What a debacle.

The steelworkers' last-minute cancellation of four days' worth of protests, rallies, flyering and civil disobedience at the Kaiser Aluminum plant in Tacoma's Tideflats kept many, but not all, would-be protesters away last weekend. (On Saturday, there were about 50 picketers--and about 50 riot cops watching them.) With only one week's notice of the steelworkers' withdrawal of sponsorship (other labor groups also pulled out when the steelworkers withdrew) the environmental and community groups that had co-sponsored the Kaiser actions did their best to recover, calling the leftover occasion a picket line support. But when some 2,000 people were expected at last Saturday's rally, and another 1,000 at Monday's direct action, you can't suddenly call things off on one week's notice; it's like trying to apply the brakes without enough stopping distance. The event was supposed to be a showcase of the new post-WTO cooperation between labor and community activists; instead, it may have been the funeral.

Such a sudden cancellation, without any kind of consultation, simply isn't how you treat a full political partner. Anti-Kaiser organizers did their best to smooth over the ruffled feathers. The steelworkers' Jon Youngdahl attributed the withdrawal to the union's being too swamped by the sit-ins, rallies, and other efforts to pass two strike-related bills in Olympia. He rejected as "just not true" rumors reported in an abominable Tacoma News-Tribune story that labor pulled out because of fear that disruptive elements--namely, the dreaded anarchists from Eugene--would come trash the Kaiser plant during the demonstration. He also held out hope that if negotiations with Kaiser were still stalled in May, another round of co-sponsored demonstrations might be organized.

But locally, time to capture the momentum from last fall's tremendous anti-WTO victory is running out. Scores of area activists are traveling to Washington, D.C. next month for protests against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund; nationally, those protests are the follow-up to Seattle. But in Seattle itself, two high-profile efforts to unite post-WTO environmental and labor groups have now fizzled, with an anti-Microsoft effort failing to gain labor support in early February.

After an effort to "shut down Microsoft" turned into a spirited but unremarkable visit to Redmond's strip malls by 50 or so activists and a couple of giant puppets, the Direct Action Network and other anti-WTO activists had hoped to use the Kaiser protests to galvanize the new labor-community alliance. In Kaiser's owner, Charles Hurwitz, they had seemingly the perfect target. He is of interest to environmentalists not only due to the rapacious nature of the aluminum industry, but because he also owns Pacific Lumber, target of a decade's worth of anti-clearcut demonstrations, tree sits, and other protests in Northern California. Hurwitz is a junk bond specialist who cost taxpayers over a billion dollars for a failed Texas savings and loan in the 1980s; efforts to force a debt for nature swap in the ecologically sensitive Headwaters redwood grove of Northern California ended instead with the federal government somehow paying Hurwitz for the privilege of not clearcutting. Hurwitz is a smooth, and greedy, operator, and his lockout of union steelworkers (after closing or selling off almost half of Kaiser's plants to pay junk bond debts) is merely the latest in a long string of sociopathic business practices.

Despite protest leaders' conciliatory words, there's plenty of bewilderment and resentment among activists over the sudden cancellation last weekend. If Olympia was the reason for the pullout, why only one week's notice? Olympia-watchers have known for many weeks, even at the time the Kaiser protests were scheduled, that with I-695 gridlock there would be a special session and little movement on not-budgetary bills. Plenty of folks suspect that labor was concerned about possible bad publicity during a pending NLRB Unfair Labor Practices litigation against Kaiser; or that labor was worried it was losing control of the rapidly growing protest, preferring its tightly scripted acts to the Direct Action Network's free-wheeling style.

There are also contradictions in the enviro/Kaiser alliance that aren't easily reconciled. After all, environmentalists want to tear down Columbia River Basin dams--and those dams exist to support the aluminum industry with cheap, subsidized hydroelectric power. Why are enviros fighting for aluminum jobs? Kaiser is a nasty employer, but shouldn't environmentalists be encouraging different lines of work?

These sorts of issues have always plagued efforts to bridge labor and community activism in Seattle; it's a shame that they may have torpedoed a tremendous show of community solidarity for locked-out Kaiser workers. It will take a strong, concerted effort by organizers to allay suspicions next time. Hopefully there will be a next time, and hopefully it will be before the embers of anti-WTO activism have so cooled that the fire must be built entirely anew.