1999 Seattle WTO protests

File:Http-www-internationalsocialists-org-seattle-n30-25.jpg

A Rainforest Action Network banner at Seattle during the protest.

Protest activity surrounding the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, which was to be the launch of a new millennial round of trade negotiations, occurred on November 30, 1999 (nicknamed "N30" on similar lines to J18 and similar mobilisations), when the World Trade Organization (WTO) convened in Seattle, Washington, United States. The negotiations were quickly overshadowed by massive and controversial street protests outside the hotels and the Seattle Convention Center, in what became the second phase of the anti-globalization movement in the United States. The scale of the demonstrations—even the lowest estimates put the crowd at over 40,000—dwarfed any previous demonstration in the United States against a world meeting of any of the organizations generally associated with economic globalization (such as the WTO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), or the World Bank). The events are sometimes referred to as the Battle in Seattle.

Organizations and planning

Planning for the demonstrations began months in advance and included local, national, and international organizations. Among the most notable participants were national and international NGOs (especially those concerned with labor issues, the environment, and consumer protection), labor unions (including the AFL-CIO), student groups, religiously-based groups (Jubilee 2000), and anarchists (some of whom formed a black bloc).

The coalition was loose, with some opponent groups focused on opposition to WTO policies (especially those related to free trade), with others motivated by pro-Labor, anti-Capitalist, or environmental agendas. Many of the NGOs represented at the protests came with credentials to participate in the official meetings, while also planning various educational and press events. The AFL-CIO, with cooperation from its member unions, organized a large permitted rally and march from Seattle Center to downtown.

Others, however, were more interested in taking direct action including both civil disobedience and acts of vandalism and property destruction to disrupt the meeting. Several groups were loosely organized together under the Direct Action Network (DAN), with a plan to disrupt the meetings by blocking streets and intersections downtown to prevent delegates from reaching the Washington State Convention and Trade Center, where the meeting was to be held.

Certain activists, most notably a group of mostly-young anarchists from Eugene, Oregon (where anarchists had protested that summer), advocated more confrontational tactics, and planned and conducted deliberate vandalism of corporate properties in downtown Seattle. In a subsequent communique, they listed the particular corporations targeted, which they contend to have committed corporate crime:

Fidelity Investments (major investor in Occidental Petroleum, the bane of the U'wa tribe in Colombia); Bank of America, US Bancorp, Key Bank and Washington Mutual Bank (financial institutions key in the expansion of corporate repression); Old Navy, Banana Republic and the GAP (as Fisher family businesses, rapers of Northwest forest lands and sweatshop laborers); NikeTown and Levi's (whose overpriced products are made in sweatshops); McDonald's (slave-wage fast food peddlers responsible for destruction of tropical rainforests for grazing land and slaughter of animals); Starbucks (peddlers of an addictive substance whose products are harvested at below-poverty wages by farmers who are forced to destroy their own forests in the process); Warner Bros. (media monopolists); Planet Hollywood (for being Planet Hollywood).

"N30"

Seattle police on Union Street, during the protests.

On the morning of November 301999, the Direct Action Network's plan was put into action. Several hundred activists arrived in the deserted streets near the convention center and began to take control of key intersections. Over the next few hours, a number of marchers began to converge on the area from different directions. These included a student march from the north and a march of citizens of the developing world who marched in from the south. Some demonstrators held rallies, others held teach-ins and at least one group staged an early-morning street party. Meanwhile, a number of protesters still controlled the intersections using lockdown formations.

The control of the intersections, plus the sheer numbers of protesters in the area, prevented delegates from getting from their hotels to the Convention Center. It also had the effect of cutting the police forces in two: the police who had formed a cordon around the convention center were completely cut off from the rest of the city. The police outside of the area eventually decided to attempt to break through the protesters' lines in the south.

