Interview with Rita Shaw

The Seattle Events: Labor’s Role and What’s Happened Since

by George Shriver

Much of this article is based on phone conversations with Rita Shaw, retired president of a railroad union local in the Seattle area (Transportation Communications Union) and former chair of the Seattle Labor Party Chapter.

The AFL-CIO’s participation in the Seattle protests had a unifying effect and added enormous social weight to the protests, most dramatically expressed in the one-day strike by the ILWU in solidarity with the demonstrations. (See the sidebar on this page for one participant’s observations on this score.)

Rita Shaw commented on the solidarity between the unions and other groups demonstrating against the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle. “The big demonstration that everyone supported — on Tuesday, November 30 — was called by the AFL-CIO. There were separate interest groups, environmentalists, etc., who had separate gathering places and held separate rallies earlier that day. After the AFL-CIO rally at the sports stadium the union people marched downtown. All the other groups fed into that march; they saw it as a unifying action. Maybe 20–30,000 of the 50,000 in that march were from the AFL-CIO.”

Rita tells us that the police set up lines about three blocks out from the convention center, where the WTO sessions were to be held. When people tried to get closer to the convention center the police started using tear gas. Most of the AFL-CIO marchers looped back to the sports stadium, but many rank and file members stayed downtown, solidarizing with the other protesters. In the wake of the march, the atmosphere of unity and solidarity was especially strong. That evening is when martial law was declared and large-scale arrests began.

Martial Law for Corporate Profit

This was a classic case of martial law being used in the interests of corporate profits, which is what the WTO is all about. But the solidarity of labor, and of much of the general public, challenged the authoritarian use of police power.

Rita Shaw reports: “On Wednesday, December 1, some labor people — mainly Teamsters and Longshore union members — got together to discuss showing support for other anti-WTO people who were still getting arrested. On Friday, December 3, a demonstration of about 5,000, mainly organized by labor people, started out from the Seattle Labor Temple (headquarters of the central labor council) and went toward the downtown area, about 15 blocks, then looped around and went back.

“Also there were demonstrations in support of locked-out workers at Kaiser Aluminum, members of United Steel Workers of America (USWA). Everyone was supporting everyone else. Demands were raised to release those arrested (close to 600 arrested, mostly on Wednesday and Thursday). There was a campaign to get them released. A big sit-in demonstration went on outside the county jail all day Friday through to Sunday, when they  finally started to release a lot of the people. On Friday, when several hundred were sitting down outside the King County jail, they held democratic discussions, and the participants in the crowd decided to stay until all were released.

“Teamsters Local 174, which is headed by Bob Kasagawa of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, is the biggest Teamsters local in the area. The local brought coffee and food down to the sit-in demonstration and set up a table. So did members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). Incidentally, the Direct Action Network people, who played a big role in blocking access to the convention center, did much of the work to get arrested people released; they were very well organized. Labor support for those arrested continued through Sunday, December 5; also, ecumenical services were held on Sunday outside the jailhouse, demanding the people be released.”

Backed by Public Sympathy, Most of Those Arrested Have Been Freed

Rita tells us that once people were released, it was up in the air what would happen. But public sympathy with the protesters was quite strong, as was the feeling of outrage against the heavy-handed police tactics. Since December, she reports, all charges have been dismissed except in the case of 14 people charged with more than just a misdemeanor. There are also 20 people charged only with misdemeanors who still face trial.

One factor in the release of most of those arrested and the dropping of most charges, Rita tells us, is that the police were so arbitrary and their arrests were so sweeping that in a great many cases they couldn’t even document who they had arrested and on what charges. They just bundled people into buses and drove them off to a naval facility; but people wouldn’t give their names until and unless they were allowed to speak with a lawyer.

A young woman who lives on an island near Seattle saw the protests on television; she came over because of all the excitement. She got carried away by the spirit of the crowd, and after someone broke Starbuck’s windows, she handed out free coffee. Her actions were videotaped. There were television cameras everywhere. She was arrested and pleaded guilty; recently she was sentenced to 30 days community service — and she can never go into a Starbucks again.

The Cheri Honkala Case

Rita Shaw reported further: “One of the first people arrested was Cheri Honkala, a member of the Interim National Council of the Labor Party and a leader of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union in the Philadelphia area. Arrested with her was Ward Morehouse, head of a human rights/social justice group. Cheri and Ward’s lawyers were able to obtain TV footage showing the circumstances of their arrest, and used that as part of their defense. Cheri and Ward were arrested together on Monday, November 29, for trying to pass out a “citizen’s arrest warrant” leaflet to those going into the WTO.

“Ward’s group had held a two-day tribunal, hearing testimony on the violation of human rights by corporations from the G7 countries (the seven wealthiest industrial countries), and Cheri testified at that tribunal. The tribunal adopted a statement charging the corporations and the WTO with crimes against humanity. It was printed up as a leaflet, a ‘citizen’s warrant of arrest for crimes against humanity.’ Cheri and Ward were trying to distribute that leaflet, to WTO delegates or members of the press on their way into the opening session. As soon as they stepped off the curb to try to ‘serve the warrants,’ they were arrested.

