For the first couple days...

For the first couple days I sat politely, crossed legged, and tried to tune out the drone of technical jargon, acronyms and W.A.S.P.s. Strangely, delegation meetings were held at a hotel right across from Victoria Park, but participants were completely oblivious to the color, sounds, art and positive vibes right outside the meeting window. I couldn’t bring up to colleagues how I roamed the park during breaks, as the anti-WTO movement was seen as an incoherent, inarticulate joke. I doubt that most Korean or Indonesian farmers, who held copious educational forums about rejecting fisheries in Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA) talks and objecting to patents on life, would see their movement in the same way. Who knows better, speaks better about trade policies than those people who directly experience them?

The S. Korean farmers were the strong face of much of the protests; their chants poignant and street blockades contagious. Most days during the week-long WTO meeting were punctuated by evening protests. Hong Kong shut down after 6pm on several days. Police were accommodating at first, until Saturday (clear that there still was no movement), when protestors prevented trade ministers from attending their dinner engagements. Protestors swelled in the streets, sweeping up bystanders, shopkeepers, elderly folks, creating a massive, uh, demonstration, in response to the stagnation around agricultural subsidies, aid for trade, NAMA formulas…The previous Friday night, trade ministers hemmed and hawed until 4am, and still, no movement. Hence, people on the outside, in the very periphery, including Heather Johnson’s ‘crack people’, took to the streets.