Organizers of the End Corporate Dominance Conference were
stunned by last weekend's turnout. Not the 1,000 or so participants--they've
come to expect that. What shocked the local activists was
the media presence. After all, for the past three years,
they've put on an annual conference that draws four-figure
crowds. But it wasn't until this year that anyone in the
mainstream media seemed to care.
The reason can be summed up in six letters: WTO and IMF.
Before the November protests against the World Trade
Organization in Seattle, and more recent demonstrations
against the International Monetary Fund in Washington,
D.C., the Portland conference was ignored by major local
media outlets (including Willamette Week). But
this year was a different story. Karen Coulter, a founder
of the End Corporate Dominance Alliance, says that this
spring, for the first time, The Oregonian called
her. Others report similar breakthroughs.
"The WTO and IMF have really sparked media interest in
this topic," says conference organizer Marc Hinz. "Business
Week magazine flew in a photographer from San Francisco."
Contrary to what many people may believe, the conference
isn't aimed at eliminating all corporations.
"The goal is to have corporations serve a public interest,
not their current limited, singular goal of extracting
profit through exploitation of labor and the environment,"
Hinz says. While previous conferences focused on theory,
this year's conference put an emphasis on action, specifically
linking organizations working on behalf of the environment,
consumers, workers and others.
"The ultimate goal is to build a cross-movement alliance
of organizations from all different spectrums of activism,
to focus on more common issues of corporate control, as
opposed to continuing to focus on separate issues, such
as logging sale to logging sale," Hinz says.
One panel, for example, highlighted an alliance between
forest activists and striking steel workers to attack
MAXXAM, which owns both Kaiser-Aluminum, where the steelworkers
are on strike, and Pacific Lumber, which is logging old-growth
redwoods. Organizer David Potter calls the coalition "the
poster child for turtles and Teamsters."
Other topics ranged from the growth of the prison industry
to Shell Oil's exploitation of Nigerian resources. The
conference brought Dr. Owen Wiwa, the brother of slain
Nigerian organizer Ken Saro-Wiwa, to discuss how Shell
used "death squads" to murder opponents of their drilling
practices.
Conference participants ranged in age, ideology and dress.
There was a contingent of the infamous "black-hooded anarchists"
(and in greater numbers than in previous years, according
to organizers), who were welcomed by the organizers, but
families with children, old-time activists and student
organizers were also in attendance.
Between workshops, people wandered around the many informational
tables set up, reading literature and making connections
with others. At lunch, Food Not Bombs served a seemingly
endless line of participants; people sat in the grass,
talking politics and eating soup.
Organizers had planned a march to demand funding for
public forums on corporate power and democracy, but because
of a lack of volunteers to help organize it, they instead
went to the new PSU Urban Center and used their bodies
to spell out "No Shell" and "No Nike." The atmosphere
at the human banner event was highly festive, which can
partially be attributed to the lack of police in attendance--a
sharp contrast to the May Day march, which drew a crowd
only a third as large as last weekend's conference. (Organizers
say they had a deal with PSU campus security to handle
any issues, and the Portland police respected that.)
Organizers welcomed the new post-WTO attention, even
though the problems they're battling aren't all tied to
world trade. "I don't think it's changed basic issues,
because even if the WTO was gone tomorrow, we would still
have a system of corporate rule in this country," says
Coulter. "But I think it has changed the climate and level
of awareness in the public. There's a lot more response
now."
According to Potter, the ECDC was one of the first organizations
to help organize WTO protests in Portland, and it seems
those activities are finally paying off.
As environmental activist Chuck Fall says, "Seattle was
the crystallizing movement that brought to the minds of
many environmental people to connect labor struggles and
the environment together."
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Willamette Week | originally
published May 10,
2000
