Something important was missing from the Seattle anti-WTO demonstrations. Oh yes, there were, in some proportion, all the just causes I’d ever marched for in the past: balanced ecology, fair wages, equal representation; everything, it seemed, but Vietnam. To pre-boomer sometime activists like me, certainly, there is nothing more assuring than watching subsequent generations marching for your own favorite obligations.And the entire thing seemed about as civil as civil disobedience ever gets. As Harold Meyerson reported from Seattle last week, for all the rough edges (and where have all those Starbucks-assailing smash-the-state anarchists been hiding all these years?), the Emerald City event was really something of a Velvet Uprising. Relatively few were the detentions and injuries (about 1 percent of the demonstrators). And from the high, wide and handsome agenda, it was abundantly clear what everyone opposed. The World Trade Organization is a non-voting quasi fraternity dedicated to the betterment of capitalism everywhere. And, by implication, to capitalism’s many social, political and environmental ramifications.