Battle in Seattle: 5 years later

Today is the much-ballyhooed fifth anniversary of the so-called "Battle in Seattle" -- the massive protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) that gave our fair city one last moment in the post-grunge spotlight before we faded back into obscurity. It's hard to imagine now, but back in those heady pre-Sept.11 days, the idea that huge public protest could have a genuine effect on public policy actually made a lot of sense.

The media famously zeroed in on the small amount of violent action and property damage that occurred, and the story that emerged was that of an innocent city under siege by a bunch of crazy extremists. This marginalized what the movement saw as the "real" story in Seattle: the enormous, incredibly improbable mobilization of wildly disparate interests against a neo-liberal free trade regime. The Earth Liberation Front and the labor unions didn't exactly march arm-in-arm and sing "Kumbaya," but they did come together to protest a set of global rules and policies. That was a really big deal, but the bricks through the Gap's windows were what made the headlines.

In the end, the WTO fled town. The city was declared under a state of emergency and a curfew was enforced for two days. Downtown businesses were boarded up; buses stopped running. President Clinton was utterly befuddled that progressives would mobilize against him, and his visit and address to the delegates were overshadowed by security concerns. Some 600 people were thrown in the pokey for a variety of offenses.

Five years later, the conventional wisdom is that the global justice movement -- also disingenuously known as the anti-globalization movement -- is dead. Everything changed on Sept. 11, the argument goes. The emphasis is on foreign policy now, not global economic issues. Many activists fear that the Bush administration has done such a number on their civil liberties that they can't speak up anymore. Some point out organizations like the WTO got wise and started having their trade summits in absurdly remote locations, which prevents meaningful protest entirely. Other activists have shifted their energies from economic issues to anti-war issues; still others became obsessed with getting Bush out of office and migrated to political campaigns. Whatever the reasoning, the dominant narrative on the left is that the magic's gone. We're doomed -- doomed.

It's easy to buy into this conventional wisdom. After all, when prominent New York Times columnist David Brooks, evidently now head of public relations for the World Bank, claims that this is the most prosperous year in human history, it's easy to forget that the poorest countries are actually getting poorer. It's easy to forget that the WTO protests were never simply anti-globalization protests. It's easy to forget that globalization is not another black and white, with us or against us issue like, say, the War on Terror.

I wish I could join Brooks and celebrate the magical transformative power of free trade regimes that happen to be backed by unilateral militarism. But the issues and concerns that inspired the November 1999 protests are more pressing than ever, and the protest movement is very much alive in the rest of the world. Delegates to the WTO from the global South have found their voice in the years since 1999, and the rules are starting to change. The millions of anti-war protesters who turned out all over the globe in February 2003 were motivated by many of the same issues that inspired the "Battle in Seattle."

Five years ago, we learned that movements and issues can burst out of nowhere onto the world stage. And as the economic and humanitarian implications of the War on Terror become clear, we can be sure they will again.