THE SLOW TRAIN WRECK OF CALIFORNIA'S ONLINE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

THE SLOW TRAIN WRECK OF CALIFORNIA'S ONLINE COMMUNITY COLLEGE
By David Bacon
CFT United, 2/17/20
https://www.cft.org/article/has-calbright-lost-its-legislative-support

CFT Community College Council President Jim Mahler, right, testifies in opposition to Calbright, the new fully-online community college.


It may have taken over two years, but the Calbright online community college has apparently lost any support it might have enjoyed in the state Legislature when the California Federation of Teachers first warned about the potential for failure. In December 2017, Jim Mahler, president of the CFT Community College Council, sent a seminal letter to Gov. Jerry Brown, Calbright's main promoter, pointing out key flaws in its proposed structure.

The project would duplicate what existing community colleges can provide and are already providing, Mahler cautioned. Its enrollment plan would concentrate on those students who most need support, pushing them into an online environment where there is much less support than on a "brick and mortar" campus. Many of Calbright's online courses wouldn't be accredited, and therefore credits wouldn't transfer to other institutions.

"If the governor is truly interested," he wrote, "in increasing the success rate of our community college students, then he should include additional funding in his next budget earmarked for the system to hire more full-time faculty and classified staff."

By the time the Senate Education and Budget Committees held a joint hearing on February 13, the misplaced funding priorities had grown so glaring that Sen. Richard Roth couldn't hide his skepticism and mistrust as he listened to Eloy Ortiz Oakley, chancellor of the California Community Colleges. Sen. Roth repeatedly pointed out that the Calbright project duplicates online services already offered by existing community college districts.

After two years of preparation, Calbright opened in October with 450 students, far from the enrollment goal its promoters projected - 22,400 students by the 2025-26 academic year. One of Calbright's three programs of study had only 38 students enrolled.

Eloy Ortiz Oakley, Chancellor of California Community Colleges, and Tom Epstein, President of the Board of Trustees of Calbright College, try to convince doubting legislators.


Yet already the school has absorbed $100 million in startup funds, and another $40 million for two years of operating costs. In contrast, the 117 campuses in the California community college system currently serve over 2 million students, and its existing Online Education Initiative serves 99,000 students in hundreds of programs.

Calbright offers only three certificate programs: information technology, medical coding, and cyber security. In his response to the committee, Chancellor Oakley admitted that medical coding jobs are likely to be eliminated by automation in a few years, but claimed that students who got those jobs through a Calbright certification would at least be "in the system" and able to pursue other work requiring a higher degree of skill.

In his testimony, CFT's Jim Mahler called out problems of course duplication with existing brick-and-mortar colleges, lack of in-person support for students who most need it, and a faulty accreditation scheme.

"Calbright was never supported by the Legislature," Mahler explains. "It only came into existence because the governor put it in the budget [rather than introduce it as a separate piece of legislation], and there were no policy committee hearings." Calbright was a pet project of former Gov. Jerry Brown, who used his political clout to establish the online college as part of that year's state budget passage.

"Calbright's three programs duplicate courses that we're offering in different colleges," Mahler charges, as did other witnesses at the February hearing. "We offer exactly what it offers - different lengths of time, short semester, full term, open entry, open exit, continuing education - everything it does we do."

Senator Richard Roth couldn't hide his skepticism.


According to Mahler, "Calbright gets a thousand times more funding per FTES than community colleges. There is no moral way to excuse these misplaced priorities, and no need to spend this level of resources on a project that completely duplicates what we're doing. How can you spend so much money on this when many community colleges are struggling themselves, with annual budgets that are often smaller than Calbright's?"

Mahler points out that Calbright is seeking accreditation by a federal agency, rather than the accreditation agency that accredits all other California community colleges. The lack of transferable credits is only one aspect of its lack of student support. "The student demographic they're targeting," he says, "is the demographic that needs the most support services, not the least support services. When you create what's more or less a correspondence course program without any support services, the demographic you're trying to reach is never going to succeed."

Mahler's critique was echoed by many community college faculty, who traveled to Sacramento to testify at the hearing. "We cannot afford to throw good money after bad by continuing on this path," said Michael Sheetz, executive director of the Ventura County Federation of College Teachers AFT Local 1828. "I currently teach both online and hybrid courses, but spending the outrageous amount of money necessary to support a redundant and inefficient program is legislative malpractice."

