A-Infos (en) US, Anarchist journal, Intersections #5 - Fifty Thousand Deep The WTO Protests Ten Years Later by Joshua Neuhouser

Though I was barely a teenager when
it happened, I can remember it all
clearly, if I want to. I remember the
curfew in downtown Seattle, the State
of Emergency, the deployment of the
National Guard to my hometown. I
remember huddling around my family's
television set, even though (or perhaps
because) the local channels gave up on
reporting and simply showed
streaming footage from Westlake
Center. And so we watched as
protesters were shot point blank in the
back with rubber b u l l e t s
a n d
newscasters hiding from the police
under their vans. In the time that
followed, I remember the Infernal
Noise Brigade, who formed during the
World Trade Organization protests and
for years later remained the city's best
band.
The WTO was created in order to
regulate the global economy in such a
way that nothing – not human rights,
not unions, not the environment –
would interfere with corporate profit.
And so when the WTO came to Seattle,
they were challenged in the streets by
environmentalists, by anarchists, by
unions, by groups of Asian immigrants
who were tired of s e e i n g
their
homelands overcome by foreign-owned
sweatshops. The widely publicized
marches and street battles were also
supplemented with strikes by taxi
drivers and longshore workers.
But after Seattle, something happened.
South American a n t i - g l o b a l i z a t i o n
activists spent most of their energy
occupying abandoned factories or
farmland and turning them into
worker-run cooperatives, as the
workers at Republic Windows and
Doors threatened to do earlier this
year. But up north, the movement got
stuck on what was called “summit-
hopping”: whenever groups
of powerful men gathered
together to plan the fate of
the world – whether it was
through the World Trade
Organization,
the
International Monetary
Fund, or the Group of Eight
– protesters would also be
there in order to draw
attention to the lack of
democracy at the summit
and disrupt the meetings.
This restricted participation
in the movement to people
who had the means to travel
across the country in order to protest.
Even sympathetic journalists began
referring to it as a McMovement: you
saw the same faces but at different
places, and what was fresh and
exciting in Seattle began to seem stale
and familiar in Montreal,
Genoa, and Miami. So while South
American anti-globalization
activists built mass movements that
have significantly changed the
face of the continent, their First World
counterparts shadow-boxed
with those in power, and the attention
they grabbed in Seattle quickly faded
after September 11th.
A lot has changed in the ten years
since the protests. The WTO itself
has collapsed, as Third World leaders,
emboldened by the movement, refuse to
have their actions dictated to them by
the developed world.
The American government itself had
less need of organizations like the
WTO, and turned invasion into its
weapon of first resort in advancing
its economic interests. So after years of
war that have done little
but bankrupt the country, it's become
easy to romanticize the 90's.
Next to the slaughter in Iraq and
Afghanistan, we've forgotten
Clinton's little wars in the
disintegrating communist bloc. And in
the face of the current recession, it can
be nic e to pr etend that the
dot-com boom had, in fact, trickled
down to the rest of us – even
though blu e collar jobs were
disappearing overseas while the rich
printed monopoly money. Ten years
ago, people were so upset with the
state of America and the state of the
world that they took to the
streets of Seattle to voice their anger.
Since then, life has gotten
so much worse that a return to that
same Democratic Party status quo
feels like relief. But it's still not too late
to take the path o f f e r e d , b u t n o t
followed, after the WTO protests.
And they call this a riot? Naw man, I
call it an uprising. 50 thousand deep,
and it sound like thunder when our
feet pound streets.
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Intersections is a publication of Common Action
http://www.nwcommonaction.org
Common Action is a regional anarchist organization in the
Northwest United States with members representing the cities of
Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, and Bremerton.
To contact us, send an e-mail to nwcommonaction@gmail.com
or write to: P.O. Box 6823, Tacoma, WA 98417
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Stay tuned to www.seattleplus10.org for
upcoming events celebrating the 10th
anniversary of the WTO in Seattle!
*******************************************
Other upcoming events:
Econvergence: Northwest Regional Gathering
on the Economic and Environmental Crises
October 2-4 in Portland, OR
www.econvergence.org
Seattle Anarchist Book Fair
October 17-18
www.seattleanarchist.org
Common Action will be hosting panels on
Anarchism and Anti-Racism, Science Fiction
and Transformative Justice. Check it out
_________________________________________
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