversal in policy must be simultaneously carried forward on the international, national and
local levels. It begins with ve central convictions:
! Loss of smallholders farmlands to highly concentrated large corporations is a primary cause of
poverty and hunger in the world, as well as environmental devastation.
! Access to land for food-growing is a fundamental human right.
! Wherever people are still living and working on their traditional lands, all efforts must be made to
be sure they can remain in place, working for their families and communities, not the global market.
Where communities have been deprived of their lands, distributive land reform is crucial.
! Society must abandon its bias toward large-scale export-oriented monocultural production, while
17
re-invigorating indigenous agricultural principles that protect biodiversity devoted to sustainable use
for local populations.
! All solutions must serve to shorten the distance between producer and consumer.
D. Manufacturing (not yet available)
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Strengthened democracy at local and national levels will go a long way toward building sustainable soci-
eties. However, in themselves, these changes are not enough. Because giant private corporations are now
global, there must be countervailing public and accountable power at the global level. This section of
the report offers four different visions of changes at the global institutional level.
First, it argues that part of the chaos and inequity in the world comes from having two conflicting sets of
governing global institutions: the Bretton Woods triad and the United Nations (UN) system. We present
arguments that global economic governance should be unied under a reformed UN system. Second, we
discuss the possible dismantling or weakening of the Bretton Woods institutions. Third, we offer propos-
als for the strengthening and reform of certain existing UN organizations and the reduction of corporate
influence within the UN. Finally, we spell out new institutions that might better ll the gap left by the
diminishment of the Bretton Woods institutions.
A. Unify Global Governance Under a Restructured United Nations (UN) System Global
governance functions are currently divided between the UN system comprised of the UN secretariat; its
specialized agencies such as the World Health Organization, the International Labor Organization, the
Food and Agriculture Organization, and its various development assistance funds such as UNDP,
UNICEF, and UNIFEM; and the Bretton Woods system comprised of the World Bank, the IMF, and
the WTO. The UN system has by far the broader mandate, is more open and democratic, and in its
practice has given much greater weight to human, social, and environmental priorities. However, in
recent years the UN has come increasingly under the influence of the same global corporations, and
toward the same ends, as the Bretton Woods institutions. The more secretive and undemocratic Bretton
Woods system has invariable taken a narrowly economistic view of the world and placed nancial and
corporate interests ahead of human and planetary interests.
Dividing governance of the global affairs of one world between two competing governmental systems is
not wise policy. The time has come to reshape the system of global economic governance under the aus-
pices of a reformed UN providing it with the human and nancial resources to fulll its original
mandate and introducing changes intended to strengthen its function as a democratic governing body.
This will require the dismantling of the current structure of Bretton Woods institutions and the regional
development banks that operate as regional clones of the World Bank, moving essential functions relating
to global economic governance to the UN, while purging the UN of corporate influence.
B. Weaken or Dismantle the Bretton Woods Institutions The goal of a global restructuring of the
institutions of economic governance is to create an equitable and democratic global nancial and trading
system supportive of healthy, secure, sustainable, just, and productive local economies that function
18
within a cooperative system of international relationships. Such a system would seek balanced and stable
trade relationships; minimize nancial speculation and international debt; encourage productive invest-
ment, local ownership, and local self-reliance; protect poor countries from inappropriate economic pres-
sures and predatory assaults by more powerful countries and global corporations; and create a bias for
the poor in international trade and investment relationships.
1. WTO: Proponents often argue that this institution is one of many global institutions including the
UN organizations, and thus, a check-and-balance is maintained. However, the enforcement mechanisms
of the WTO are so powerful and broad that, in effect, the trade and nance agenda it promotes trumps
the influence and policies of institutions outside of the Bretton Woods system. In response, many in civil
society argue to eliminate or severely reduce the WTOs power. A true balance of power must be
restored among diverse actors and institutions such as the UN Conference on Trade and Development
(UNCTAD), multilateral environmental agreements, the International Labor Organization (ILO), and
evolving trade blocs. More fluid, pluralistic international institutions with multiple checks and balances
allow nations and communities of both the North and the South to live by their values, their rhythms,
and strategies of their choice.