Sheetz continued, "Our district budget hovers near $180 million annually and every year we struggle to meet the ongoing financial burdens of delivering the quality education our students deserve. Instead of wasting the millions of dollars that Calbright community college requires to stay viable, reinvest the money where it belongs.

Nicky Gonzalez, a Peralta faculty member, pointed to the lack of Latinx students in the Calbright population. The president of the Peralta Federation of Teachers, Jennifer Shanoski, accused Calbright of directly competing for students with the Peralta district, noting that its main office is in Oakland. "We heard that charter schools were a great experiment in providing education to underserved people, and look what happened," she warned. "We don't need to do this again."

Senator Maria Elena Durazo, D-Los Angeles listens to Oakley and Epstein.


Other faculty came from DeAnza, Gavilan, Coast and Antelope Valley community colleges, and from other faculty groups. Raymond Brennan, from the part-time faculty association at DeAnza, told the committee, "I agree with Jim Mahler's suggestion that what the committee heard should be enough to see that Calbright is not the way to go, and that the existing system can and has been doing what Calbright purports to do."

John Stanskas, president of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges, testified, "The fact remains that the programs themselves are already offered at existing California community colleges. The $100 million enterprise has greater resources to explore, which places Calbright in a position of unfair competition with other colleges in the community college system." Bill Scroggins, president and chief executive officer at Mt. San Antonio College, described the programs at Mt. San Antonio and made the same point.

The senators at the hearing were clearly moved by the testimony. Senators Connie Leyva and Maria Elena Durazo closely questioned Chancellor Oakley. Sen. Richard Pan, a former professor, noted that the online-only model didn't adequately meet the training requirements for most jobs. "Don't most certificates for job skills require some hands-on experience?" he asked Oakley. "That's not something you can get just sitting at a computer."

Sen. Roth criticized Calbright's sponsors for asserting that existing community colleges weren't adequately serving students without any studies that supported their conclusions. "The real issue," he declared, "is whether this product is needed or duplicative."

Many faculty present were particularly outraged at the announcement that Calbright's former president Heather Hiles abruptly resigned in January. "She was given a salary of roughly $385,000 a year to oversee a maximum student population of 450 students," Sheetz charged. "In my district our chancellor is paid $275,000 to oversee three colleges, 1,200 faculty, and nearly 30,000 students annually." Hiles also will receive a lump sum payment of about $32,000. She never worked in higher education, and instead was founder, CEO, and managing partner of Imminent Equity, an investment fund.

 Rob Schneiderman, President of the Coast Federation of Teachers, testifies to Senators.
[For photos of other faculty testifying at the hearing, go to:
https://www.cft.org/article/has-calbright-lost-its-legislative-support]


Hiles' replacement, Ajita Talwalker Menon, was a higher education policy advisor to President Obama and later to Oakley. She will earn about $285,000 per year. Both salaries are more than that of California's governor. "They're supposed to be spending 50 percent on instruction like all other districts," Mahler said, "but there's no way they're going to do that because they're paying their top managers nearly half a million dollars each."

The CFT is planning to sue over Calbright's violation of its own obligations under the California Education Code. Those were outlined by CFT President Jeff Freitas in testimony to its Board of Trustees last July. The online college is duplicative of existing programs, he charged, diverts critical taxpayer resources, recruits students from other districts, doesn't tell potential students about the implications of taking courses that aren't accredited by other colleges, and hasn't met the deadlines in its own governing regulations.

"There will be a legislative audit hearing at the end of the month, and we hope that our new sponsored legislation will kill it," Mahler predicted at the end of the hearing. "We're working to make sure it's not included in the budget. Things are lining up to get rid of it, and I'm hopeful that this is the year. The sense I had in the hearing room was that there's still no support in the Legislature for Calbright."

Jennifer Shanoski, President of the Peralta Federation of Teachers, speaks at the hearing.

PHILIPPINE BANANA FARMERS: Their Cooperatives and Struggle for Land Reform and Sustainable Agriculture

PHILIPPINE BANANA FARMERS:
Their Cooperatives and Struggle for Land Reform and Sustainable Agriculture
By David Bacon
Food First Issue Brief #13, 02.13.2020
https://foodfirst.org/publication/philippine-banana-farmers-their-cooperatives-and-struggle-for-land-reform-and-sustainable-agriculture/

Denmark Aguitas catches a bunch of bananas on his shoulder as it's cut from the tree, and carries it to the cableway. Photo copyright (c) 2020 by David Bacon.


