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In 1999, in a carnival of creative nonviolence, 70,000 protesters shut down the WTO meeting in Seattle, scoring a victory against neoliberalism and launching the global justice movement in the U.S.
In 1999, the World Trade Organization decided to hold global capitalism’s board meeting in Seattle, US. Most North Americans had never heard of the WTO before, but savvy organizers across a spectrum of single-issue silos, including labour, environmental, human rights and others, decided that they would team up and act like a movement for a change. Our critiques of neoliberalism varied widely and there were both reformers and abolitionists in our ranks, but we were united in the recognition that the meeting represented a potent symbolic target for anyone challenging the juggernaut of undemocratic global corporate power.
Radicals and liberals agreed early on that a healthy inside/outside strategy was called for. A critical mass of activists began organizing, recruiting, and training together to attempt a many-thousands-strong blockade of the WTO meeting. We believed that if we could achieve the tactical victory of a mass shutdown of the WTO’s coming-out party, it would strengthen the hands of everyone working against corporate globalization.
Our theme was “Another World Is Possible” and we were living it out.
Scores of affinity groups organized themselves into thirteen clusters, and through a highly functional (and democratic) spokescouncil, hammered out a plan to capture the key intersections around the Seattle Convention Center in a massive nonviolent blockade. And so, in the predawn darkness of November 30, 10,000 direct actionistas marched through the streets of Seattle toward their targets. Each individual action had its own logic and narrative. Each would have stood on its own as extraordinary. When connected together, they became unstoppable.
The action frame we chose was carnival-protest, equal parts communicative and concrete (see: PRINCIPLE: Don’t expect a concrete outcome from a symbolic action). Outside the stodgy corporate meeting, a giant dance party broke out, complete with marching bands, dancers, theatre troupes, giant puppets, radical cheerleaders, a phalanx of 300 turtles, and even Christmas carolers. Thousands of folks joined together (with hands and blockade chains) around key entrances and intersections, preventing delegates from entering, which was the instrumental part of the action. It could have looked threatening, but with all the celebratory art and solidarity, we looked beautiful and human doing it. Our theme was “Another World Is Possible” and we were living it out (see: THEORY: Ethical spectacle).
By morning, 10,000 more folks, inspired by the audacity and courage of these artful actions, had spontaneously joined the human wall around the WTO. Teamsters and turtles were literally dancing together in the streets. A few hours later, as the Seattle police unleashed a torrent of tear gas and pepper spray to crack the blockade, 40,000 labour marchers defied their own marshals and reinforced us with a sea of humanity (see: PRINCIPLE: Maintain nonviolent discipline). One of the biggest business meetings on Earth had been shut down, a tactical victory most thought impossible. And the rest, as they say, is history.
The impact of Seattle was enormous. It accelerated the global justice movement in the Global North. It showed that a people’s victory against global capital was possible. It created a teachable moment — both for the public, on the WTO and the dark side of corporate globalization, and also for the movement, showcasing direct and mass action (Mass street action) tactics and a carnivalesque sensibility that are still influential today. Also, the new wave of actionistas who got trained in Seattle went on to play critical roles in progressive movements in the decades that followed.
Originally published in Beautiful Trouble.
Théorie clé
When 50,000 lefties take the streets to confront corporate power, you’re going to get 50,000 different critiques. To try to unify all that message diversity, we designed a “framing action.” The day before the big protest, four climbers dropped a massive banner 300 feet above Seattle’s main commuter highway that framed the action as a choice between democracy and the WTO. The photo of the banner went global on the day of the mass action, summing up in stark and simple terms what the Battle in Seattle was all about.
Tactique clé
The shut-down of the WTO blended both soft and hard blockade technologies. Of the thousands who participated, all but a few hundred simply joined hands and stood shoulder to shoulder with their comrades to prevent delegates from getting through. However, several hundred people used lock-boxes, chains, barrels, and other hard blockade technology to hold key intersections where we knew our people power would be lightest. With art and costumes and good cheer, we made these gear-intensive technical “lockdowns” look beautiful, not scary.
Principes clés
Whether your YES! was the freedom to keep making the Roquefort cheese that your great-grandfather made or to continue living in an ancient rainforest unpoisoned by Big Oil or to keep your good union job and not have it outsourced to a sweatshop, you shared a NO! with billions of others. This “unity in diversity” was present on the streets with Teamsters and turtles linking arms, and in the “movement of movements” that organized the protest.
Before the WTO uprising in Seattle, relatively few people in the Global North questioned the process of corporate globalization and so-called “free” trade. Seattle jolted the entire Overton window sharply to the left. Fair trade and other alternatives moved out of the fringe. The idea that militant mass action could stop corporate globalization in its tracks became not only think-able, but popular. Every major summit for the next two years was met with a mass protest.