2. World Bank and the IMF: This section recommends the appointment of international IMF/World
Bank Decommissioning bodies to oversee the process and the distribution of their assets. Half of the
members of such a body should come from civil society organizations because these are the groups that
were instrumental in bringing to light the destructive impact of these institutions. Two illustrative steps
that could be taken immediately include:
! Dismantling of all structural adjustment programs (SAPs) in the Third World and the ex-socialist
world.
! Reducing the IMF and World Bank staffs, with commensurate cuts in their capital expenditures
and operational expenses.
C. Strengthen the Countervailing Powers of Other International Organizations As the
Bretton Woods institutions are dismantled, the countervailing institutional power required to reform the
global nancial system and end global corporate rule can come from strengthened states and a reformed
United Nations. We hasten to note that though we believe that the United Nations should be strength-
ened in its mandate and resources, we also believe that international institutions should have responsibil-
ity and authority only for such functions as cannot be reasonably carried out at national and local levels.
Wherever possible, the primary responsibility of international institutions should be to support effective
and responsive democratic governance at national and local levels. There are strong arguments that the
World Health Organization, International Labor Ofce, and United Nations Environmental Programme
should be upgraded to address trade related health, labor, and environmental issues.
D. Create New Global Institutions In addition to reforming existing UN bodies, there may be a
need to create a small number of new institutions at the global level, most likely under United Nations
authority and oversight. Here are ve examples of the kinds of institutions that are needed:
1. Create an International Insolvency Court: Debt relief rather than the provision of still more debt is the
more appropriate response to the over indebtedness of low income countries. A people cannot be both
free and in debt. We therefore endorse recommendations to create an International Insolvency Court
(IIC) that have come from UNCTAD, the Jubilee 2000 Coalition, and the Canadian government.
19
2. Create an International Finance Organization (IFO) under the mandate and direction of the United Nations:
The IFO would work with UN member countries to achieve and maintain balance and stability in inter-
national nancial relationships, free national and global nance from the distortions of international debt
and debt-based money, promote productive domestic investment and domestic ownership of productive
resources, and take such actions as necessary at the international level to support nations and localities in
creating equitable, productive, sustainable livelihoods for all.
3. Create Regional Monetary Funds. Recognizing the legitimate need for access to short-term emergency
foreign exchange loans, while also recognizing that nance should be local to the extent possible, we
endorse the creation of regional monetary funds accountable to the member countries of their region.
4. Replace the WTO: There are three sets of proposals from civil society organizations around the world
on what type of trade rules should replace the WTO:
! Some argue for a return to the original idea of a more comprehensive International Trade
Organization that was proposed after World War II. This ITO would embrace goals of full employ-
ment and the busting of global cartels. It would also go beyond the original ITO mandate by
embracing environmental goals and its structure would be more open, transparent, and democratic.
! Others argue for returning to the less onerous General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, but like-
wise transforming GATT to be more open, transparent, and democratic.
! Others argue for the elimination of a global trade body and the strengthening of regional trade
bodies that help mesh production and trade strategies among member nations.
5. Create an Organization for Corporate Accountability (OCA) under the mandate and direction of the United
Nations. While enforcement authority will rest entirely with national and local governments, the OCA
will provide both governments and the general public with comprehensive and authoritative information
on corporate practices as a basis for legal action and for investor and consumer boycotts.
The above is a much abbreviated menu of more fully discussed views on how to reform the current sys-
tem of global institutions; their relationship to one another, to nation-states, and to citizens.
To obtain a copy of the nal report, contact the IFG at:
International Forum on Globalization
1009 General Kennedy Avenue, #2
San Francisco, CA 94129
Telephone: 415-561-7650 Fax: 415-561-7651 Web site: www.ifg.org
20
.cxxowi v cv xv x1s
The board of directors of the International Forum on Globalization would like to
thank John Cavanagh, vice president of the IFG, and director of the Institute for
Policy Studies, who has served as chairman of the Alternatives Committee of the
IFG, and as general editor of this document. The committee is comprised of the 18
drafters listed below. We also appreciate additional contributions from the following:
Agnes Bertrand, Brent Blackwelder, Alvin Duskin, Edward Goldsmith, Paul
Hawken, Andrew Kimbrell, Victor Menotti, Anuradha Mittal, David Morris,
Mark Ritchie, and Steve Shrybman.
