Sleepless in Seattle: last November the world's trade ministers and corporate suits gathered in the city of Boeing and Bill Gates for another cosy round of free-trade deals …

I'M THINKING ON THE FLIGHT TO Seattle, all I want to do here is stuff my brain with information, tape the words of every speaker, pick up every leaflet and march with every protester. I want the experience of being here to expand my already growing disquiet at what our economic institutions have bought into. I want to find the best way to make a difference. I intend to be sleepless in Seattle.

I arrive on Friday to attend the International Forum on Globalization's two-day `Teach In' on the role of the WTO. The Forum is a spectacular organization, boasting an alliance of some 60 economists, activists, scholars and non-profit organizations (NGOs) from more that 20 countries. And what an event they organized! The 3,000-seat auditorium is packed to capacity. Energy levels are sky-high, with almost every speaker met by a lively chorus of approval.

Centre-stage overflows with passionate and well-informed opinion on the multiple impacts of economic globalization. Vandana Shiva (Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, India), Martin Khor (Director of Third World Network, a grouping of NGOs involved in development and environment issues) and author Susan George all expose and inspire. They give us alternatives, show us ways of humanizing the economy. The hundreds of trade and government bureaucrats from the official WTO delegations should have been here to listen and to learn.

Walking out of the meeting into downtown Seattle I get this wonderful feeling of citizen power, this feeling that millions -- billions -- of people not represented by the WTO: workers, farmers, students, indigenous peoples, the economically weaker groups, have a voice in the street. Back home, consumer power can be and has been wielded to stop the multinationals in their tracks. It's that message we must get across.

Saturday

I am inspired by yesterday's speakers and feel my prepared speech repeats many of their thoughts and sentiments. So I decide to start again. As the only businesswoman speaker I want to contribute a business perspective and to talk about my own experience of trade that really benefits local communities. I call for a world trading system that proactively supports human rights, that is sustainable.

In the evening we listen to `Views from the South', featuring some of the most prominent voices, notably Vandana Shiva and Martin Khor on `Third World opposition to globalization, the WTO and transnational corporations'. These powerful and authoritative speakers catch us up in an ever-growing sense of injustice at the current systems of global governance. We are enlightened with examples, shocked with facts, empowered with knowledge.

Saturday evening marks the end of this remarkable Teach-In -- an intensive and deeply inspiring 48 hours of views, discussion and debate, preparing all of us for what promises to be a dramatic week ahead; and a long fight into the future for justice and equality in trade. It certainly gives all of us ammunition (an unfortunate term in retrospect ...) for lively debates -- and media interviews -- to come.

Sunday

A morning of getting up to speed on the practicalities of the week ahead. Public Citizen, the US consumer organization headed and inspired by Ralph Nader, has organized an impressive schedule of debates and demonstrations. This Mobilization Against Corporate Globalization, as their newsletter is called, provides an extensive summary of events; the only oddity being a session `WTO for beginners' on the following Friday. It is the media that need this session most -- at the start of the week. The general public have no idea what the WTO is; they have no grasp of the real consequences of current trade rules. The media has so far failed to expose the true human and environmental costs of unregulated free trade. Through media interviews lined up this week, I hope to help dispel some of the more fundamental myths and to talk from experience about the reality of alternatives -- fair trade that works.

The Public Citizen office is the alternative nerve centre. Television cameras jostle for space amongst the volunteers to get an angle on Mike Dolan -- running the show -- who gives a quick soundbite before turning back to us with a complicated logistical schedule. We finally head off to join the inaugural British NGO get-together. Hilary Coulby from ActionAid -- the NGO on the official British delegation -- chairs an informal briefing where everyone expresses their frustration at failing mobile phones or the lack thereof; confusion and overlapping briefings; with the irony that hardly a minute during the week is without an NGO briefing.

We spend the afternoon at a panel discussion on `Alternatives to corporate globalization'. Barry Coates, Director of the World Development Movement, and Susan George give powerful and punchy speeches on where our futures lie. No utopia -- just a long fight. `If you stop fighting you go backwards,' warns Susan George, who reminds us that there is no promised land. `We have got to figure out how to stop people that stop at nothing,' she says, leaving us with a battery of soundbites and an empowering vision of the way forward in this `war'.