Thirty years ago many banana workers in the Philippines made a radical change in their work and lives. They transformed the militant unions they had organized to wrest a decent living from the multinational corporations that control much of the world's food production. Instead of working for wages, they used the country's land reform law to become the owners of the plantations where they had labored for generations.

It was not an easy process. They had to fight for market access and fair prices against the same companies that had been their employers. But they developed a unique organization to help them, that provided knowledge and resources for forming cooperatives. Twenty years ago FARMCOOP and these worker/grower cooperatives defeated the largest of the companies, Dole Fruit Company (in the Philippines called Stanfilco). As a result, today the standard of living for coop members has gone up, and workers have more control over how and what they produce.

FARMCOOP became the source of everything from financial planning and marketing skills to organic farming resources and political organizing strategy. FARMCOOP then developed an alliance with one of Mindanao's indigenous communities, helping it start its own coops that combine the use of local traditions with organic and environmentally sustainable agriculture.

The experience of both sets of cooperatives points to an alternative to the poverty that grips rural people in the islands. The Philippines is an economically poor country-the source of migrant workers who travel the world to work because they can't make a living at home. More of the world's sailors are Filipinos, for instance, than any other nationality, recruited in shapeups each morning outside Rizal Park in Manila.

According to the FAO, "Only the remittances of migrant workers to their families have enabled the latter to survive crippling poverty brought about by stagnant agricultural productivity, stiff competition from cheaper food imports, and periodic droughts and floods that devastate crops and livelihoods."

The struggle of FARMCOOP and the cooperatives created an alternative to forced displacement and migration, changing the lives of their own members, and providing valuable experience for workers and farmers elsewhere in the Philippines, and in other countries as well.


---   This report serves as evidence of workers' collective strength to take control of their lives and weaken the grip of corporations that dominate the world's food supply. This report also highlights the challenges faced by the cooperative farmers and indigenous communities struggling to battle environmental destruction and plant diseases through sustainable agriculture.  ---

To read the rest of this issue brief, click here:
https://foodfirst.org/publication/philippine-banana-farmers-their-cooperatives-and-struggle-for-land-reform-and-sustainable-agriculture/

To download a PDF version of this Issue Brief, click here:
https://foodfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Philippine-Banana-Farmers_Feb12.pdf

This issue brief is one in a series published by Food First -
Dismantling Racism in the Food System
Special multi-authored series on racism and liberation in the food system

IN WASHINGTON’S FIELDS: Photographs by David Bacon

IN WASHINGTON’S FIELDS: Photographs by David Bacon
February 1-May 10, 2020
Washington State History Museum
1911 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA

David Bacon is a photojournalist, author, activist, and organizer. Much of his work focuses on farmworkers. While the people in his photographs are integral to the process of putting food on tables throughout the country, their importance is not often acknowledged. These photographs show the reality of people working in fields in central and western Washington, and in narrative text panels their voices tell the story of their struggle for justice.


University of Washington, Tacoma Seminar with David Bacon
Tuesday, February 11, 12:30-1:20 PM
UW Room BB 104
Free and open to the public


Discussion Panel:  The Fight in the Fields:  Migrant Workers Fight for their Rights in Washington State
Tuesday, February 11, 5:30-7:00 PM
Washington State History Musem
Free and open to the public

David Bacon, photographer
Rosalinda Guillen, director of Community2Community
Ramon Torres, president of Familias Unidas por la Justicia
Vanessa deVeritch Woodside UWT Associate Professor
Moderator:  Dr. Michael Honey, UWT Haley Professor of Humanities and Labor Solidarity Project Chair.

"Immigrant's and worker's rights can hardly be separated in today's climate of racism and repression at the border and in the notorious detention centers of ICE in Tacoma and elsewhere. This exhibit and discussion are designed to shine a light on the continuing struggle of farm workers for a degree of dignity and justice." - Michael Honey


Gallery Tour with photographer David Bacon
Tuesday, February 11, 7:00-8:00 PM
Washington State History Museum
Free and open to the public

THE CHILDREN OF DR. KING'S DREAM

THE CHILDREN OF DR. KING'S DREAM

OAKLAND, CA - 20JANUARY20 - Children at the celebration of the birthday of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., called Reclaiming the Dream.

