November, 24 2019, 11:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Heather Day, Community Alliance for Global Justice: 206-724-2243 heather@cagj.org
Kristen Beifus, UFCW 21: 206-992-7913 kbeifus@ufcw21.org
On 20th Anniversary of Battle in Seattle, Activists Honor History and Today's Movements
This Saturday November 30th marks twenty years since the historic grassroots uprising that shut down the World Trade Organization ministerial meetings in Seattle. On November 30th 1999, over 50,000 people took to the streets, some marching, and many engaging in peaceful civil disobedience to call attention to the WTO's failed policies that impact the everyday lives of working people, pollute our environment and undermine farmers around the world.
Seattle, WA
This Saturday November 30th marks twenty years since the historic grassroots uprising that shut down the World Trade Organization ministerial meetings in Seattle. On November 30th 1999, over 50,000 people took to the streets, some marching, and many engaging in peaceful civil disobedience to call attention to the WTO's failed policies that impact the everyday lives of working people, pollute our environment and undermine farmers around the world. Through coordinated action, activists successfully blocked the opening sessions of the ministerial on November 30, and a few days later the WTO talks collapsed. Now, two decades later to the day, organizers from 1999 and leaders of today's movements are gathering to honor this history and trace the lineage to today's struggles for justice. The event is free and co-organized by Community Alliance for Global Justice, United Food & Commercial Workers Local 21, and Town Hall Seattle.
Media is invited--for press access, interviews and exclusive coverage, call Media Contacts.
When: Saturday, November 30th, 2019, 10am-4pm (doors open at 9)
What: Another World is Possible! WTO+20 How a People's Uprising Shut-Down the World Trade Organization in '99 & Why it Matters for Today's Movements for Justice
Location: Town Hall Seattle, 1119 8th Ave, Seattle, WA 98101
Event details:cagj.org/wto20/cagj-nov-30/
The WTO+20 gathering will recognize the role of direct action in achieving social change across time. One hundred years ago, in 1919, over 65,000 workers from over 100 unions withheld their labor during the Seattle General Strike. Initially an employer attempted to divide skilled and unskilled shipyard workers, igniting the strike, which demonstrated the power of working people united for a common cause.
"A hundred years later teachers, coal miners, auto, grocery, healthcare and many other workers still know that one of the most powerful ways we can advocate for change in the workplace that benefits our communities is by disrupting the status quo," explained Faye Guenther, President of UFCW 21. Participating in the People's Shut Down of the WTO twenty years ago, we felt the power of putting our bodies on the line alongside our community to stop the advancement of inequity. This is why UFCW 21 is honored to sponsor this WTO+20 celebration, intersectional sharing, and strategic opportunity to raise up direct action throughout our diverse movements."
"When we look back at why we were protesting the WTO in 1999, we see that we were right to shut it down on November 30th: neoliberalism and unfettered capitalism continue to have devastating consequences for Mother Earth and her people around the world," explains Heather Day, Director of Community Alliance for Global Justice, a grassroots food justice organization she co-founded with other organizers of the 1999 protests. "To repair the planet, it is more urgent than ever that we find inspiration in the victories of 1999: when people join together and take direct action, we are powerful," says Day.
A morning panel will kick-off the event, featuring Deborah James, coordinator of Our World Is Not for Sale Network; Nancy Haque of Basic Rights Oregon; Lisa Fithian, author of Shut it Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance; and Edgar Franks, farmworker organizer with Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ) who will share stories of what took place in 1999. The panel will then turn to Paul Cheoketen Wagner, Founder of Protectors of the Salish Sea, Ramon Torres, farmworker organizer with FUJ, and other guests about how direct action is utilized by today's movements to achieve victories. In the afternoon, participants can attend a training on Escalating Resistance and Mass Rebellion with Lisa Fithian, or choose between three movement-building workshops: Seattle's Green New Deal with Matt Remle (Lakota), co-founder of Mazaska Talks, and Alec Connon, 350Seattle; Campaign to permanently shut down the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, with Ashley Del Villar and Fletcher Christie from La Resistencia; and A new global economic constitution written by Amazon? What's happening in the WTO and what can we do about it, with Deborah James. Art and music will be featured throughout the day, including screen-printing and theater with David Solnit, Direct Action Network organizer in '99 and North American Arts Organizer, 350.org, and music with Correo Aereo and Jim Page.
"Twenty years after the Seattle protests, the impacts of the WTO has proved its critics right: trade has increased but wages and incomes are flat, inequality is surging, and developing countries - except those that have benefited from trading with China - have not been able to close the gap with rich countries. WTO boosters who are worried about the crisis in the system would do well to realize that the real crisis is the millions of people suffering from harmful WTO policies on agriculture, medicines, the environment, and labor rights among others," says Deborah James, who continues to track the WTO. "Rather than tinkering at the edges of the dispute mechanism, or negotiating rules to give the future economy away to Big Tech for free, we need to address the fundamental problems with the failed rules of the WTO and implement a Global Green New Deal."
