"This is what democracy looks like!"
—Protesters’ chant on Seattle streets

’ve been going to demonstrations for 25 years. In the late ’80s I spent three years staffing some of the largest demos (for Southern Africa, gay rights, Central America) Washington, D.C., had seen since the Vietnam war, with hundreds of thousands in the streets. I was in some of the earliest and largest of the Nevada Test Site civil disobedience actions. The series of anti-World Trade Organization direct actions and demonstrations that took place in Seattle from November 30 to December 3 was the most inspiring protest I have ever witnessed and am ever likely to witness. It felt like history in the making.

In part, this was for a simple reason: We won. The World Trade Organization (WTO) has operated for five years as a sort of secretive hyper-NAFTA, with 135 nations conspiring to remove such "barriers" to free trade as environmental and food safety laws, liveable wages, the right to collective bargaining and more. The WTO’s powerful new trade regime carries with it the ability to levy devastating sanctions on countries not cooperating, thus effectively striking down laws agreed to by a country’s sovereign elected bodies. The WTO has consistently used its awesome power to do the bidding of transnational corporations, ruling in their favor in every instance. Seattle was the North American coming-out party for an institution few knew anything about.

A number of the WTO delegates credited the Seattle street protests with setting the political tone that allowed Third World delegations to refuse, for the first time, the demands by the United States and the European Union for new and ever more destructive negotiations for free trade agreements. Perhaps more importantly, the WTO was suddenly a household word across the United States. It was held up to the light of day—and many people didn’t like what whey saw. Rarely do we have the chance to make such an impact. On one magical day alone, thousands of protesters, many under 25, effectively silenced one of the most powerful organizations on Earth. The opening day of WTO negotiations was effectively shut down.

Nonviolence as Norm

But there was more. The images purveyed by the international media—pictures of police hurling tear gas in response to violent protesters—were simply lies. Property destruction in Seattle was minimal, carried out only on one day by a fringe few; nonviolence was the norm. By the end of the day November 30, after a 40,000-strong labor march had come and gone, there were an estimated 35,000 more people in the streets of Seattle, engaging—most for the first time—in nonviolent direct action. In the face of vicious police crackdowns, large nonviolent demonstrations continued all week. A new American protest culture was born under fire.

The WTO was brought to a standstill on the first day, and the police, as often happens in the face of such power, panicked. They had had ample opportunity to prepare. A multi-agency task force (including, among others, the Seattle Police Department, King County Sheriffs, State Patrol and the U.S. Secret Service, FBI, State Department and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) had been meeting for months in preparation for the protests. They had also been meeting with protesters, including the Direct Action Network, a loose alliance of groups that came together to plan the November 30 direct action. DAN activists explained quite clearly their intent to shut the WTO down and how they would do it. The cops didn’t believe them. Then DAN did it.

DAN’s November 30 strategy was relatively simple. Organizers targeted Seattle’s Paramount Theater, where WTO activities were scheduled to start, and divided the surrounding area into 13 pie wedges. Different affinity groups (autonomous bodies of five to 15 people that function as units in mass civil disobedience actions) took responsibility for blocking key intersections and hotels in each wedge. Assuming they would not be able to get near the Paramount itself, organizers sought to gridlock downtown, preventing delegates from getting from their hotel rooms into their limos and cabs and to their appointed talks.

The strategy succeeded beyond DAN’s wildest expectations. Until the tear gas flew, a carnival atmosphere often prevailed in the downtown streets, with music, drumming, giant puppets and other festive accoutrements. The success was due to two factors. First, a flood of activists was willing to brave heavy rain at 7:00 in the morning to shut the WTO down. Optimistic organizers had hoped for a couple of thousand people on the morning streets of downtown Seattle; they got far more. The affinity groups spent the whole day blocking their assigned intersections and entrances, largely untouched by police. While craziness erupted around them, the affinity groups held their ground. Despite what was at times extreme provocation, the protests remained almost entirely nonviolent. Frustrated delegates were engaged in conversations; when vandalism did erupt, protesters often tried to stop it.

