Enviros and other critics of the World Trade Organization are launching a $40,000 outdoor advertising blitz in Seattle to get people thinking about the negative consequences of trade liberalization, as trade leaders from around the world prepare to gather in Seattle later this month for a WTO meeting. Fifteen groups, including the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund and the Sea Turtles Restoration Project, are paying for ads to be posted on 90 buses and 14 billboards. The ads read “WTO: What are we trading away?” and follow up the question with other questions: “Our forests?” “Endangered species?” “Family farmers?” “Democracy?” Meanwhile, Pres. Clinton, speaking to workers yesterday at a Harley-Davidson factory in York, Pa., had a few wry words on the upcoming meeting: “Every group in the world with an ax to grind is going to Seattle to demonstrate. I’ll have more demonstrators against me than I’ve had in the whole seven years I’ve been president. I’m kind of looking forward to it. … I want everybody to get this all out of their system and say their piece. And I want us to have a huge debate about this.”
