(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
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The Legacy of the “Battle of Seattle” [1]
['D. W. Gibson', 'Shawn Fain', 'Brent Cebul', 'Lily Geismer', 'Isabella Weber', 'Jared Abbott', 'Vincent Bevins', 'Doug Henwood', 'Daniel Denvir', 'Cal Winslow']
Date: 2025-04
D. W. Gibson
Tuesday was the main day of the protest where they shut down the meetings. They actually got the meetings canceled. And the Direct Action Network, the sort of loose affiliation of collectives and individuals, were the ones really focused on shutting down the meeting.
Labor — the AFL-CIO [American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations], the Teamsters, and steelworkers — were all into the idea of going out protesting, but not everyone was into the idea of sitting down in the street and actually shutting down the meeting. But there were competing points of view between localized and national leadership. For instance, Ron Judd, who still works for the state of Washington, was the main guy on the ground for the AFL-CIO. He was very much into sitting in the street and shutting down the meetings. The leadership back in DC, people like John Sweeney and to some extent James Hoffa, were a little bit more hesitant about those confrontational civil disobedience tactics.
So at this key moment on Tuesday when they’re trying to shut down the meetings and the police are starting to get really heavy with the tear gas, and it looks like they could disperse the crowd, the DAN needs reinforcements and more bodies in the street. All the labor people who had been assembled in a stadium and had a big rally are marching toward the conference center. They’re all blocks away, and the DAN can see them, and they’re like, “Here come our backups!” That’s where this split happens, and a lot of the leadership says, “No, we’re not gonna go sit in the streets. We’re turning back now.” But a lot of the rank-and-file people, led by Ron Judd locally, and the steelworkers in particular, decide “No, we’re going to sit in the streets to join the Direct Action Network.” That was crucial because it allowed them to sustain the barricade they had on the conference center and stop the meetings.
A lot of the leadership says, ‘No, we’re not gonna go sit in the streets. We’re turning back now.’ But a lot of the rank-and-file people decide, ‘No, we’re going to sit in the streets to join the Direct Action Network.’
That fissure in labor was very real. But once they had success in stopping the meetings, and once a week passed and the WTO was not able to reach a new agreement, leadership back in DC, people like Hoffa, got really excited about this. John Sweeney got more excited about it. In the book, Kevin Danaher tells this story about how a year later, he’s hanging out with Sweeney in DC and Sweeney’s saying, “We’re gonna protest the IMF [International Monetary Fund] with you in the fall, and I’m going to sit in the street this time. It worked in Seattle. Let’s do it this time and make it even bigger.”
But then 9/11 happens, and that just absolutely derails everything. I don’t think it should be used as an excuse, but it is a very important part of the story. A lot of people get scared by the idea of civil disobedience, albeit nonviolent, and they back away from it. Then a lot of the organizing went from pushing back on corporate governance to having to push back on all the wars that the US was launching around the world.
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[1] Url:
https://jacobin.com/2024/06/battle-of-seattle-protest-wto
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