Massive Miscalculation

The second factor was what can only be construed as a massive miscalculation by police. In ringing Metro buses and police lines to protect the Paramount and Convention Center, they forgot to leave a way for delegates to get in. Or out. It would have been simple for police to provide a corridor from hotels to the meeting place only a block or two away, but they didn’t. By the time it occurred to them, thousands of protesters were barring the way. Throughout the morning, police were completely outnumbered by nonviolent protesters, singing, chanting and generally having the time of their lives.

The downside, conveyed on television by brutal images, began in the morning and was in full evidence long before a few vandals started their sprees of window-breaking. Along with their festive memories, protesters will also carry home from that day in Seattle the smell of tear gas, pepper spray, mace and other nerve agents and the impact of at least three different kinds of rubber or hard plastic projectiles fired, often point blank, at demonstrators, as well as—of course—riot batons. To its credit, the Seattle Fire Department refused repeated requests to turn fire hoses on protesters. All of this against people who weren’t fighting back, who, indeed, weren’t doing anything but using what they thought were their First Amendment rights.

By December 1, when curfews, a state of civil emergency and a "no protest" zone had been hastily declared, and hundreds were arrested for doing the exact same thing they were doing legally November 30, the jail and court systems also became an issue. In the face of massive jail solidarity, jailers responded with a panoply of reported abuses: beatings, restraints, hog ties, isolation, stripping prisoners naked, threats of rape, suffocation and electrocution, overcrowding and denial of food, water, medicines and access to lawyers.

Building Solidarity

In the face of those abuses, it was remarkable that not only did anti-WTO protesters stand firm, attracting thousands to subsequent demonstrations, but that they were joined by hundreds of others who perhaps didn’t care about the WTO but did care about the Bill of Rights. On Thursday, December 2, and through the weekend, mass marches and encampments surrounded the King County jail, where many of the arrestees were being held. That act of solidarity—also supported by labor—was instrumental in getting detainees access to lawyers and, eventually, getting them out by the following Monday.

The week’s rallying cry—"This is what democracy looks like"—has a double meaning. The protests were not only what democracy should look like, but the police were how "democracy" responds when the halls of power sense dissatisfaction among the rabble. What was perhaps most remarkable was that such a large mobilization was managed for such a relatively obscure topic. While the WTO has generated huge demonstrations internationally, it has attracted little attention in the United States. Last spring, organizers embarked on an ambitious public education effort in Seattle, reaching out not only to human rights, labor, environmental and religious activists, but also to the general public. By late summer, "fair trade" committees were operating in every neighborhood in Seattle. Ostensibly, this was organizing for the labor march, but once people found out the WTO’s record of overturning environmental and human rights as well as labor laws, the urgency of the situation also served as an effective recruiter for the more radical direct actions.

Seattle’s peace and antimilitarism community was also mobilized. The WTO acts effectively not just to promote but virtually to require militarism. By making "state security" spending—on arms and militarism—the only area of state spending exempted from WTO sanctions, Third World and other governments wanting to spend money to boost their economies can do so only on the military. The WTO has been a boon to the arms trade for similar reasons. And, of course, First World militaries, particularly those of the United States and NATO, serve as the ultimate enforcers of the free trade regime.

The Nonviolent Action Community of Cascadia (WRL’s Seattle local) played several key roles in the demonstrations. We were part of both the Direct Action Network and the network of nonviolence trainers that was stretched to its limit in preparation for the direct action. And, on the Sunday prior to the WTO’s opening, we helped host a "WTO and the Global War System" forum that filled a 300-seat hall to overflowing and hosted a multicultural celebratory concert in a 400-seat venue.

The tremendous and unprecedented alliance of different groups working together—labor, environmental, human rights, religious, peace and youth—was one of the most positive aspects of the week in Seattle. Also to be shared in communities across the continent: the feeling of exhilaration that comes when nonviolent direct action wins. The series of victories that came with a week of protest in the streets of Seattle will be with us for a long time to come.