To see the full selection of photographs, click here

LET'S THANK A NEW GENERATION OF WORKPLACE ORGANIZERS

LET'S THANK A NEW GENERATION OF WORKPLACE ORGANIZERS
By David Bacon,
Truthout, December 17, 2019
https://truthout.org/articles/we-need-to-support-every-workers-struggle-including-the-fight-at-google/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=5f7b0788-cf30-4fae-9aa1-faab1c7b351e

Security guards, employed by a contractor at the Google Mountain View campus, demonstrate for their right to have a union. Many Google workers supported their demonstrations.David Bacon


The progressive movement in this country owes thanks to the new generation of workplace organizers, who are carrying our movement forward. Among them are four activists we should recognize and support: Laurence Berland, Rebecca Rivers, Paul Duke and Sophie Waldman, who were fired from Google for organizing their fellow workers.

Workers at Google have been protesting many of the company’s actions over the last two years. A year ago, Google’s decision to pay a reported $90 million in severance to a manager accused of sexual harassment sparked a walkout by an estimated 20,000 employees worldwide. Petitions and rallies at its Mountain View, California, headquarters, protesting other company actions, have followed. With the firings, Google has finally sought to eliminate those workers it thinks responsible for this upsurge.

The four fired employees filed a formal complaint against Google with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), saying they were fired for collective activity, which is protected, at least in theory, under federal law. The Board is investigating the charges. Google says it would never retaliate against workers for such activity — a boilerplate denial that comes from every employer charged with violating Federal labor law. The company insists they were fired for accessing information that is readily available to employees on the company database.

What did the four really do? They tried to put human rights into action inside the company. They protested sexual harassment. They told Google not to bid on a Trump contract to put the Homeland Security database into the cloud, facilitating the shameful detention of children and parents. They questioned Google for hiring Miles Taylor, who was chief of staff to Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

Google’s activists sought to give voice in the company to their outrage over the detention of migrants, joining millions of people in the outside world, like these marchers in Oakland.  David Bacon


What did Google say their crime was? Making sensitive information public. CEO Sundar Pichai, whose salary in 2016 was almost $200 million, told an “all hands” meeting (a Google term for a meeting for a large number of employees) that “you’ve clearly seen the amount of leaks we are seeing.” The four fired workers were Google’s own Chelsea Mannings and Julian Assanges. When company managers questioned Rivers, the contract with DHS is what they asked about.

So, of course, Google did what the government does to whistleblowers — what union organizers call “corporate capital punishment.” It fired them. Everyone at Google knows what the real reason was.  They were organizing their fellow workers inside the company. That made Google afraid.

“This isn’t really about me, or Rebecca, or any individual,” Berland said at a November demonstration. “They are retaliating against us because they want to intimidate everyone who dares to disagree…. They want us afraid, and they want us silent.”

In Mountain View workers at the Versatronex hi-tech assembly plant went on strike over racist treatment, in a precursor to the current workplace activism there. It started when the company fired a Salvadoran worker, Joselito Muñoz, for standing up in a company meeting and saying “Se acabo el tiempo de esclavitud,” which means, “The time of slavery is over.”  David Bacon


Corporate media have said this is about changes in what Google boasts as its “open culture.” I know all about the open culture of Silicon Valley from personal experience.

Challenging Exploitation in Silicon Valley

When I was fired for organizing a union at National Semiconductor (a large manufacturer of integrated circuits, which had over 10,000 people in our plant at the time I worked there) I went up the food chain all the way to the office of the CEO, Charlie Sporck. He came to work in a pickup truck, wore Pendleton plaid shirts and tried to make us think he was just an ordinary worker like us. So I went in one morning and said I told I thought I was being fired for organizing, and that my rights were being violated.

It made no difference — I still got fired. And after I got fired, I got blacklisted. I was never able to work in the industry again.

Many of my fellow activists also got fired for organizing the union — at National, at Phillips, at Intel. Did we get our jobs back? No. For that, you need a union with a contract that says you can only be fired for a just cause. Federal law says we can’t be fired for organizing a union, but there is no real enforcement. We all filed charges, as the workers have done at Google, and after an “investigation,” the company’s pretextual excuses were found valid. Our government is not committed to our rights at work.