Produced and published by the International Forum on Globalization (IFG)
1009 General Kennedy Avenue, #2
San Francisco, CA 94129
Telephone: 415-561-7650 Fax: 415-561-7651 Web site: www.ifg.org
The IFG is a research and educational institution comprised of over 60
researchers and economists from 20 countries.
John Cavanagh, Chair
Sarah Anderson
Debi Barker
Maude Barlow
Walden Bello
Robin Broad
Tony Clarke
Randy Hayes
Colin Hines
Martin Khor
David Korten
Jerry Mander
Helena Norberg-Hodge
Sara Larrain
Simon Retallack
Vandana Shiva
Victoria Tauli-Corpus
Lori Wallach
Drafting Committee
9
By Elizabeth (Betita) Martinez
'I was at the jail where a lot oI protesters were being
held and a big crowd oI people was chanting This Is
What Democracy Looks Like!`At Iirst it sounded
kind oI nice. But then I thought: is this really what
democracy looks like? Nobody here looks like me.
Jinee Kim, Bay Area youth organizer
In the vast acreage oI published analysis about
the splendid victory over the World Trade
Organization last November 29December 3, it is
almost impossible to Iind anyone wondering why
the 4050,000 demonstrators were overwhelmingly
Anglo. How can that be, when the WTO`s main vic-
tims around the world are people oI color?
Understanding the reasons Ior the low level oI
color, and what can be learned Irom it, is absolutely
crucial iI we are to make Seattle`s promise oI a new,
international movement against imperialist global-
ization come true.
Among those who did come Ior the WTO meet-
ing were some highly inIormative third world pan-
elists who spoke Monday, November 29 about the
eIIects oI WTO on health care and on the environ-
ment. They included activist-experts Irom Mexico,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Ghana, and Pakistan. On
Tuesday, at the huge rally on November 30 beIore
the march, labor leaders Irom Mexico, the
Caribbean, South AIrica, Malaysia, India, and China
spoke along with every major U.S. union leader (all
white).
Rank-and-Iile U.S. workers oI color also attend-
ed, Irom certain unions and locals in certain geo-
graphic areas. There were young AIrican Americans
in the building trades; blacks Irom Local 10 oI the
ILWU in San Francisco and Latinos Irom its Los
Angeles local; Asian Americans Irom SEIU;
Teamsters oI color Irom eastern Washington state;
members oI the painters` union and the union oI
Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees
(H.E.R.E.). Latino/a Iarmworkers Irom the UFW
and PCUN (Pineros and Campesinos del Noroeste)
oI Oregon also attended. At one point a miner Irom
the South AIrica Labor Network cried, 'In the
words oI Karl Marx, Workers oI the world, unite!`
The crowd oI some 25,000 people cheered.
Among community activists oI color, the
Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) delega-
tion led by Tom Goldtooth conducted an impressive
program oI events with Native peoples Irom all
over the U.S. and the world. A 15-member multi-
state delegation represented the Southwest Network
Ior Environmental and Economic Justice based in
Albuquerque, which embraces 84 organizations pri-
marily oI color in the U.S. and Mexico; their activi-
ties in Seattle were binational.
Many activist youth groups oI color came Irom
CaliIornia, especially the Bay Area, where they
have been working on such issues as Free Mumia,
aIIirmative action, ethnic studies, and rightwing
laws like the current Proposition 21 'youth crime
initiative. Seattle-based Iorces oI color that partici-
pated actively included the Filipino Community
Center and the international People`s Assembly,
which led a march on Tuesday despite being the
only one denied a permit. The predominantly white
Direct Action Network (DAN), a huge coalition,
brought thousands to the protest. But Jia Ching
Chen oI the Bay Area`s Third Eye Movement was
the only young person oI color involved in DAN`s
central planning.