Many events are being organized locally and nationally for the WTO Shut Down Anniversary. On Saturday, December 7th, Washington Fair Trade Coalition will host a rally and march starting at 10am at Occidental Park, featuring street theater and music; followed by an afternoon of workshops at Town Hall with a keynote from Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz and Lori Wallach, director of Global Trade Watch. In Houston, TX, Indymedia is organizing an anniversary gathering and gallery exhibit showcasing 20 years of historical independent media archives.
Media is encouraged to attend the Town Hall event on November 30th to hear directly from social movement activists on the ground then and today.
LATEST NEWS
Rights Groups Urge Biden to Make Delayed Report on Israel's Use of US Arms Public
The report—due Wednesday under the terms of a White House directive—has been indefinitely postponed, according to congressional aides.
May 07, 2024
Before Tuesday's reporting that the Biden administration will delay a highly anticipated report on whether Israel is using U.S. military aid in compliance with international law, a coalition of advocacy groups circulated a letter urging the White House to share the document with the public once it's published.
In February, President Joe Biden issued National Security Memorandum (NSM)-20, which requires Secretary of State Antony Blinken "to obtain certain credible and reliable written assurances from foreign governments" receiving U.S. arms "that the recipient country will use any such defense articles in accordance with international humanitarian law" and then provide Congress with periodic reports "to enable meaningful oversight."
The first report is due by Wednesday. However, four congressional aides
toldPolitico Tuesday that publication would be postponed indefinitely.
"It is not clear if your administration intends to... make this report available to the public," coalition members Amnesty International USA, Defending Rights & Dissent, Freedom of the Press Foundation, National Press Photographers Association, Radio Television Digital News Association, and Reporters Without Borders said in a letter to Biden drafted ahead of Politico's reporting.
"We strongly urge you to make the report available to the public and the press to the greatest extent possible," the groups added.
Access to the document, the coalition argued, "will allow the press to more fully and accurately report on how elected leaders are making decisions about military aid to foreign countries" and "will help Americans make informed judgments about our leaders' decisions on foreign military aid."
"We strongly urge you to make the report available to the public and the press to the greatest extent possible."
The letter comes as Israel uses U.S.-supplied arms and ammunition to wage what hundreds of international legal experts and others say is a genocidal war on Gaza. These include 155-millimeter artillery shells and 2,000-pound guided "bunker-buster" bombs, which Israel says are necessary to target Hamas' underground tunnels.
Aided by artificial intelligence-based target selection systems, Israel Defense Forces commanders are ordering strikes they know will cause large numbers of civilian casualties. In a bid to assassinate a single Hamas commander, the IDF dropped at least two 2,000-pound bombs on the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp on October 31, killing more than 120 civilians.
Even the U.S. military—which since 2001 has killed hundreds of thousands of people during the open-ended so-called War on Terror—avoids using 2,000-pound bombs in densely populated areas due to the tremendous damage they cause.
One prominent U.S. military historian called Israel's Gaza onslaught "one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history," comparing it to the Allied firebombing of Dresden during World War II, which also killed tens of thousands of civilians.
The letter also comes as the Biden administration reportedly believes that Israel's nascent ground invasion of Rafah does not cross the president's "red line" warning that any "major operation" in the southern city—where more than 1 million Palestinians forcibly displaced from other parts of Gaza are sheltering alongside around 280,000 local residents—would damage U.S.-Israeli relations.
The International Court of Justice found in January that Israel is "plausibly" perpetrating genocide in Gaza, where Israeli bombs, bullets, and blockades have left more than 123,000 Palestinians—most of them women and children—dead, injured, or missing since October 7, and hundreds of thousands more suffering full-blown famine.
While the Biden administration has accepted the Israeli government's claims that it is not breaking international law when using American weapons, a number of House Democrats have challenged Israel's assurance, citing "mounting credible and deeply troubling reports and allegations" of human rights crimes committed by IDF troops in Gaza, and by soldiers and settlers in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Officials at the United States Agency for International Development also concluded in a confidential April memo to Blinken that Israel is violating NSM-20 by blocking humanitarian aid from entering the besieged Gaza Strip as children there starve to death.
Furthermore, a leaked State Department memo revealed last month that officials at four of the agency's bureaus concluded that Israel's assurances of legal arms use are "neither credible nor reliable."
In addition to NSM-20, federal legislation including the Arms Control Export Act and Leahy Laws also proscribe U.S. arms transfers to human rights violators—although there are many examples of these statutes being ignored for the benefit of key allies including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other nations.