My friend Romie Manan survived the firings because National Semiconductor feared him as the leader of the Filipinos in the plant. The prospect that they might organize and protest was a much more serious threat to National than a possible NLRB complaint. You can easily recognize Romie today because he only has half a thumb - the other half was burned off by hydrofluoric acid in a so-called "clean room."  His was just one of many injuries and health dangers we protested as workers.

Romie Manan led Filipino workers at National Semiconductor.  David Bacon


Still, we won some things at National just because we had a group of organized workers inside the plant. That’s how a union starts. And that’s what the Google workers were fired for trying to organize, whether you call it a union or not.

We got one of the worst cancer-causing solvents — TCE, or trichloroethylene — banned. We had the help of allies in our community — the Santa Clara Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, and especially attorney Mandy Hawes, who’s spent a lifetime suing high tech companies for harming workers, and Ted Smith, who organized the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. They should get an award for so many years of fighting.

We forced the company to give us raises. We challenged the racist structure of high tech, where women and people of color are a big majority on the bottom, and things get more male and more white the further up you go. When I worked in the plant, the company and the government treated the racist structure of the workforce as a trade secret. Making it public began with a fight by workers in our factory.

A Versatronex worker on strike against racist firings. Versatronex later closed the plant.  David Bacon


In the 1990s, tens of thousands of us, the people on the bottom, lost our jobs when the semiconductor companies decided that labor was cheaper elsewhere, where workers weren’t trying to organize. The Santa Clara County Human Relations Commission, and its director Jim McEntee and chairman Jesus Ruiz, held hearings about racist firings in electronics plants and the relocation of our jobs. The union in the plant found workers who came to testify, risking their jobs.

That’s a lesson for the folks at Google: Our jobs can be moved. If we want to protect them, we need allies throughout our community. We have to reach out far beyond that nice Google campus in Mountain View.

We accept without question our right to advocate and speak freely for human and labor rights. That should include the right to speak out and organize at work. But remember what Rivers, Berland, Duke and Waldman were fired for. We cannot accept that we have rights outside the workplace but tyranny inside. You can call it open culture if you want, but we can see the iron fist in the velvet glove.

Google hired union busters, IRI Consultants, to fight its own workers. Just hours after a meeting with IRI, Google managers installed a tool allowing them to know when any worker organizes an event with more than 100 participants. What kind of event do we think they’re afraid of?

Like any corporation, Google’s loyalty is to profits for the shareholders, not us as workers, or to us as the community dependent on the jobs. One of the signs at a Google rally said, “This is our company.” Another said, “Bring them back.” Google workers deserve credit for being brave enough to come out and wave those signs in front of company managers.

Korean and Latino tech workers in San Jose marched together to oppose union busting and plant closures.  David Bacon


But to make it “our company” — that is, a company where workers are free to advocate progressive values, and human and labor rights — we have to bring them back, as the other sign said. That is, we need to put the four fired workers back to work, stop the company from firing anyone else, and reduce the fear that any reasonable worker feels when she or he thinks about doing what they did.

We Need to Build Broad Solidarity to Support All Workplace Struggles

So how do we do this? What difference would it make to other workers if Google workers build an organization in their company? We are told that the world of high tech is unique, and that the community and labor solidarity that won enormous changes for farmworkers, for instance, have no relevance in Silicon Valley. Our experience, however, says just the opposite.

Organizations like Jobs with Justice have already shown us how communities can organize to support the rights of all the workers in a given place. For example, organizers can set up workers’ rights boards where community leaders, faith activists, elected officials and union people join together to expose violations of rights at work, and defend people when those violations occur. When companies have to pay a price for violating workers’ rights, they’re much less likely to do so, even when the legal system doesn’t impose significant penalties.

We can fight for labor law reform that restores our rights. Farm workers, for instance, still have the right to secondary boycotts. That’s a big reason why the United Farm Workers won the 1965 grape strike. We stood in front of Safeway and said, “Don’t go into the store if it’s violating workers’ rights and selling grapes during the strike.” We picketed not just the vineyards where workers were on strike but also the stores that sold the struck grapes, appealing to workers far removed from the fields to support the strike. That’s the right to solidarity in action — people supporting each other.

In the Cold War, we lost that right for the rest of us, when Congress passed the Taft Hartley Act. That law prohibited those boycotts, as well as other ways workers can support each other. We need that right to solidarity back. That can give us a tool to enforce our rights, at Google and everywhere else, and not just on paper.

