Home > WTO Meeting of 1999
On November 30, 1999, the World Trade Organization convened in Seattle, Washington, USA, for what was to be the launch of a new millennial round of trade negotiations. The negotiations, which were unsuccessful, were quickly overshadowed by massive and controversial street protests outside the hotels and convention center , in what became the coming-out 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 against a world meeting of any of the organizations generally associated with economic globalization (e.g., the WTO, the IMF, or the World Bank).1 Organizations and planning
Planning for the demonstrations began months in advance and included local, national, and internationational 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 anarchistsAnarchism is a generic term describing various political philosophies and social movements that advocate the elimination of hierarchy and imposed authority. These philosophies use anarchy to mean a society based on voluntary cooperation of free individual.
The coalition was loose and broad, based more on opposition to " free tradeFree trade is an economic concept referring to the selling of products between countries without tariffs or other trade barriers. Free trade is the absence of artificial ( government-imposed) barriers to trade among individuals and firms in different nati" policies than support for any one political position, but there was a general consensus among the protestors that the WTO favors the rich and powerful multinational corporationA multinational corporation MNC or transnational corporation TNC is one that spans multiple nations; these corporations are often very large. Such companies have offices and/or factories in different countries. They usually have a centralised head offices over the interests of most of the world's population and that its policies are destroying the lives of people in third worldFor the Jamaican reggae band, see Third World (band). Third world is a term originally used to distinguish those nations that neither aligned with the West nor with the East during the Cold War. These countries are also known as the Global South developin countries. Many complained specifically about the impact of the WTO on Americans in undermining the sovereignty of federal, state, and local governmentA government is an organization that has the power to make and enforce laws for a certain territory. There are several definitions on what exactly constitutes a government. The government has been defined as the dominant decision-making arm (the policy els and siphoning well-paying American jobs to countries with lower wages, poorer working conditions, and few environmental protections.
The motivations and intent of many of these groups in coming to Seattle differed drastically. Many NGOs 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 CenterSeattle Center is a fairground, park and arts and entertainment center in Seattle, Washington, on the site used in 1962 by the Century 21 Exposition. It is located just north of Belltown in Lower Queen Anne. The Center is home to: The annual Northwest Fol to downtownDowntown is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington. It is fairly compact compared to other city centers on the West Coast because of its geographical situation: hemmed in on the north and east by hills, on the west by Elliott Bay, and on the south by recla.
Others, however, were more interested in taking direct actionDirect action is a method and a theory of stopping objectionable practices or creating more favorable conditions using immediately available means, such as strikes, boycotts, workplace occupations, sit-ins, or sabotage, and less oppositional methods such, especially civil disobedience, to disrupt the meeting. These groups loosely organized together as 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. Though the group was a politically diverse one, it did settle on a basic code of nonviolence, including: "We will not destroy property."[1]
However, certain activists, most notably a group of mostly-young anarchists from Eugene, Oregon (where anarchists had " rioted" that summer), advocated more confrontational tactics, and apparently planned deliberate vandalism of properties in downtown Seattle owned by multinational corporations, such as Beaverton, Oregon-based Nike, Seattle-based Starbucks, various banks, etc.
