EDITOR'S NOTE: Following the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests, G21 received a number of e-mails from people who had taken part in or witnessed the events. In this SPECIAL REPORT we reprint their experiences and insights with their permission.

ALAN ATKISSON is a reknowned ecological writer and author of the recent book Believing Cassandra, A Optimist Looks at a Pessimist's World. Herewith his dispatch from Seattle:

So we went to protest the World Trade Organization in Seattle.

We flew to Seattle because I was supposed to have a big roll-out extravaganza for my book.

When we planned this, it seemed a reasonably good bet to have a book reading and media appearance thing timed with the meeting of the World Trade Organization. But we, along with everyone else, grossly underestimated the events that were to take place there.

The wave was historic, but it pushed my own personal little boat around mightily, so that's how I felt it, and that's how I'll first report it.

First, the article I'd co-written with my friend Alex Steffen got bumped out of the Sunday paper to Tuesday, and ultimately to Wednesday. (The Mayor and County Executive co-wrote a piece that pushed us down the pecking order.) Then my appearance on the local public radio talk show got bumped by the appearance of the head of the AFL-CIO and (by phone, I guess) Fidel Castro. It all crescendoed with my reading on Tuesday night, which was the night after the big wave of protests and ancillary violence caused the city to be placed under a curfew and state of emergency. The reading went on -- Elliott Bay Books is two blocks outside what became the curfew zone -- and fifteen people braved the chaos to come hear me.

Enough about me; let's talk about the WTO. It's the agency that administers and adjudicates the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT. It is secretive, tightly controlled, and shockingly non-participatory *even to its own member-delegates.* (According to recent reports, delegates in Seattle have been surprised to discover certain documents and agreements had been secretly drafted in advance).

Since most of the global environmental and social problems in the world trace their origin to wasteful economic growth and suspect trade practices, it has fallen -- unfairly, I would say -- on the WTO to receive the projected angst and anger of a whole variety of anxious groups, from labor to child welfare to environmental activists.

Hence the protests in Seattle, which attracted dissident voices from all over the planet, looking for someplace to air their worries, somebody to be angry at. Neither Melita nor I is especially negative on the topic of "globalization," the catch-all word for increasing global economic integration and the hobgoblin of most of the protesters ("No globalization without representation," "Globalization kills," etc.). After all, our relationship was the product of jet planes, the internet, the spread of English. Hard to get mad at a phenomenon that has brought you together with the love of your life...

"'Most of the arts and professions in a state,' says by far the most illustrious philosopher and historian of the present age, 'are of such a nature that, while they promote the interests of the society, they are also useful or agreeable to some individuals; and in that case, the constant rule of the magistrate, except perhaps on the first introduction of any art, is to leave the profession to itself, and trust its encouragement to the individuals who reap the benefit of it.' [Emphasis added by the author. --- Ed.] The artisans, finding their profits to rise by the favour of their customers, increase as much as possible their skill and industry; and as matters are not disturbed by any injudicious tampering, the commodity is always sure to be at all times nearly proportioned to the demand..." --- Adam Smith, Book 5, Wealth of Nations

The recent Civil Disobedience that occurred in Seattle, would --- if Mr. Smith were reincarnated --- bring a smile to the gentlemen's face. Granted the participants had agendas far removed from a 17th Century philosopher's -- labor, environment not with standing. The existence of the World Trade Organization (WTO) however brings the specter of a return to mercantilism on a global scale. The WTO will, consequently, bring a reduction in civil liberties and economic choice to the citizens of this planet.

Mr. Smith was born of the mercantile system and noted its inefficiencies. "Nations tolerably well advanced as to skill, dexterity, and judgment, in the application of labour, have followed very different plans in the general conduct or direction of it; those plans have not all been equally favourable." It is out of this inefficiency that he proposed the free exchange concept that has been the basis of capitalism. The belief that free exchange would automatically define the exchange rate of the goods by supply and demand has been demonstrated over the past two centuries. Fundamentally capitalism requires three factors to be successful:

1. Willing participants for the exchange and a good to transfer.
2. An infrastructure that acknowledges the concepts of private property.
3. An inefficiency in the underlying economies of the participants that makes the exchange favorable to both parties.

The reader may be asking -- "What does that have to do with WTO?"