Farmworkers on strike in San Joaquin Valley’s blueberry fields taking direct workplace action against company wage cuts.  David Bacon


That strike in 1965, and the way the boycott transformed public support into active solidarity, lifted conditions for farmworkers. It gave women bathrooms in the fields, where before there was no privacy. It gave workers shade in the 100+ degree sun and hoes that you can use standing up, instead of the short-handled hoe that forces you to work bent over all day, in constant pain.

Our rights, especially the right to a union, have been won at a terrible cost. We remember who died for farmworker rights. Juan de la Cruz, an immigrant from Mexico, and Nagi Daifullah, an immigrant from Yemen, were shot on the picket line in the 1973 strike. Rufino Contreras was shot in a struck Imperial Valley lettuce field. Nan Freeman, a Jewish girl of 18, was run down by a truck crossing a strike picket line in Florida. They died because they believed in justice, not as an abstract principle, but as a fundamental right at work that has to be fought for.

The reasons why people organize at Google may be different from the reasons that motivated farm workers, but winning the right to organize was the key to making farm conditions better and it is the key to what Google workers hope to achieve as well. We need to stand up in the same way.

We can see that what happens to Google workers can make it harder for us to defend our rights elsewhere. If Berland, Rivers, Duke and Waldman stay fired, and people at Google get scared, IRI Consultants will show up next at the county building, or at the school district, or on construction sites. It will be harder even for people who have unions and rights at work to keep them.

Aquiles Hernandez, who was imprisoned as an education workplace activist in Mexico, organizes farmworkers in California.  David Bacon


If people at Google are fired for organizing against a contract with Homeland Security, it makes it harder to fight the Trump agenda of deportations and detentions.

But let’s look at it the other way. If we have strong unions at Google and Microsoft, run by militant workers, it will be easier to win the things we need, like the Green New Deal or Medicare for All or immigration reform. We can end the wars that have gone on for years. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King warned us half a century ago that U.S. bombs that kill people abroad become bombs that explode and wreak poverty and devastation in our neighborhoods here at home.

In Silicon Valley, a human rights advocacy group called Human Agenda promotes the values of all of us: Freedom from oppression and racism. Life in a healthy environment. Social conditions that favor meaningful lives. And economic justice is one of the most important of those conditions.

If we don’t have a union at Google, we can still fight and win some of these things. But organization at work gives workers the power to fight politically as well, in the communities where we live. When workers in high tech have a strong organization, meeting our human needs and enforcing basic rights, and even goals beyond this, will be within our reach.

Organizing is the key to what we want. Our problem isn’t that we don’t know what we want. It’s that we need the ability to make change happen. And that is the product of organizing, nothing else.

Security guards, employed by a contractor at the Google Mountain View campus, demonstrate for their right to have a union. Many Google workers supported their demonstrations.  David Bacon

Security guards demonstrate for their right to have a union.  David Bacon

SEATTLE - SOMETHING GREATER YET TO COME

SEATTLE - SOMETHING GREATER YET TO COME
By David Bacon
The Progressive, December 4, 2019
https://progressive.org/dispatches/twenty-years-since-seattles-wto-protests-bacon-191204/

Demonstrators sit in the streets blocking intersections downtown.

On November 30, 1999, thousands of activists flooded downtown Seattle, protesting the global economic order and forging a new understanding of the world.    This story and photoessay was originally published by the Pacific News Service on December 1, 1999.


SEATTLE, WA  (12/1/99) - Those who marched or stood or sat in the streets of Seattle this week made history, and they knew it. And like the great marches against the Vietnam War, or the first sit-ins in the South in the late 50s, it was not always easy to see just what history was being made, especially for those closest to the events of the time.

Tear gas, rubber bullets and police sweeps, the object of incessant media coverage, are the outward signs of impending change - that the guardians of the social order have grown afraid. And there's always a little history in that.

Poeina, a young woman sitting in the intersection at the corner of Seventh and Stewart, waiting nervously for the cops to cuff her and take her away in her first arrest, knew the basic achievement she and her friends had already won: "I know we got people to listen, and that we changed their minds." It was a statement of hope, like the chant that rose Tuesday from streets filled with thousands of demonstrators as the police moved in - "The whole world is watching!"

