After Seattle,
now what?
by
Bob Banner
The focus of the anti-WTO demonstrations has been to galvanize numerous concerns... whether it be freeing Tibet from China, changing despicable working conditions by corporations in third world countries, the downsizing of jobs in the US to go elsewhere so corporations can pay cheaper wages, or a plethora of other vitally important causes. The question indeed is where does it go from here? After Seattle, now what?
Jello Biafro, a former musician with the Dead Kennedys, spoke at Michael Moore’s bash at the Seattle Center during the WTO protests. His wildly receptive three-minute talk focused on what do we do after we leave Seattle. He said for us to LISTEN to folks, even if that means listening to the right wing folks since this is no longer an issue between left and right. This is an issue of top/down. He also said for us to bring the message home, to our familes, schools, jobs and stand up to what we are for.... As for the media, he said "Don’t blame the media, BECOME THE MEDIA." Also, Anita Roddick (the owner of The Body Shop) stated so articulately that what CEO’s, corporations and the WTO fear most is a consumer revolution. If we stopped buying Nike, MacDonald burgers, Starbuck’s coffee, Old Navy and Gap clothes we could make a major difference. But to do this on a large scale means much more education.
There already is a form of consumer revolution called the simplicity movement, helping people lessen their consumption. But to a very large degree the simplicity movement [or VS as it has been called (voluntary simplicity)] has become yuppified and coopted by people emphasizing gaining financial independence instead of necessary and vital political and social action work.
Then, too, there are the people who are experiencing involuntary (or forced) simplicity.
To take the essence of simplicity... and organize our lives so that purpose, social service, and passion are integrated into a quality of life that can become models for other people, we must move into a larger sphere of political awareness. As Jerry Mander aptly put it (paraphrased by someone else), we have become so "parochial and inward-looking" that we need a large dose of how the third world views our capitalistic economic model and our consumptive mode of living so we can wake up to what’s really going on and how our life styles affect them. [This was the reason he included many people from the South during the IFG conference (see report on p. 35.)]
We can do this in many ways:
1) start "WTO for dummies" clubs in the neighborhood, or create classes at the nearest community center;
2) buy local;
3) know where our food comes from (either grow our own, buy or trade/share with neighbors, subscribe to a CSA [Community Supported Agriculture], buy at local farmers markets, create community gardens (find land that the city will either give away or lease and begin a food cooperative/urban farm);
4) read labels on our clothes, shoes, computers, bikes, soaps — all the goods and products we use; investigate and educate ourselves on what we are buying. (We are voting with each dollar we spend.);
5) write letters to the editors of local papers having them include material about the WTO and other global organizations that allegedly speak for us;
6) put investments into Socially Responsible Investments (SRI)... (for those who have extra money to invest);
7) learn indigenous ways of the third and fourth world rather than arrogantly jamming our ideas of progress down their throats;
8) get a local professor to start a column following the WTO debate defining the terms used frequently when speaking about globalization, such as the MAI, IMF, World Bank, GATT, NAFTA, Fast Track, protectionism, sound science, transparency, precautionary principles, etc.;
9) start sending book reviews to our local newspapers about globalization;
10) become acquainted with labor unions in our neighborhood/city/community/school/hospital and speak to them about their concerns;
11) learn about the "South in the North" by learning about the homeless, poor, unemployed and marginalized. We do not have to necessarily focus on the South to understand what’s going on.
12) start making alliances and share what we have learned within the simplicity movement — growing our own food, getting appliances repaired (instead of throwing them in the landfills), reducing our debt by cutting up our credit cards (or using them wisely), keeping chickens for our own eggs, collecting our own water [using cisterns (most of the world’s population catches rain water, rather than pumping from aquifers)], buying used clothes, creating a listserv of like-minded individuals to spark a community of social/community activists, creating a video library that includes documentaries of global as well as local concerns to expand our knowledge and vision; creating ordinances, initiatives (support SOAR); campaigning for responsible representatives in our local government; showing people how they don’t have to work 40-80 hours a week doing what they hate; showing alternative, sane models of people who are in transition from a job so that more and more hours become theirs to do what they have passion for (reclaiming their time); keeping alive the spark of the WTO which has been the impetus galvanizing numerous concerns;
13) create alternative advertising to spark debacles in the mind for personal and consumer transformation;
14) not get caught in the dualistic thinking that we either have to focus on the personal or the political. This is old-paradigm thinking. Both are happening anyway, so why not become more responsible for each one. Also, do what you love. Don’t get down on ourselves for not doing what we have passion for... but try our damnedest to become an authentic and responsible citizens without becoming frenetic, anxious or full of despair. Use what turns you on so that your love beams out onto the world and touches people. As Rumi said, "Let the beauty we love be what we do." (Helena Norberg-Hodge told us, at the IFG conference, that so many of her friends were becoming so full of despair and cynical about any kind of change.... she told them "Not now!"... This is the time for us to use the WTO for our own local community-building efforts.]
15) Start a sustainability school in a church, abandoned grange, community center, barn, yoga center... Start slow, creating forums, lectures, slide shows, and eco-events.
16) add your own list....
Of course this is a mouthful but the point is to start a dialogue, keep the debate going on about the WTO... not on the alleged violence of the protesters but the violence of the WTO, e.g., how certain global policies wreak havoc on peasants from India forcing them to commit suicide, how the WTO affects our local communities, how, likewise, our Board of Supervisors affect our local communities by a vote of 3-2 that has been allowing sprawl to trample our beautiful bioregion.
People in the simplicity movement have inspired some of the gross consumers who have become miserable with their opulence and accumulative shopping frenzies. To guarantee the potency of this movement we need to go deeper, make allies, get political, take stands, join forces, and start reclaiming our power and our democratic ideals that we all too frequently take for granted.
