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Young activist follows father’s example

Monday, May 7, 2001

By Tom Groening, Of the NEWS Staff

CAMDEN — When Will Neils was young, he and his friends would play the "if you could ..." game. If he could be alive at any time in history, Neils would tell his friends without hesitating, it would be in Chicago in August 1968. The opposition to the war in Vietnam was at its height then, with protesters facing down authorities during the Democratic National Convention, even as police beat them.

And even though the anti-war movement came before the 24-year-old Neils was born, he believes he would have fit in well then. But ask Neils the "if you could" question today and you get a different answer.

Seattle, Nov. 30, 1999, he will say, when he and tens of thousands of other protesters tried to shut down the World Trade Organization’s meeting. With some pride, he relates how he was subjected to tear gas during the demonstrations.

Though he is young enough to have voted in only two presidential elections, Neils is already well known in Maine activist circles. And like the many young people who have risked bodily injury and jail for their beliefs, Neils won’t give an inch when it comes to fighting globalization, a fight he believes is just and as critical a political issue as any in recent memory. Neils’ activism has its roots in the 1960s for several reasons, even though that era is long over. His father was an activist, working in the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, and then finally as a member of the Students for a Democratic Society group working against the war.

Neils’ parents settled in the rural Knox County town of Appleton in the early 1970s. By age 11, when he read Abby Hoffman’s "Woodstock Nation," he knew he wanted to be an activist.

"That book changed my life," he said. "I went to school on the ’60s," he said, adopting many of the tactics that Hoffman used to educate people about the issues of the day. Neils felt out of place at Camden-Rockport High School, preferring to teach himself through reading. Even though he was in a gifted and talented program, he dropped out of school in his junior year.

"It was cutting into my reading time," he said.

After earning a GED, Neils worked as the coordinator of the Camden Teen Center at the ages of 19 and 20. "It was a great learning experience for me," he said. "I learned a lot about small-town politics."

Neils then became active with the local chapter of the Greens, then with Earth First! and some Maine-based environmental groups. He was arrested in a youth rights rally in Bangor in 1998. He is proud to have logged two other arrests during demonstrations since then.

Then, with the WTO meeting in Seattle, progressive, radical and anarchist groups around the world found there was something they could agree on: fighting economic globalization. The numbers and the diversity of the groups converging on the meeting surprised many.

For Neils, it had all come together.

The issues of the ’60s came into sharp focus, he explained, and made sense as precursors to the battle of the hour. First it was the civil rights movement, which was about economic oppression of a group of people; then opposition to the Vietnam War, which was about stopping imperialism; and now it is the fight against what he believes is national governments colluding to give corporations a free hand over the world.

"What we’re talking about now is the true disease," he said Friday, gathering speed in his speech, as he warmed to the topic.

"I’m not a protectionist," Neils said, but rather a supporter of people being able to control their own economic destiny through democratic governments. He believes the WTO, International Monetary Fund and other efforts at erasing economic borders are not about free trade, but rather about exploitation. Multinational corporations are playing a shell game, he said, except there is a hole in the table, making it impossible for people to win.

As an example of the downside of the loss of economic borders, he cites a pending case in which a Canadian company that manufactures the gasoline additive MTBE is suing a county in California over its banning the use of the chemical. The manufacturer is claiming the county law is unfair, and is seeking $970 million in damages, with a part of that amount based on an estimate of lost earnings.

It won’t be a California court, or even a federal court that will decide the case, Neils said, but rather a three-member tribunal appointed through the North American Free Trade Agreement.

"As a taxpayer, isn’t that a complete slap in the face?" he asked. "They’re constantly screwing us with our own money."

The Seattle experience energized the movement, and inspired young people like himself, he said. "I think a lot of people heard about the WTO for the first time," as a result of the protests. For two days, the debate dominated the front page of The New York Times, a victory for the protesters, he said.

After Seattle, Neils protested at the WTO meeting in Washington, D.C., the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, the inauguration of President Bush, and recently at the Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting in Quebec City.

Neils does not endorse violence or the destruction of property, but he stops short of denouncing vandalism. "They’re not going to give it to us," he said of the things he and his cohorts are fighting for.

"In principle, I am an anarchist," he proudly proclaims. The anarchist movement dates to the late 19th century labor struggles, he said, and not to a belief in chaos over political order, as many believe.

Today, he lives in a rented log cabin with no running water on U.S. Route 1 near the Camden-Lincolnville line. He earns what little cash he needs by doing occasional carpentry work. After the interview, he was off again, hitchhiking his way to Massachusetts and an Earth First! rally.