ETS! encourages comments, feedback, tips, corrections, and info! Please keep them as concise as possible so we can print as many different voices as possible: ETS!, P.O. Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145, or e-mail ets@scn.org.

The SPEEA Strike

ETS!,

WTO opponents have a stake in winning the SPEEA strike at Boeing.

Months after the hugely successful demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, unionized engineers and engineering techs are now shutting down technical operations at the Boeing Co. These brave and dedicated workers are trying to curb the power of the aircraft behemoth. They need our help.

Boeing, the world's largest multinational airframe manufacturer and a major host of the Seattle WTO Ministerial, forced out its engineering workers by refusing to provide fair procedures for raises or fund long-term disability and life insurance benefits.

The company is a champion of "free" trade on its own terms, a flagrant polluter, and a political bully in national and Washington State politics--invariably writing or bending laws for its own benefit. Boeing is a determined opponent of employee rights: it just settled a discrimination suit by African American employees and is now being sued by Hispanic workers. It refuses to even discuss costs of living adjustments for retirees and is notorious for relying on frequent massive layoffs of veteran workers to prop up profits.

There's a place on the SPEEA picket lines for the union militants, environmentalists, feminists, radicals and dissidents of all persuasions whose demonstrations and rallies disrupted the WTO meetings. Volunteers are very welcome and have an opportunity to make history again by participating in the first major work stoppage by Boeing engineers.

Sustained solidarity is the key to building the world of shared plenty and environmental sanity that is sought by working people everywhere.

Call SPEEA at 1-800-325-0811 to offer help or pick up a sign at the nearest Boeing gate throughout the Puget Sound area and in Philadelphia, Portland, Los Angeles or Wichita. Strike fund donations should be sent to: SPEEA, 15205 52nd Ave. S, Seattle, WA 98188.

Henry Noble, Seattle, WA

In Search Of...

To whom it may concern,

Sorry to say your "Reclaim Our History" entry for Feb 8 (ETS!, Feb. 2, 2000) is wrong. You write: "Feb 8, 1517, Hernandez de Cordova sails with three vessels from Cuba to Bahama Islands in search of Indian slaves".

I am coincidentally reading "Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes, and the Fall of Old Mexico," by Hugh Thomas, which has a chapter on Hernandez de Cordova's voyage.

HdC didn't sail to the Bahamas, but to the "islands" west of Cuba (that is, Yucatan, but the Spaniards still hadn't figured out that there was a continent lurking nearby, and thought the lands they'd "discovered" were all islands off the coast of Asia). HdC and crew thus became the first Spaniards to purposefully reach the mainland of what is now Mexico (others had hit it accidentally while lost).

Anyway, HdC ended up basically getting his butt kicked by the Mayas, retreating to Florida, and dying of his wounds shortly after returning to Cuba. You can find the details in Thomas's book.

It is true that they were in search of Indian slaves, as they had a nasty habit of killing all the natives on the Caribbean islands they overran (through a mixture of outright killing, disease, and because their cattle overran the natives' crops).

Greg Barnes, via e-mail

The Motive of INGOs?

Dear ETS!,

You probably saw the pictures of the global elite meeting at Davos, protected by Swiss riot police (and the Swiss Army). New: this time the global elite included representatives of global civil society. You have probably seen that some people openly advocate global civil society. This development is a major background issue for the WTO and other international organizations.

Now, a Greenpeace-Shell world government, is that True Progress? Is that the ideal which should inspire activists? And was it the ideal, for the Seattle and Davos demonstrators?

I am no doubt cynical, but I think it is good to look behind the images of riots and broken McDonald's windows. There is certainly a global civil society, in the sense of a coalition of international NGOs (INGOs). That includes organizations like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, Greenpeace, Corporate Watch, the APC and so on. These organizations are seeking representation in decision-making at the global level.

There is already a precedent for this in the European Union. The EU has an Economic and Social Committee (ESC), which is intended as the representative of "civil society." It describes itself as "the European-level forum for reflection of civil society organizations and associations." In fact it continues the older west European tradition, of tripartite (business/labor/government) National Social Councils. A new section has been added, to include the newer "civil society" organizations of the last generation. (See their website at http://www.ces.eu.int/en/org/fr_org_default.htm.)

Something like this ESC, at the global level, is what international civil society wants. Greenpeace and Amnesty don't come to WTO or WEF meetings to "smash the system," but to get onto this kind of committee. The global media are their main vehicle in this campaign: their own membership is too small and too uncommitted to exert any power at the global level.