Seattle`s 27-year-old Centro de la Raza organized
a Latino contingent in the labor march and local
university groups, including MEChA (Movimiento
Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan), hooked up with vis-
iting activists oI color. Black activists who have
been Iighting Ior an AIrican American Heritage
Museum and Cultural Center in Seattle were there.
Hop Hopkins, an AIDS activist in Seattle, also
black, made constant personal eIIorts to draw in
people oI color.
Still, the overall turnout oI color Irom the U.S.
remained around Iive percent oI the total. In person-
al interviews, activists Irom the Bay Area and the
Southwest gave me several reasons Ior this. Some
mentioned concern about the likelihood oI brutal
police repression. Other obstacles: lack oI Iunds Ior
the trip, inability to be absent Irom work during the
week, and problems in Iinding child care.
Where Was the Color in Seattle?
Looking for reasons why the Great Battle was so white
Yet several experienced activists oI color in the
Bay Area who had even been oIIered Iull scholar-
ships chose not to go. A major reason Ior not partic-
ipating, and the reason given by many others, was
lack oI knowledge about the WTO. As one Filipina
said, 'I didn`t see the political signiIicance oI it
how the protest would be anti-imperialist. We didn`t
know anything about the WTO except that lots oI
people were going to the meeting. One oI the Iew
groups that did Ieel inIormed, and did participate,
was the hip-hop group Company oI Prophets.
According to AIrican American member Rashidi
Omari oI Oakland, this happened as a result oI their
attending teach-ins by predominantly white groups
like Art and Revolution. Company oI Prophets, rap-
ping Irom a big white van, was in the Iront ranks oI
the 6AM march that closed down the WTO on
November 30.
The problem oI unIamiliarity with the WTO was
aggravated by the Iact that black and Latino com-
munities across the U.S. lack Internet access com-
pared to many white communities. A July 1999 Ied-
eral survey showed that among Americans earning
$15,000$35,000 a year, more than 32 percent oI
white Iamilies owned computers but only 19 per-
cent oI Black and Latino Iamilies. In that same
income range, only 9 percent oI AIrican American
and Latino homes had Internet access compared to
27 percent oI white Iamilies. So inIormation about
WTO and all the plans Ior Seattle did not reach
many people oI color.
Limited knowledge meant a Iailure to see how
the WTO aIIected the daily lives oI U.S. communi-
ties oI color. 'Activists oI color Ielt they had more
immediate issues, said Rashidi. 'Also, when we
returned people told me oI being worried that Iami-
ly and peers would say they were neglecting their
own communities, iI they went to Seattle. They
would be asked, Why are you going? You should
stay here and help your people.`
Along with such concerns about linkage came the
assumption that the protest would be overwhelm-
ingly white as it was. Coumba Toure, a Bay Area
activist originally Irom Mali, West AIrica, said she
had originally thought, 'the whites will take care oI
the WTO, I don`t need to go. Others were more
openly apprehensive. For example, Carlos ('Los
Ior short) Windham oI Company oI Prophets told
me, 'I think even Bay Area activists oI color who
understood the linkage didn`t want to go to a protest
dominated by 50,000 white hippies.
People oI color had reason to expect the protest
to be white-dominated. Roberto Maestas, director oI
Seattle`s Centro de la Raza, told me that in the mas-
sive local press coverage beIore the WTO meeting,
not a single person oI color appeared as a
spokesperson Ior the opposition. 'Day aIter day,
you saw only white Iaces in the news. The publicity
was a real deterrent to people oI color. I think some
oI the unions or church groups should have had rep-
resentatives oI color, to encourage people oI color
to participate.
Four protesters oI color Irom diIIerent Bay Area
organizations talked about the 'culture shock they
experienced when they Iirst visited the
'Convergence, the protest center set up by the
Direct Action Network, a coalition oI many organi-
zations. Said one, 'When we walked in, the room
was Iilled with young whites calling themselves
anarchists. There was a pungent smell, many had
not showered. We just couldn`t relate to the scene
so our whole group leIt right away. 'Another told
me, 'They sounded dogmatic and paranoid. 'I just
Ireaked and leIt, said another. 'It wasn`t just race,
it was also culture, although race was key.
