Dear friends of the Caravan,
Back from Seattle, I send you below some news that will give you new energy. About the DAN, the people who actually stopped the WTO meeting. They are the people who co-sponsored the call to Global Action and they are going to coordinate for the next PGA North American meeting! We have a lot to learn from these beautiful people!
Pasted below is a part of an article that an american review asked me to do about PGA, the part where I present last day of action and the Direct Action Network in Seattle. The complete article is attached for information.
Hugs Olivier
"For the third WTO Summit in Seattle, another Global Day of Action call went out, sent also in the name of the IWW and the Direct Action Network (DAN) on the west coast of the USA. First reports indicate that at least 74 cities around the world organised events, large or small: 18 cities in India (including New Delhi, Bangalore and the Narmada valley), 14 in Canada, 9 in Germany, at least 8 in the United States, 7 in Great Britain (including an important confrontation in London) and as many in Italy, plus Geneva (5000 persons), Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Prague, Brisbane, Amsterdam... There were demonstrations in cities of Pakistan (8000 persons), Sri Lanka, Turkey, Israel, Ireland, Iceland, etc. (There were also demonstrations in Korea, the Philippines and Greece apparently without links to the call to action. In France, people responded massively to a separate call of the ATTAC movement, which reports 75000 participants in 80 cities.)
But of course, the divine surprise was in Seattle itself, where the Direct Action Network (DAN) actually stopped the WTO summit from opening on November 30!
The DAN is a network of committees formed at the beginning of the summer in eight west coast cities ranging from Vancouver, Canada to Los Angeles. Citing the 4 PGA hallmarks (see above), inspired by the Indian farmers "cremation" of GMO crops, the uprising in Chiapas and the takeover of London's financial district by Reclaim the Streets during the June 18th Global Day of Action, this network (which seems to mostly regroup students and young radicals) not only co-sponsored the call to global action on November 30th, but organised for Seattle in an incredibly serious, creative and efficient manner. A twenty page action packet detailed exactly how they planned to form clusters of affinity groups technically and politically prepared to block all the approaches to the Seattle convention center by creative, non-violent actions, tripods, lockdowns, etc.; how the resistance was to be pursued in jail in case of mass arrest; how to deal with media; first aid, etc. They dared a prophesy:
"Envision"
Thousands of people theatrically processing through Seattle with giant images and puppets graphically showing the economic and ecological devastation left in the wake of global capital. Mass non-violent direct actions and blockades shutting down roads and arteries leading to the ministerial of the WTO. .... breaking down corporate globalisation and showing glimpses of the world as it could be - global liberation.... life, creativity and resistance hurled in the face of thousands of deadening bureaucrats, business people and politicians at the WTO ministerial... The cacaphony against capital will be deafening when nine days of large scale street theater preparations culminate in the largest festival of resistance the world has ever seen. We will make revolution irresistible."
Today, Clinton must be wanting to know why the police didn't take this challenge more seriously. Its true that it was difficult to imagine that there would be thousands of people on hand (in the rain, at 7 in the morning on a weekday!) to carry out this daft plan! I myself could only believe it as I saw it happen, sections of the two converging marches (one led by a group of progressive steel workers, the other by the PGA North American Caravan) breaking off to block the 13 approaches to the Convention Center, the people so determined that the police had soon exhausted its stock of gases, without succeeding in breaking the siege. By the time the much larger march of the unions and NGOs approached, the day was won, and a large proportion of the marchers abandoned the official (legal) trajectory to fraternise with the DAN in a huge cross-city festival that ended only at nightfall in a last shower of gas and concussion grenades.
During the four succeeding days, the spirit of the demonstrations was as beautiful. I will never forget how, after the brutal repression and hundreds of arrests of Wednesday, we literally danced back into the "No demonstration zone" ("No Constitution zone") the next day, with passing motorists, bus drivers and workers on the construction sites cheering us on. Throughout the city, in the jail, around the jail (besieged by the protestors for three days and nights) the air was alive with the awareness that this was a rare moment, probably the birth of a new popular movement in the USA.
Among its post-Seattle objectives, the DAN mentions the Mayday 2000 project proposed by PGA groups from Europe and the North American People's Global Action conference (to be held in the first part of 2000). Great news from the USA!