WTO was one for the books

'BATTLE FOR SEATTLE': UW history project documents turbulent event for future generations

11/28/2000

David Wickert; The News Tribune

When the World Trade Organization protests rocked Seattle with the force of a tear-gas grenade, Margaret Levi knew she was watching history in the making.

A University of Washington professor who studies labor history, Levi paid careful attention as the "Battle for Seattle" unfolded in all its messy and exhilarating immediacy.

A year later, the echoes of the WTO demonstrations are still resounding. But Levi and her UW colleagues are collecting artifacts and memories of the event so future generations will understand what all the ruckus was about.

UW's WTO History Project is an attempt to document the protests from the perspective of the various activist groups that staged them. Under Levi's direction, researchers have spent months interviewing participants and collecting memorabilia that will be used by future scholars.

"It's very exciting," Levi said of the opportunity to witness history first-hand. "It's also very confusing. It's a cacophony of voices. There are years of sorting out of material that needs to take place."

Indeed, the World Trade Organization, government leaders and a variety of activist groups are still sorting through the ramifications of the Seattle protests.

The WTO, an international organization with the power to enforce trade agreements, met in Seattle a year ago this week to set an agenda for a new round of trade talks. But the conference also drew thousands of activists from around the world, each with their own grievance.

Labor unions decried weak protections for workers. Environmentalists cited the destruction of natural resources. And everyone from animal-rights activists to anarchists joined in.

The resulting demonstrations - organized marches, peaceful sit-ins, free-form street theater and window-breaking rampages - paralyzed downtown Seattle and disrupted the WTO conference. The police response, which included tear gas, rubber bullets and more than 600 arrests, prompted numerous complaints of abuse.

Levi first got the idea to document these dramatic events while participating in them. She helped organize campus support for a labor march that drew 40,000 people and later joined in the march.

Although she has studied other labor protests, including the 1919 general strike that shut down Seattle for five days, Levi has found few sources that explain those events from the perspective of the organizers.

"It's often very hard to get the story of what actually happened," she said.

With that in mind, Levi and other researchers began interviewing scores of WTO protest participants. So far, more than 80 interviews have been done, with more than 100 planned altogether.

At the same time, the UW library is collecting memorabilia - placards, videotapes, leaflets, costumes and other information - from the WTO protests.

"There's really a wonderful variety of material," said Carla Rickerson, head of manuscripts and special collections for the university archives. "We're expecting this to have long-term research interest."

The researchers have combined their efforts and are currently cataloging material. When they're done, they'll make much of it available to the public at their Web site (www.wtohistory.org) and preserve the rest for scholars.

Levi said her immediate aim is not to write a definitive history of the protests, but to provide primary material for others to interpret.

"Many people will interpret this material in different ways," she said.

Indeed, the archive already provides a fascinating glimpse of the planning that went into WTO.

Interviews conducted by UW researchers show activists spent thousands of hours planning protests that on television seemed like a random series of unconnected events. Some of that planning was tedious.

"We had a lot of frustrating coalition meetings at the beginning, because nobody really knew what to do at these meetings," complained one activist who was interviewed. "We sat there and planned and planned and planned and it became clear ... at a certain point that it's time to just start doing the work."

The interviews also reveal disagreements over goals and tactics. Some groups, for example, supported working through the WTO to accomplish their aims, while others advocated abolishing the trade group. Some favored orderly marches, while others chose more disruptive tactics.

But what strikes Levi is that many groups that previously were at odds found common ground.

Her favorite example is the meeting of Kaiser Aluminum workers and environmental activists protesting Oregon logging. The two groups, she said, discovered they were protesting the same company. As a result, the environmentalists learned more about the workers' concern for their jobs, while the workers discussed environmental issues.

"There was not perfect cooperation," said Gillian Murphy, a graduate student who is coordinating the project. "But there was enough cooperation to pull it off."

Whether that cooperation will last may be a matter for future historians to study.

"Something very exciting is happening," Levi said. "Whether it can be sustained, I don't know."