“In their trial (in mid-March) their lawyers presented three grounds for having the case dismissed. First, was the violation of First Amendment rights. Second, they had committed no violence; were just handing out a leaflet. The third was a ‘minimalist’ defense — what they had done was so minor it wasn’t worth having a trial over. The judge acknowledged that their First Amendment rights had indeed been restricted, but he claimed that was justifiable in view of an alleged bomb threat at the convention center. He did agree with the third point and dismissed the case on those grounds. So, unfortunately, First Amendment rights were not strengthened by the ruling in that case.”

Did Secret Service Dictate Police Tactics?

A City Council committee has been set up, Rita tells us, to investigate why the police behaved the way they did. No information has been released on what training the police got. A police lieutenant who gave testimony in Cheri and Ward’s case said that the Secret Service was giving the orders, calling all the shots. “It was out of our hands,” he said.

Cheri and Ward were arrested for stepping off the sidewalk into the street. The street had been declared forbidden territory, apparently by the Secret Service. Why could no one go across the street? Because, supposedly, there had been a bomb scare at the convention center the night before. That gave the Secret Service the excuse to impose their rules. It was also the Secret Service that issued badges for delegates to be admitted to the convention center.

Rita Shaw also reports: “In December the Seattle City Council held open hearings where citizens could testify about what had gone on. There were overflow crowds of more than 600 at each of two hearings. The overwhelming majority complained about police behavior and the lockdown of the city. People testified that the cops just kept pushing people up into their residential neighborhoods; you’d be home watching TV and suddenly — tear gas was coming into your house. The crowds at these hearings were so large that loudspeakers were set up in the courtyard outside the hearing room; people stayed there in the rain; they wouldn’t go away.”

Labor Party Activities

The Seattle Labor Party Chapter held a reception on Sunday evening, November 28, with about 200 people attending. Labor Party National Organizer Tony Mazzocchi spoke briefly, and informal discussion followed his talk. Rita Shaw points out that the Labor Party calls for abolishing the WTO altogether, as opposed to the call for giving labor a seat at the table, to make the WTO more fair. The Seattle chapter didn’t expect to make a big dent in these much larger weeklong activities; their aim was to hold a reception, then participate in and support the other actions, which they did. Rita tells us: “We handed out one piece of literature, a two-sided leaflet with the 16 points of the Labor Party program and a brief explanation about it on one side. On the reverse side we ran the Labor Party position on ‘fair trade’ — plus a coupon for joining the party.”

For weeks in advance, multiple events had been planned throughout the WTO sessions. On Wednesday, December 1, at Plymouth Congregational Church in downtown Seattle, Labor Party activists participated in a public meeting against genetic engineering entitled “No Patents on Life.” Five organizations sponsored this event: the Council for Responsible Genetics, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Institute for Agricultural Trade Policy; the Third World Network, based in Malaysia; the Tebtebba Foundation, based in the Philippines; and the Washington Bio-Tech Action Council from the University of Washington in Seattle. Some members of this coalition are also active in the Labor Party, as part of the Labor Party’s special committee on science and technology (whose members include Jonathan King, of the Council for Responsible Genetics, and Phil Beriano from the University of Washington).

Tony Mazzocchi was the opening keynote speaker. For years he headed up health and welfare work for his union, the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers (OCAW). The OCAW was actively involved with scientists concerning the dangerous materials that workers in the oil, chemical, and nuclear industries have to deal with. So this is not just a problem in the realm of labs and test tubes, not just a concern for environmentalists protesting the effects on the community as a whole and on the ecological system; it affects workers in their daily lives on the job.

Rita tells us that Ralph Nader (who is now campaigning for president on the Green Party ticket — if he wins nomination over Jello Biafra) was the keynote speaker in the afternoon. The topic he was given was “The Privatization of Life.” Nader said that was the wrong terminology.  We should speak of “corporatization,” not privatization, because that is what’s happening. The giant, super-rich corporations are trying to claim ownership of genetics — including the human genome, our own genes!

Rita reports that the location of this meeting against genetic engineering was just inside the perimeter closed off by the police. “Anyone who wanted to attend it had to be escorted in by police. In spite of that, an overflow crowd showed up, with standing room only.

“At 7 pm, practically the whole downtown area was closed off by the police. So getting home meant walking — you couldn’t get a bus, and you couldn’t go in or out of the area after 7 pm.”

An Intense Educational Process

Rita tells us that on the day after the meeting about genetic engineering “we went to another meeting at  a church — which again was just packed — for a discussion of how the WTO was impacting small farming all over the world, wiping out an entire way of life. People who had never heard such discussions attended, learning more about what corporate globalization is doing to the world. For example, three locked-out USWA Kaiser workers were there, their mouths hanging open. ‘We have more in common with those people [small farmers in poor countries] than we thought,’ they said.”

