Remembering Seattle, 9 years later – and looking toward the future.
I am a few days late, but I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the passing of the 9th anniversary of the WTO meeting in Seattle in 1999.
While I was at home in Ohio with Jason Kucsma, finishing up the very first issue of Clamor, many friends were in the streets of Seattle protesting the World Trade Organization meeting. We featured the protests on the cover of our premiere issue.
This year, David Solnit wrote a bit of a reflection, and it was posted on Infoshop.org – “Seattle WTO Shutdown 9 Year Anniversary: 5 Lessons for Today” where he talks about the need for new tactics, strategic organizing, and a systemic analysis. He says, “There is actually no global justice movement. “Global justice” instead is a common space of convergence—a framework where everyone who fights against the system we call corporate globalization (or capitalism, empire, imperialism, neoliberalism, etc) and its impacts on our communities can make common cause and make our efforts cumulative. This anti-systemic framework helps diverse groups and movements to come together for mobilizations or to support each other. This is the movement of movements that fights for global justice, often winning, and has become stronger over the last nine years.”
Self-reflection is an important part of developing movements for social change, and I hope that as the 10th anniversary approaches, more long term activists will publish/post their reflections on this critical time. David’s article also links to the site organized by WTO protest participants for people to post their own stories and memories of the event.
And, just a moment to shout out to the young activists making waves at the UN climate talks in Poznan, Poland. Like the WTO meeting in 1999, the Poznan talks have been a strategic opportunity to frame the issues leading into the Copenhagen talks next year – Activists have once again challenged world leaders, but in a new, different, strategic way than in Seattle – and that is inspiring and hopeful. Here’s a story on it from my friend Joshua Kahn Russell, including some beautiful photos and this quote:
“Actions like the one that happened 15 minutes ago aim to create the pressure to do just that. At the end of our action (after engaging with some angry UN people) several delegates and dignitaries came to thank the Youth for their action. A woman said ‘I am in a very high position in my government in Norway. Youth doing actions like this makes my work easier. Thank you.’”