That morning, the King County Sheriff's Office and Seattle Police Department fired pepper spray, tear gas canisters, percussion grenades, and eventually rubber bullets at protesters at several intersections in an attempt to reopen the blocked streets and allow as many WTO delegates as possible through the blockade. At 6th Avenue and Union Street, the crowd threw them back.

The situation was complicated around noon, when black-clad anarchists (in a formation known as a black bloc) began smashing windows and decorating storefronts, beginning with Fox's Gem Shop. This produced some of the most famous and controversial images of the protests. This set off a chain-reaction of sorts, with additional protesters pushing dumpsters into the middle of intersections and lighting them on fire, police vehicles turned-over, non-black-blockers joining in the property destruction, and a general disruption of all commercial activity in downtown Seattle.

Other protesters attempted to physically block the activities of the black bloc. Seattle police, led by Chief Norm Stamper, did not react immediately, however, because they had been convinced by protest organizers during the protest-permit process that peaceful organizers would quell these kinds of activities.

The police were eventually totally overwhelmed by the mass of protesters downtown, including many who had chained themselves together and were blocking intersections. Meanwhile, the late-morning labor-organized rally and march drew tens of thousands; though the intended march route had them turning back before they reached the convention center, most ignored the marshals and joined what had become a street-carnival-like scene downtown.

The opening of the meetings was delayed, and it took police much of the afternoon and evening to clear the streets. Seattle mayor Paul Schell imposed a curfew and a 50-block "No-Protest Zone".

Over 600 people were arrested over the next few days. One particularly violent confrontation occurred the evening of December 1, when police pursued protesters fleeing from downtown into the bohemian neighborhood of Capitol Hill, using tear gas, pepper spray, and physical force. A police order that day also banned the use or sale of gas masks downtown, provoking criticism. [1]

Misinformation in the media

The New York Times printed an erroneous article that stated that protesters at the 1999 WTO convention in Seattle threw Molotov cocktails. Two days later the New York Times printed a correction, but the original error persisted in later accounts in the mainstream media. See: De-Fact-o.com "Origins of the Molotov Myth"

The Seattle City Council also dispelled these rumors with their own investigation findings:

"The level of panic among police is evident from radio communication and from their inflated crowd estimates, which exceed the numbers shown on news videotapes. ARC investigators found the rumors of "Molotov cocktails" and sale of flammables from a supermarket had no basis in fact. But, rumors were important in contributing to the police sense of being besieged and in considerable danger."

In fact, no one at an anti-globalization protest in the United States has ever thrown a Molotov cocktail.

Aftermath

Controversy over the city's response to the protests resulted in the resignation of Seattle police chief Norm Stamper, and arguably played a role in Schell's loss to Greg Nickels and Mark Sidran in the 2001 mayoral primary election.

Similar tactics, on the part of both police and protesters, were repeated at subsequent meetings of the WTO, IMF/World Bank, Free Trade Area of the Americas, and other international organizations, as well as the Democratic and Repulican National Conventions in the U.S.

The long-term impacts on WTO policies remain decidedly unclear, and it is an open question whether the WTO's actions since that time have been influenced significantly by these events.

To many in North American anarchist and radical circles, the Seattle WTO riots, protests, and demonstrations were a success and are thought of as the most recent victories in the U.S. Prior to the "Battle of Seattle," there was almost no mention of "anti-globalization" (sic) in the US media, while the protests are seen as having forced the media to report on why anybody would oppose the WTO. However this was only the second phase of these mass demonstrations. The first began in 1997 in Melbourne on 12 December in which newly formed grass-roots organizations blockaded Melbourne, Perth, Sydney and Darwin city centers.

On January 16, 2004, the city settled with 157 individuals arrested outside of the no-protest zone during the WTO events, agreeing to pay them a total of $250,000.

On January 30, 2007, a federal jury found that the City of Seattle had violated protesters' Fourth Amendment constitutional rights by arresting them without probable cause or hard evidence.