Rita emphasized an important point: “Mutual support and the linking of these many issues drew people together and educated them in a way that you couldn’t have done with years of educational effort.”

What’s Happened Since

Rita reports: “People going back to their cities said they planned to continue fighting against corporate globalization. Everyone wanted to try to continue what was begun in Seattle, to continue to deal with the issues addressed during the WTO protests.

“I don’t know about other cities, but here in Seattle, within a week, there were at least three large, well-publicized meetings by different groups wanting to continue this unity. The title of one, for example, was ‘Where Do We Go From Here? — continue the movement for economic justice and for an end to global corporate domination.’ Labor, student, environmental, and human rights groups were involved. There were several other similar meetings around the same time. The labor movement also says it wants to do this, but we haven’t seen much activity along these lines from the Central Labor Council, although it remains verbally supportive.

“The AFL-CIO has a special organizing group in Seattle, and they were there as a resource during the WTO events. It’s very positive that the unions opened up their union halls for the Seattle actions.”

There is a widespread questioning of capitalist globalization and a desire to build a unified movement against it, but AFL-CIO officials seem hesitant about a long-term involvement in such a movement. Labor Party activists who are friends of our magazine tell us that AFL-CIO endorsement of the Washington, D.C., protests against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in April came late and reluctantly, after much lobbying. But according to one report, labor officials are being forced to think more deeply about these questions. The AFL-CIO’s mistaken emphasis during protests in D.C. on keeping China out of the WTO instead of on building international labor solidarity against capitalist globalization is another example of the difficulties faced by this nascent coalition. (See Charles Walker’s article “The Unions, China, and Pat Buchanan” elsewhere in this issue.)

Rita Shaw cited one example of the difficulties that arise in trying to forge a coherent movement out of the many disparate groups opposing corporate domination of the global economy: “One group called a meeting to plan for May Day 2000. Nearly 100 people came to the first planning meeting, about 50 to the second one. They broke up into affinity groups to discuss plans. One group came to the conclusion that there weren’t enough people of color involved. The spokesperson of that group spent the rest of the time berating the meeting as a whole for their alleged racism.” The plans for May Day are on hold.

Keep Building the Labor Party

Rita Shaw rightly observed: “It’s not clear where all this is going. And so our Labor Party chapter is focusing on the Just Health Care campaign. If we don’t build our chapter, and focus on accomplishing some part of our program, we won’t be able to serve as an organizing center for anything.

“During the Seattle events we had a small meeting for people to talk with Tony Mazzocchi about the Just Health Care campaign. People from the Teamsters and the Musicians unions joined the Labor Party as a result of these discussions; they got answers to their questions about how the health care campaign was being organized and its intent.

“Also during the Seattle events locked-out Kaiser Aluminum strikers also joined the Labor Party.  (LP membership of course is free for striking or locked-out workers.)

“On Friday and Saturday when union people came down to support the sit-in outside the county jail, it just happened to be true that many of them were Labor Party members, who are among the most conscious and militant activists in the local labor movement.

“I was interviewed briefly on television during the sit-in outside the jail on Friday night. I identified myself as a Labor Party member and said, ‘This is the way it should be — the labor movement giving support to the environmentalists and youth activists; everyone working together.’

“The next night, after democratic discussion among those sitting in, the people voted to stay there until the jailed were released. Local residents just spontaneously started bringing food. Again I was interviewed on TV and asked why we were sitting in. I said that no serious social movement would abandon its people if they had been jailed. I was one of the few older people out there, and was seen, I guess, as a minority member of a very young movement. The young people made me feel totally accepted. But then we didn’t discuss any of the differences we have on political perspectives, class politics, Makah whaling rights, or other issues of conflict. We all focused on the need for unity at that moment

“The local Postal Workers paper had a centerfold of photos from the WTO demonstrations. In one of them they identified me as ‘Rita Shaw from the Labor Party.’ So in some ways the Labor Party’s presence in the anti-WTO protests was pretty visible.”

One final point, the general spirit of protest against domination by the giant corporations so dramatically expressed in the “battle of Seattle” was also expressed in a different way  in the victorious 40-day strike against Boeing by engineers and professionals. (For more on that strike victory, see articles by Charles Walker and Rita Shaw elsewhere in this issue.)

How Labor and Its Allies Strengthened Each Other

Impact of Seattle Coalition — Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

“Without the Direct Action Network, which disrupted the WTO, the labor march would have received a two-minute clip on the nightly news…

“Then again, without the thousands of union members, it would have been easier to write off the young protesters as flakes — people who aren’t worried about basic issues like having to earn a living.

“I guess the ideal mix was summed up in the now famous sign seen in the Tuesday march: ‘Teamsters and Turtles, Together at Last.’”

(From a report on Seattle posted on the Internet in December 1999 by Jeff Crosby, president of Local 201, International Union of Electrical Workers [IUE]. Crosby’s report was also reprinted in Labor Notes for January 2000.)