In retrospect, observed Van Jones oI STORM
(Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary
Movement) in the Bay Area, 'We should have
stayed. We didn`t see that we had a lot to learn Irom
them. And they had a lot oI materials Ior making
banners, signs, puppets. 'Later I went back and
talked to people, recalled Rashidi, 'and they were
discussing tactics, very smart. Those Iolks were
really ready Ior action. It was limiting Ior people oI
color to let that one experience aIIect their whole
picture oI white activists. Jinee Kim, a Korean
American with the Third Eye Movement in the Bay
Area, also thought it was a mistake. 'We realized
we didn`t know how to do a blockade. We had no
gas masks. They made sure everybody had Iood and
water, they took care oI people. We could have
learned Irom them.
ReIlecting the more positive evaluation oI white
protesters in general, Richard Moore, coordinator oI
the Southwest Network Ior Environmental and
Economic Justice, told me 'the white activists were
very disciplined. 'We sat down with whites, we
didn`t take the attitude that we can`t work with
white Iolks,` concluded Rashidi. 'It was a liberat-
ing experience.
10
Few predominantly white groups in the Bay Area
made a serious eIIort to get people oI color to
Seattle. Juliette Beck oI Global Exchange worked
hard with others to help people Irom developing
(third world) countries to come. But Ior U.S. people
oI color, the main organizations that made a serious
eIIort to do so were Just Act (Youth ACTion Ior
Global JUSTice), Iormerly the Overseas
Development Network, and Art and Revolution,
which mostly helped artists. Many activists oI color
have mentioned Alli Chaggi-Starr oI Art and
Revolution, who not only helped people come but
Ior the big march in Seattle she obtained a van with
a sound system that was used by musicians and rap-
pers.
In Just Act, Coumba Toure and two other mem-
bers oI colorRaj Jayadev and Malachi Larabee
pushed hard Ior support Irom the group. As a result,
about 40 people oI color were enabled to go, thanks
to special Iundraising and whites staying at people`s
homes in Seattle so their hotel money could be used
instead on plane tickets Ior people oI color.
ReIlecting on the whole issue oI working with
whites, Coumba talked not only about pushing Just
Act but also pushing people oI color to apply Ior
the help that became available.
One oI the problems Coumba said she encoun-
tered in doing this was 'a legacy oI distrust oI mid-
dle-class white activists that has emerged Irom
experiences oI being used.` Or not having our
issues taken seriously. Involving people oI color
must be done in a way that gives them real space.
Whites must understand a whole new approach is
needed that includes respect (iI you go to people oI
color thinking you know more, it creates a barrier).
Also, you cannot approach people simply in terms
oI numbers, like let`s give 2 scholarships.` People
oI color must be central to the project.
Jia Ching Chen recalled that once during the
week oI protest, in a jail holding cell, he was one oI
only two people oI color among many Anglos. He
tried to discuss with some oI them the need to
involve more activists oI color and the importance
oI white support in this. 'Some would say, We
want to diversiIy,` but didn`t understand the dynam-
ics oI this. In other words, they didn`t understand
the kinds oI problems described by Coumba Toure.
'Other personal conversations were more produc-
tive, he said, 'and some white people started to
recognize why people oI color could view the
process oI developing working relations with whites
as oppressive.
UnIortunately the heritage oI distrust was intensi-
Iied by some oI the AFL-CIO leadership oI labor on
the November 30 march. They chose to take a diI-
Ierent route through downtown rather than march-
ing with others to the Convention Center and help-
ing to block the WTO. Also, on the march to down-
town they reportedly had a conIlict with the Third
World People`s Assembly contingent when they
rudely told the people oI color to move aside so
they could be in the lead.
