-Caveat Lector- forwarded.... Dave Hartley http://www.Asheville-Computer.com http://www.ioa.com/~davehart -----Original Message----- From: MichaelP [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 1999 5:00 PM To: unlikely.suspects :; Subject: Seattle -November 30-December 3 [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << All of you who are planning on coming to Seattle for the WTO Ministerial at the end of November, will get to meet Sally and witness first hand her fantastic organizing skills. If you haven't made travel arrangements yet you should do so today. If you need somewhere to stay let us know - we've made a bunch of reservations for hotel rooms/hostels/couches & futons (e-mail Alesha Daughtrey at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for more information). ============================= Seattle woman striving to limit powers of WTO Tuesday, September 7, 1999 By BRUCE RAMSEY SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER A week ago, 50 people carrying signs swarmed into the chambers of the King County Council. Their target was a resolution welcoming the World Trade Organization to Seattle. In this trade-dependent city, the group succeeded in having "expanded and freer international trade" taken out of the resolution. In its stead was language calling for trade agreements to "empower workers (and) consumers, protect the environment, reinforce sovereignty and foster sustainable, broad-based economic development." A global economy that fails to protect such rights "is a global economy that will not work," the new motion said. A global economy that will not work . . . that's surprising rhetoric in the booming hometown of Boeing and Microsoft. That it was passed by Democrats and Republicans was a victory for Sally Soriano. She is chief organizer of People for Fair Trade, an umbrella for groups ranging from progressive to left that either want to reform, curb or abolish the WTO. While the corporate supporters of the WTO have been busy building airplanes and making software, Soriano has been running a campaign out of her house. She has engaged Port Commissioner Pat Davis and trade consultant Bill Bryant in public debates. She can turn on the rhetoric, and in her opponents' view, she often overstates her case. But she is a formidable opponent -- and she comes with an audience. Her victory at the King County Council was not the first. Last year she lobbied the councils of King and Snohomish counties and the Seattle City Council to pass resolutions on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, a proposal that hardly anyone had heard of. Soriano had. And she won over the Seattle City Council 8-0. No supporters of the investment treaty had shown up. It was a symbolic victory, as was the one last week. It could be dismissed as street theater -- except that between Nov. 30 and Dec. 3, Seattle will become the best stage in the world for street theater. There will be 135 trade ministers to confront, thousands of protesters to make a noise, and thousands of journalists to record it. How many protesters? "We're talking tens of thousands," she says. That includes everyone from Canadian nationalists to Eugene, Ore., anarchists. Soriano's house at North Beach is restfully empty, the volunteers having moved out to a store-front office at 1914 Fourth Ave. On one wall is a list of things to do; on another are her Diego Rivera murals of industrial workers. On the window sill is a book by Michael Parenti, who can be heard occasionally denouncing global capitalism on KUOW-FM. Selling Parenti tapes by mail order is one of her sources of income. The other is Ralph Nader's organization, Public Citizen. Soriano, 53, has never married. She comes from an old Seattle family; her grandfather was a halibut fisherman in Alaska, and her father, Amigo Soriano, was a Puget Sound ship's pilot. Her uncle, Dewey Soriano, who died last year, was the man who brought Seattle its first major-league baseball club, the Pilots, in 1969. Sally, who grew up in the Alki neighborhood, worked for her uncle at the Pacific Coast Baseball League for a short time. Then she went off to the University of Washington to study education and sociology. Half a million Americans were fighting in Vietnam. "That's when I became an antiwar activist," she said. In 1969, she took off a quarter to study in Cuernavaca, Mexico, with educational theorists Jonathan Kozol and Ivan Illich. Upon graduation, she was hired at the University of Wisconsin to teach in a new department called Community Education. "A 33-year-old dean hired a bunch of us," she said. They taught about the educational system, and how it should be changed. Eight years later she returned to Seattle, teaching sometimes at the community colleges. She stayed away from political campaigns for years, thinking them pointless. But in 1988 she began a career as an activist by becoming a Democratic delegate for Jesse Jackson. By 1993, she was campaigning for Ralph Nader against NAFTA; in 1994, against GATT, and in 1997, against Fast Track, the grant of authority to President Clinton to negotiate non-amendable trade pacts. Washington, she said, "was one of the most difficult states to organize in" to oppose free trade. She said she isn't against trade, only the way the current system makes the rules for it. At a Seattle University forum she described the WTO as "a supranational legal system, outside our constitution and courts . . . that has always favored corporations over labor, public health and the environment." Business generally argues that the WTO represents the rule of law. The WTO, in that view, civilizes governments abroad something like the Constitution civilizes it here, keeping it from doing arbitrary and unpredictable things. Soriano pictures the WTO as kind of a tory Supreme Court, ever willing to strike down the will of the people. Her goal, she says, is to stop the WTO from negotiating any more agreements, and to begin reviewing the existing ones. Given the support of the WTO by a majority of Democrats and Republicans -- if with a different emphasis -- stopping it is not likely. Making herself and her supporters heard is well within her ability. P-I reporter Bruce Ramsey can be reached at 206-448-8391 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] ================================= *** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. *** DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! 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