The Seattle protests put trade on the roadmap of public debate, making WTO a universally recognized set of initials in a matter of hours - what it took a year of debate over NAFTA to accomplish.

But perhaps the greatest impact of Seattle will be on the people who were there. Just as anti-war demonstrations and civil rights sit-ins of decades ago were focal points, from which people fanned out across the country, spreading the gospel of their movement, Seattle is also a beginning of something greater yet to come. What will the people who filled its downtown streets take with them back into this city's rainy neighborhoods, or to similar communities in towns and cities across the country?

A certain understanding of the world was forged in the streets here - a realization based, to begin with, on who was there. Environmentalists came protesting the impending destruction of laws protecting clean air and water. Animal rights activists came to protect sea turtles. Trade unionists came fighting for jobs, and protesting child labor. Fair trade campaigners arrived ready to debate corporate domination of the process by which trade rules are decided.

Even the generational culture of the protestors started to spill over from one group into another. Environmental activists in their 20s came with the tactics from the battles in the forests of northern California and the Pacific Northwest. They carried giant puppets, dressed themselves in costumes rather than carrying signs, and laid down in busy intersections at the height of morning rush hour.

Just as anti-war demonstrations and civil rights sit-ins of decades ago were focal points, Seattle is also a beginning of something greater yet to come.

In groups of 20 and 30, they chained their arms together, slipping metal sleeves over hands and chains to make it hard for the police to cut them apart. Two years ago, this tactic was answered by Humboldt County sheriffs, who swabbed pepper spray directly into the eyes of protestors at Pacific Lumber Company. Even for veterans of civil disobedience, the chains are a tactic that demands determination and commitment to face down the fear of violent response.

As police rushed in to make arrests and cut them apart, a young woman stood to the side, crying out in tears to the helmeted and shielded officers - "I'm your daughter!"

Later the same day, tens of thousands of union members marched into downtown to join the protest. Having shut down all the ports along the Pacific Coast from Alaska to San Diego, union members chanted and waved picket signs as their ranks filled the streets as far as the eye could see. Each union's members marched together, each with its own color jacket or t-shirt, each carrying banners and hundreds of signs printed for the occasion.

Many of the morning's young protestors were visibly impressed by the strength of the numbers and organization. For Annie Decker,  "the power and size of it made me feel joyful. I was proud that we were together, bringing the WTO into the public eye."

In the midst of the tear gas, it was not hard to see that this culture of protest is starting to spread, whether through union jackets on protestors in the redwood forests, or giant puppets on union picket lines in Oakland. But under the culture is the germ of an idea - the linkage.

For unionists, the depredations of a global trading system has pitted workers in many countries against each other, in a race to the bottom in wages and workers' rights. Environmental activists see a system that values profit-making over laws protecting health and the environment. Rather than creating an atomized assembly - each group pursuing its own interests in isolation - protestors came ready to see what they had in common.

Decker, an organizer and observer at an intersection filled with sitting bodies, called her own realization liberating. "We don't have to just express an opinion on one issue," she said. "Trade and the power of corporations are affecting us in so many areas that we can all make connections, and see the common element behind the problems we share."

President Clinton may regret planning a summit of the powerful that has become overshadowed by street protest. But in the long run, he will regret this realization more. It is an indictment, not of a particular company, or even a single country, but of a whole economic order that is uniting its enemies in opposition to it.

Photos:

1-2 Demonstrators chain their arms together, with pipes covering the chains, to make it hard for police to cut them apart for arrests.

  

 

3 Leaders of the AFL-CIO march against the WTO, including, from left, AFL-CIO Vice-President Linda Chavez Thompson, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa, and United Auto Workers President Steve Yokich.

4 Demonstrators march against the WTO.

5-6 Longshore union members march against the WTO.

 

7-9 Demonstrators sit in the streets blocking intersections downtown.

 

 

 10 Demonstrators against the WTO prepare for tear gas.

11-12 Demonstrators in the streets downtown.

 

13-14 Demonstrators sit in the streets blocking intersections downtown.

 

15 Demonstrators in plastic handcuffs sit in intersections in the streets downtown, just before being arrested.

16 Longshore union members march in the streets downtown.

17 Leaders of the AFL-CIO march against the WTO, including, from left, Steel Workers Union President Richard Becker, AFL-CIO Vice-President Linda Chavez Thompson, and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

18 Longshore union members march in the streets downtown.