Yet iI only a small number oI people oI color
went to Seattle, all those with whom I spoke Iound
the experience extraordinary. They spoke oI being
changed Iorever. 'I saw the Iuture. 'I saw the pos-
sibility oI people working together. They called the
giant mobilization 'a shot in the arm, iI you had
been Ieeling stagnant. 'Being there was an incredi-
ble awakening. Naomi, a Filipina dancer and musi-
cian, recalled how 'at Iirst a lot oI my group were
tired, grumpy, wanting to go home. That really
changed. One oI the artists with us, who never con-
sidered herselI a political activist, now wants to get
involved back in Oakland. Seattle created a lot oI
strong bonds in my small community oI coworkers
and Iriends.
They seem to Ieel they had seen why, as the
chant popularized by the Chicano/a students oI
MEChA goes, 'Ain`t no power like the power oI
the people, Cause the power oI the people don`t
stop!
There must be eIIective Iollow-up and increased
communication between people oI color across the
nation: grassroots organizers, activists, cultural
workers, and educators. We need to build on the
contacts made (or that need to be made) Irom
Seattle. Even within the Bay Area, activists who
could Iorm working alliances still do not know oI
each other`s existence.
With mass protests planned Ior April 16-17 in
Washington, D.C. at the meeting oI the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the
opportunity to build on the WTO victory shines
brightly. More than ever, we need to work on our
ignorance about global issues with study groups,
youth workshops, conIerences. We need to draw
speciIic links between WTO and our close-to-home
struggles in communities oI color, as has been
emphasized by Raj Jayadev and Lisa Juachon in
11
The Silicon Jallev Reader. Locali:ing the Effects of
the Global Economv, 1999, which they edited.
Many examples oI how WTO has hurt poor peo-
ple in third world countries were given during the
protest. For example, a Pakistani told one panel
how, Ior years, South AIricans grew medicinal
herbs to treat AIDS at very little cost. The WTO
ruled that this was 'unIair competition with phar-
maceutical companies seeking to sell their expen-
sive AIDS medications. 'People are dying because
they cannot aIIord those products, he said. A
Filipino reported on indigenous Iarmers being com-
pelled to use Iertilizers containing poisonous chemi-
cals in order to compete with cheap, imported pota-
toes. Ruined, they oIten leIt the land seeking sur-
vival elsewhere.
But there are many powerIul examples right here
in the U.S. For starters, consider:
WTO policies encourage sub-livable wages Ior
youth oI color everywhere including right here.
WTO policies encourage privatization oI health
care, education, welIare, and other crucial public
services, as well as cutbacks in those services, so
private industry can take them over and run them at
a proIit. This, along
with sub-livable
wages, leads to
jeopardizing the
lives oI working-
class people and
criminalizing youth
in particular.
Workers in
Silicon Valley are
being chemically
poisoned by the
chips they work on
that make such
wealth Ior others.
WTO doesn`t want
to limit those proI-
its with protection
Ior workers.
WTO has said it is 'unIair trade to ban the
import oI gasoline in which certain cancer-causing
chemicals have been used. This could have a devas-
tating eIIect on people in the U.S., including those
oI color, who buy that gas.
Overall, WTO is controlled by U.S. corpora-
tions. It is secretly run by a Iew advanced industri-
alized countries Ior the beneIit oI the rich and aspir-
ing rich. WTO serves to Iurther impoverish the poor
oI all countries.
Armed with such knowledge, we can educate and
organize people oI color. As Jinee Kim said at a San
Francisco report-back by youth oI color, 'We have
to work with people who may not know the word
globalization` but they live globalization.
Eli:abeth (Betita) Martine: is a longtime Chicana
activist and teacher who has published 6 books on
struggles for social fustice in the Americas. She
founded and now heads the Institute for MultiRacial
Justice, a resource center that aims to help build
alliances among peoples of color. A San Francisco
resident, she spent four davs at the WTO protest
with the delegation of the Southwest Network for
Environmental and
Economic Justice,
which is based in
Albuquerque, N.M.
This is an extended
version of an article
contained in the
Februarv 2000
issue of ColorLines.
Subscriptions to
ColorLines are $16
per vear (four
issues) and mav be
obtained from the
website,
http.//www.color -
lines.com or at
510/653-3415.
12

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of its current rules before negotiating

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