The massive size of the protest pushed the city of Seattle $3 million over their estimated budget of $6 million, partly due to city cleanup and police overtime bills. In addition, the damage to commercial businesses from vandalism and lost sales has been estimated at $20 million.

Influences on popular culture

During the protest the band No WTO Combo was formed by former members of various bands, including ex-members of the Dead Kennedys and Nirvana. No WTO Combo played one live show during the protest, and then broke up.

Several other punk rock bands have shown support for the anti-globalization movement in the aftermath, such as Anti-Flag whose song "Seattle Was A Riot" was based on the events of the protest, Pennywise who wrote the song "WTO" in protest to their actions and Against Me! (the chorus to their song "Baby, I'm an Anarchist" refers to the riots).

Rage Against the Machine used footage of the protests and subsequent police actions in their music video of 1999 song "Sleep Now in the Fire".

This may have been inspired by the No WTO Combo, a collective of punk and grunge musicians who were scheduled to play at the protests but ended up cancelling due to the riots. The Seattle-based Infernal Noise Brigade, founded as a musical group to play at the protests, remained together until 2006; they traveled to perform during protests at events such as the 2004 Republican National Convention and the 2005 31st G8 summit in Auchterarder, Scotland.

The Seattle Hip-Hop group Blue Scholars released "50 Thousand Deep" on their 2007 album Bayani, which details the MC's experience at the protests. In it, he states "I was there, I'll tell you right now the pigs started it," alleging the ensuing unrest was instigated by police action.

In "The Divide", a novel by Nicholas Evans, one of the main characters, Abby, takes part in the Seattle demonstrations.

The movie "Battle in Seattle" was released in 2007, based on the protests. The movie stars Ray Liotta, Charlize Theron, Channing Tatum, and Woody Harrelson.

See also

• Banner drop
• Battle in Seattle — dramatic film depicting the events
• Breaking the Spell (film)

References

• Parrish, Geov. "Anarchists, go home!: Hey, Eugene punks, stay away from my revolution". Seattle Weekly. December 15, 1999.
• Parrish, Geov. "Beyond Gandhi". Seattle Weekly. November 24, 1999.
• Gates, Rhoderick. "Seattle Explosion: 2 Years Too Late". Our Time, November 31, 1999.
• A great deal of info presented in this article can be found in the movie This Is What Democracy Looks Like.

Further reading

• Highleyman, Liz (1999). "Scenes from the Battle of Seattle". Black Rose Web Pages. Retrieved 2008-03-28. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• The Battle In Seattle: The Story Behind and Beyond the WTO Demonstrations, by Janet Thomas, Fulcrum Publishing, 2000 (book).

External links

• University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – WTO Seattle Collection A collection of images depicting the protests of the WTO ministerial meeting held in Seattle on November 29 - December 3, 1999.
• University of Washington WTO History Project A collection of interviews with protest organizers and participants, and other documentation concerning the 1999 WTO protest.
• Stephanie Zimmerman's WTO protest diary on ZMedia.org.
• Breaking the Spell - Documentary about the WTO protests with footage of the riots on the ground.
• NO 2 WTO on Infoshop.org.
• Call for direct action convergence; flag.blackened.net accessed Oct 11, 2004 by the Internet Archive.
• Geov Parrish, The new anarchists: In Eugene, a youth-fueled movement breaks windows to ask the big questions, Seattle Weekly, September 2-8, 1999.
• Before the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, there were large organized protests against the 1988 World Bank/IMF meetings in Berlin. [2]
• Video: WTO Seattle police abuse
• Rob Sharp, Charlize now faces her own battle of Seattle, The Guardian, September 3, 2006: forthcoming Hollywood movie about the Seattle events.
• Paul Byron Crane in Seattle WTO comment on NPR Radio New Millennium reports
• Paul de Armond, Netwar in the Emerald City - RAND
• Paul de Armond, Storming Seattle - Albion Monitor