More Reflections and Analysis
By Jeff Engels
The morning of November 30, 1999 was unseasonably warm as I jumped in my car to meet-up with my fellow members of the Inlandboatmen’s Union of the Pacific (IBU) Marine Division of the International Longshore Warehouse Union (ILWU) at our headquarters on Fisherman’s Terminal in Seattle. At the time I was serving as a business agent for the tugboat workers in the Puget Sound Region and running for National President of the IBU. Together we gathered 300 picket signs, bullhorns, and our union banner before heading down to the fountain at the Seattle Center. There we mustered with the other 500 ILWU members from up and down the West Coast, Hawaii, and Canada and together ...More
By John E. Peck
Corporate free trade apologists were quick to disparage the protesters as part of a misguided “anti-globalization” movement, apparently unaware that the forces behind the direct action had been cultivating north-south solidarity for quite awhile – a new more powerful form of globalized resistance from below. Family farmers/fishers, migrant farm/food workers, and indigenous communities were critical to this grassroots victory – in particular, La Via Campesina (LVC) and its many U.S. allies such as Family Farm Defenders (FFD) and the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC). It was in such epic struggle that the seeds of food sovereignty found fertile ground. ...More
By Ruben Solis
1999 and the Battle of Seattle was important because it marked the moment where we defined global mass movements as south-to-south, against the global north. It became obvious that south-to-south organizing and unity called for a world (social) forum of the grassroots movements across the globe. The political debate on globalization centered on looking at it only through an economist lens. Our experience fighting NAFTA informed us that globalization was much more than economics, and that we as poor people of color and Indigenous nations would be first impacted by the globalization, and therefore we were the experts on it. ...More
35+ links to reflections compiled by Infoshop News staff
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the historic N30 and Battle of Seattle protests. The latter protests were against the WTO meeting in Seattle in late 1999. N30 was a day of anti-capitalist and anti-neoliberal protests around the world, which saw tens of thousands of protesters in dozens of cities. Infoshop News was fairly new at the time and along with Indymedia, provided live coverage of the protests in Seattle and around the world. We ran a breaking news wire with updates from the streets. Our coverage included photos and later news accounts and opinions from the corporate media and independent press. We hope to re-create that page and that content in the near future. Today we are sharing links to commentary and personal accounts by participants looking back 20 years to these historic events. ...More