Local activists started the ball rolling

By Joan Jones Holtz
September 2000

Angeles Chapter activists chose a patriotic way and a patriotic day to skewer the World Trade Organization’s policies of prioritizing trade over public health and the environment by symbolically trashing tainted WTO “products.”

Dubbed the “WTeaO Party,” members gathered on Veterans Day at the L.A. Chamber of Commerce building in downtown Los Angeles with American flags, banners and posters depicting “The Spirit of ’76” patriots with the slogan: “No globalization without representation.”

One by one, Club activists stepped forward to dispose of WTO-polluted products. “WTO dirty water” was poured onto the sidewalk and a “WTO dirty gasoline” can was tossed into the “WTO trash” container. Next to go was a package of “WTO-shrimp caught by killing endangered sea turtles.” Last was the “WTO obsolete computer,” one that likely won’t be disposed of in an environmentally sound manner since the international agency ruled that such a provision would be a threat to Silicon Valley profits.

The protest was part of the Club’s campaign to dog U.S. Commerce Secretary William Daley on his 20-city tour hawking free trade to the public prior to the WTO summit in Seattle on Nov. 30-Dec. 3. Chapter activists also protested in Long Beach and in West L.A.
During this series of protests, the Club joined a host of other unions and environmental and human rights groups in turning Daley’s sales pitch of “trading globally, prospering locally” into “pillage globally, layoff locally.”

At the downtown Los Angeles protest, Martin Schlageter, the Chapter’s conservation coordinator, led chants of “people before profits” and talked about the false promises of WTO and its unaccountable power to undermine hard-won health, environment and labor standards.

Addressing Daley’ bid to “put a human face on trade,” Schlageter told the crowd:

“The human face of trade is kids getting sick with asthma because the WTO ordered us to import dirty gasoline that pollutes our air; the human face of trade is schoolchildren sick with hepatitis because under NAFTA we import tainted fruit; the human face of trade is the working men and women struggling to make ends meet because they’re forced to compete with workers abroad earning less than a dollar a day; the human face of trade is the mom or dad who will someday have to explain to their children why the only sea turtles left are in zoos; the human face of trade is the shocked expression when people learn that a trade agreement allowed a foreign corporation to sue taxpayers for $1 billion after California banned a toxic gasoline additive that is polluting our water.”

Schlageter closed by telling the crowd that big businesses are creating a world economy through the WTO that values only the bottom line, not our environment, not working families, not democratic rights.

Joan Jones Holtz is an outings leader and conservation activist with the Chapter. She also attended the Sierra Club’s national protest in Seattle.