5 Days In Seattle that Shook The World

Photo: Stephen Kaiser

New obstacles arose. International congresses are very different from the conventions we were accustomed to. The WTO, formed in 1995, was still in its infancy. The ministerial conference in Geneva in 1998 was its first such meeting. The organization was thinly staffed, thinly funded, and relatively inexperienced.

As we toured the convention center, the two WTO representatives kept remarking that the space was too small. The rooms had to be set up “WTO-style”—in spacious chevrons rather than the standard theater layout or classroom set. Every meeting required expansive executive chairs with tables. Our ample space seemed to shrink with every passing minute. We realized we would have to move the opening plenary session to the Paramount Theatre and use our food—service space for meetings.

After lunch and wine, we looked at the space with new eyes. Our CEO moved into meeting-planner mode and somehow created a scheme the WTO officials could live with. We sent them off and awaited the decision.

At the end of January 1999 Senator Patty Murray called someone in Seattle to say (as I heard it) that she was on Al Gore’s plane and he had told her Seattle won the bid. Great jubilation, headlines in the newspapers, much back slapping and high-fiving—and then back to work.

By April it became clear that not everyone was so enamored of trade and globalization. Local unions and environmental groups wanted seats on the host committee. Very scary websites started appearing, urging people to come to Seattle to “shut down the meeting” and “shut down the WTO.” Who were these people? What had we gotten ourselves into?

KATE PFLAUMER

U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington

Clinton told me that after Geneva he’d told the WTO they needed to open their process up, make the meetings public, or they’d always have protests.

On the federal side we tried to convince the city people that this could be much bigger than they thought, and that just because protests were “nonviolent” didn’t mean the roads wouldn’t be blocked.

KATHY SCHWARTZ

Convention and Visitors Bureau

As spring turned to summer, then fall, the uproar became alarming. The unions, angry at the export of U.S. manufacturing jobs, would organize a huge demonstration and bring in busloads of marchers. Environmental activists would stage competing demonstrations. We sensed we were going to be overrun—probably how the Magyars felt awaiting Genghis Khan.

FOUR WATERS

General Legal Support, Earth First!

Waters, a graphic designer and activist in Northern California, provided media relations and ground support in the late ’90s for Julia Butterfly Hill’s famous two-year sit-in in a threatened redwood.

I came as part of the jail and legal team for the protests. We did several days of nonviolence training in advance. It basically teaches you what your rights are and what they’re not, and what to expect so you’re not surprised. It feels very violent, especially for people who come from a more conventional, middle-class suburban background—not just being in jail but being arrested. Especially in the heat of the moment, it’s extremely combative. You want to punch somebody back. You can easily be afraid, you can easily feel like you’re suffocating, and if you’re going to go be arrested in a nonviolent, civil-disobedient manner, you really have to put yourself in a mind set. It goes back to the civil rights movement.

We had trained, if we were really rocking, at most 1,000 people. Percentage-wise that’s pretty slim. I wasn’t shocked at the number of people who came for the WTO. I’m shocked that anyone in Seattle would be shocked. We knew we had made alliances with certain religious groups and faith-based organizations, with the steelworkers and other union members. We knew what a broad base we had.

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Published: November 2009