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"If the Biden administration can stand behind its decisions about defense assistance, it should have no reason to withhold the report that members of Congress will see from the press and the public," Vogus added.
While Biden has criticized Israel's "indiscriminate bombing" of Gaza and is reportedly holding up two shipments of precision-guided bombs to send a message to Israeli leaders, the president continues to affirm his steadfast support for Israel and has recently approved the transfer of more warplanes, 2,000-pound bombs, and other arms to its key Middle Eastern ally. The administration is also pushing Congress to approve the sale of $18 billion worth of F-15 fighter jets to Israel.
Earlier this year, a group of mostly Democratic members of Congress asked Blinken to explain what they called "highly unusual" moves by the Biden administration to bypass lawmakers in order to fast-track emergency military aid to Israel. Biden—who recently signed off on $14.3 billion in new armed aid to Israel atop the $4 billion it already gets from Washington each year—has also come under fire for approving more than 100 weapons sales to Israel since October.
Human rights defenders slammed Biden's reported decision to postpone publication of the report due on Wednesday.
"It's obvious why Biden is burying the NSM-20 report on Israel: He won't hold Israel accountable," Georgetown University adjunct professor Josh Reubner asserted on social media. "There's no way to conclude that Israel hasn't violated assurances it won't use U.S. weapons to break international law or block aid. Of course it's doing both."
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Anti-war voices on Tuesday welcomed Politico's reporting that U.S. President Joe Biden's administration is delaying "shipments of two types of Boeing-made precision bombs to send a political message to Israel," which on Monday launched a long-awaited invasion of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
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The White House has neither confirmed nor denied Politico's report, which came as Biden again conflated campus protests against Israel's war on Gaza with antisemitism. Since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the U.S.-backed offensive in October, Biden has faced mounting pressure to cut off arms to the country and use his influence to end the bloodshed.
"Reports that the Biden administration is delaying the sale of at least two types of bombs to the Israeli government, in reaction to its disastrous conduct of the war in Gaza, are highly welcome. That conduct is again on international display in Rafah this week, where the Israeli military has begun an invasion that, as we at Win Without War have previously warned, could lead to further horrific war crimes," the group's executive director, Sara Haghdoosti, said in a statement Tuesday.
"Now that this news has leaked, senior administration officials must publicly confirm this policy shift," she said. "If President Biden is taking the overdue but necessary step to condition weapons sales in line with U.S. law and policy and to force changes in Israeli government strategy, he cannot leave his intentions open to miscommunication or spin from those, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, who are continuing this conflict for their own political benefit. The White House must leave no stone unturned in its effort to stop the Israeli government's offensive on Rafah—the hundreds of thousands displaced there do not have more time."
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While multiple congressional Republicans condemned the Biden administration's supposed move to delay the delivery of the bombs to Israel, critics of the Israeli assault joined Haghdoosti in welcoming the development—which comes on the heels of Congress and the president approving billions more in military aid for Israel.
"Glad to see it. I wish they would've started sending this message thousands of lives ago, as so many urged," Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, said on social media.
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Refugees International president Jeremy Konyndyk, called it an "overdue but welcome development" that "hopefully... signals a pivot to beginning to impose more overt conditionality on U.S. arms transfers."
Politico separately reported Tuesday that according to congressional sources, "the Biden administration's report on whether Israel has violated U.S. and international humanitarian law during the war in Gaza has been delayed indefinitely."
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According to Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), the protesters "were attacked on the crosswalk" by an "Upper East Side Zionist."
CUAD reported that the man drove up to the demonstrators, who have been calling on Columbia to divest from companies that contract with Israel and for the U.S. government to stop supporting the Israel Defense Forces, and asked for a flyer before grabbing a protester by the arm.
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The New York Police Department
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CUAD noted that the alleged attack took place as U.S. politicians including President Joe Biden have condemned the campus protest movement, with at least one lawmaker
applauding abusive behavior by anti-Palestinian counter-protesters and New York City Council member Vickie Paladino (R-19) saying last week that the student movement is being led by "monsters, and it's now our job to slay them."
Paladino's "call for vigilante justice was almost fulfilled today," said CUAD.
USA Today also reported that at a separate protest on the Upper West Side near the apartment building of the co-chair of Columbia's board of trustees, "a woman punched a demonstrator in the face, seemingly at random."
In Los Angeles last week, city police stood by while a mob of pro-Israel counter-protesters
attacked nonviolent students who had set up an encampment in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, where Israel has killed at least 34,789 and on Monday invaded Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced.
On Tuesday, in honor of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Annual Days of Remembrance, Biden gave a speech on antisemitism, conflating protests in support of Palestinian rights with the hatred of Jewish people.
CUAD and independent reporter Talia Jane said the driver is a relative of the late Meir Kahane, an American-born Israeli far-right extremist.
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