Protesting the WTO: PDX & Beyond

This week marks the 10th anniversary of the famous Seattle protests, which succeeded in temporarily shutting down World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations. The implications of its success were considerable, but I mention it now primarily for irony's sake. For on December 5th there will be nation-wide protests against the policies of the WTO in remembrance of the Battle of Seattle. One of the larger gatherings has been put together in Portland by an organization called D5. Okay...so far, so good.

Now let's take a look at the itinerary:
12pm- Meet under the Hawthorne Bridge
1pm- March to the World Trade Center
2pm- Indoor Rally and Concert at Portland State Univers-

--wait, what!? An indoor concert at PSU? Why would we want to cut our own protest short by having a concert inside a building 10 blocks away from the World Trade Center? What a half-ass attempt at activism. I wonder if we think listening to certain music will directly change the world, or if we've simply given up.

Another thing that makes me wonder is the D5 website. They advertise the after-party to be held at a local bar: "Celebrate the day's successes and the 10-year anniversary of the Seattle protests..." They're obviously optimists if they've planned their own victory party ahead of time. If you set your standards low enough, it's easy to be successful. I'd rather celebrate the Seattle protests by emulating them, not by going to a pseudo-protest--whose aim is to be "family-friendly"--so as to purge myself of any pending guilt.

The suits don't feel bad for us. They don't feel guilty about sending our jobs to other countries, and they probably don't think twice about taking advantage of the impoverished. If protests go as planned on December 5th (at least in Portland), we won't be any closer preventing the monstrous actions of the WTO, and we won't be any closer to saving our jobs.

I don't mean to keep belittling the peace movement. They're good people. I'm really impressed with the exhaustive list of groups and organizations that endorse D5, and it's obvious that a ton of work has been put into this event. But the more impressed I am by this, the more disappointed I become when I remember how the time and energy will essentially be wasted due to a lack of specificity and valor.

We're basically going to wave our signs around for a while, catch a show, and then get drunk. It sounds like a perfect day to me, but I don't a perfect day. I want a day of convictive resistance that brings us closer to job security and symbiotic international trade. I want a day that's as peacefully and effectively disruptive as those three days were in Seattle in 1999.

However, I'm still gonna to go, and I encourage others to as well. If nothing else, it'll be informative and sociable, and it can't be any more dull than the anti-war rallies that went down early in the week. Check back with me to find out how it went. I hope I'm surprised.