Issue and Opponent: In 2006, Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos of the activist duo Yes Men sought to reveal how the free trade policies of the World Trade Organization (WTO) reflected systemic racism. Public dissatisfaction with the corporate globalization instituted by the WTO was not new. At the WTO’s assembly in Seattle in 1999, the organization faced 50,000 protesters who felt that global free trade would harm people, animals, and the environment. On a smaller scale in 2006, Servin and Vamos designed an action to target the WTO and to expose the imperialist nature of its policies in Africa.
Dilemma Action: Servin and Vamos created a satirical website mimicking that of the real World Trade Organization and began mistakenly receiving invitations to actual trade conferences and events. After being invited to speak at a conference on business in Africa at the Wharton Business School in Philadelphia, PA, activist Jacques Servin assumed the alias of Hanniford Schmidt and claimed to be a representative of the WTO. At the conference, Servin gave a presentation advocating for a policy of “private stewardship” of African workers by Western companies, essentially suggesting that a modern form of slavery would bring health and prosperity to African laborers. Servin’s speech was followed by a fake press release stating the same message. The goal of the action was to hold the WTO accountable for its harmful free trade policies. By taking free trade ideals to an extreme and suggesting the private ownership of human beings, Servin and Vamos’ scheme attempted to force conference attendees, the media, and the public to grapple with the true consequences of imperialist WTO policies.
Outcomes: During his speech in which he effectively proposed a return to slavery, Servin received a few skeptical looks and murmurs from the audience but otherwise continued his presentation undisturbed. The Yes Men revealed that the presentation and press release had been a satirical project only after the end of the conference. The stunt did receive some media coverage by organizations such as The Chronicle of Higher Education. However, media coverage focused more on the prank itself rather than the underlying issues the activists had attempted to highlight. The 2006 speech and press release orchestrated by Servin and Vamos was only one action in a larger campaign to target the WTO, in addition to numerous corporations and media institutions. The Yes Men created the website www.gatt.org to mimic the appearance of the official WTO website but to convey satirical content and fictional news stories. From October 2000 through May 2002, the Yes Men made appearances at trade conferences in Austria, Finland, and Australia. They even falsely announced the disbanding of the WTO in 2002, garnering international media attention.