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The anti-WTO movement through cash-colored glasses
Mar. 10, 2000
Think the tumultuous anti-WTO protests in Seattle were a flash in the pan? The protestors’ enemies sure seem to think otherwise. COMMON DREAMS received and published a leaked memo apparently produced by the lobbying firm Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healy, entitled “Guide to the Seattle Meltdown.” The memo, aiming to provide corporate-types with an “alarming window on the future,” offers a compendium of anti-globalization activist groups whose activities “may have significant short-term ramifications for the business community.”
The memo is intended as a precautionary guide for corporations, but it’s also about the best morale booster and organizing tool an activist could ask for. A portion of the memo, written by the firm’s managing director, warns of “the potential ability of the emerging coalition of these groups to seriously impact broader, longer-term corporate interests.” It adds: “Seattle was not an anomaly and the consistent anti-corporate message of virtually all the groups who participated there in November is not a temporary phenomenon.” The memo then goes on to list all the major groups, their leaders’ names and their Web sites for further info.
Read the leaked memo on COMMON DREAMS.
—JG