So the suspicion is, that demos like those at Seattle and Davos serve primarily the interests of the INGOs--as a means of levering their way into membership of some future "Global Social-Environmental Council." From what I know of the backgrounds, I think most of the demonstrators would not explicitly support such a strategy. So are they being used as cannon-fodder? It certainly looks that way, but there is no point in discussing the motives of individual demonstrators.

It is more relevant to look at the use of such demonstrations, especially in the media--and how they fit into larger political campaigns.

Paul Treanor, via e-mail

Gary, the Demopublican

Dear People,

We are seeing in Washington State serious political infighting between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party over control of the state that could decide who our next dictator--er, president--could be in this country (or what's left of it). A whole lot of political economic effort was involved in building the centrist political machine that put Bill Clinton in office, and also ended up co-opting the center-lefty elements that at one time had a meaningful political presence in socioeconomic policymaking in this country. Times have changed again folks, with both parties forced to compete for every last dollar out there, dirty or not, in order to put themselves over the top and in control. This is due mostly to the rules of the game and what limits or does not limit candidates in their fundraising activities.

Since both parties must go to a lower and lower number of corporations and their pathetic leadership for funds, naturally the debate also gets narrower and narrower, becoming less and less viable and interesting as times goes on. Crossover candidates are responding not to the popular will anymore, but instead deep pockets and opinion polls shaped by the designers to confirm the desired conclusion. Seattle's leadership is really good at this and since the state Democrats--er, Republicrats--are taking advice from the same source, they are also caught up in the same top-down non-responsive crap.

The story goes that Gary Locke's daddy built up a successful business, a grocery store, and from that Gary alleges that he learned the value of hard, self-sacrificing work. I have heard this one before, I believe; can't they come up with better stories? Along the way, young Gary probably also internalized the idea that those dirty bums on the street deserved to be there and also the idea that since they didn't have things, their lives must be valueless, too, so let them die. Malign neglect is the preferred method, because then we can't be held directly responsible for letting them die. And publicity stunts showing us helping them will placate the complicit middle class as to our good intentions.

The few that survive must be really special and deserve to live so we'll help them out once they come to us, even though we may hold our delicate, holier than thou nose for awhile while telling them how to dress and when to take a shower and what spoon to use, and how to properly address massah.

Both parties have lost touch heavily with the mass base out there and where they stand; I hope that the Republicans have the biggest comeuppence, though. Nowhere do you see more conservative Democrats or Greens for that matter than in Theattle, because the multinationals are running the show from behind the curtain. Whoever gets the most cash wins, right? Not in the end, though. The Democrats used to win elections by being the most committed to reaching and serving the people, while making the most effective use of limited resources. No longer. They are currently losing the state more and more as they fail to respond to their potential mass base of support while trying to please the corporations who are more than willing to throw them a bone and even some meat once in awhile. God forbid if they actually seek out popular support from the unwashed masses, and even moreso if they actually craft policy and initiatives that those people want. Things like recovering the money stolen into the stadium development illegally so we can actually house people, or taxing multinational corporations for what they take from the taxpayers every day, or recovering damages from environmental poisonings and destruction, or paying parents enough so they can raise their kids out of poverty, or doing something as simple as actually creating policy that is constitutionally compatible, seems to have escaped the senses of the party leadership.

And so it is that not with a bang, but a whimper, the Democrats will lose control of the state and end up close to the streets along with the rest of us; probably do them some good. Too bad, Gary, you could have been so much more if you had just stood up and spoke out against their insanity once in awhile, exposing it for what it actually is, but you listened to them when they led you to political annihilation, suckah. I don't know, is slow death or quick death kinder?

Lyle Courtsal, Seattle

The What?

Hi, Eat the State!,

You guys are the shit!

That is, shit as in good, not shit as in shit.

Anyway, I have been reading you folks on-line since July. I used to be in online news (www.bicc.de/milex), and now I'm in web design in London, U.K.

When are you guys going to pull John McCain's pants down?

"I have opposed federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts because I believe it is not proper to use tax dollars for what many Americans feel are the obscene and inappropriate projects this organization has supported. I support providing federal block grants to the states for arts education and artistic endeavors pursued by state and local authorities, while assuring that federal tax dollars are not spent on obscene or offensive material."--McCain.

Or at least point out that Bill Bradley was a senator that voted for all the tax giveaways of the Reagan years and is problematic on campaign finance?

All the best and keep it up,

Scott, via e-mail