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under a number of different organizational umbrellas, but were
unified in their conviction that the policies of the WTO enable
the super rich and powerful to exploit workers, ignore human
rights, squeeze third world countries, and destroy the
environment—all in pursuit of profits. The 1999 WTO talks shut
down, as thousands of police and National Guard troops arrested
hundreds of protesters amid vague reports of black-masked
anarchist provocateurs. Peaceful protesters were showered with
pepper spray and pummeled with rubber bullets. Seattle’s chief of
police resigned amid charges of incompetence and brutality.
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The mainstream media quickly christened the events the
“Battle of Seattle.” The lead story in the New York Times the
following day cynically reported that “what was planned as the
biggest American demonstration yet against global trade […]
turned into a burst of window-breaking and looting,” a “surge of
violence that ended in a civil emergency. […] It died out with
the image of a grinning young man in a Gap sweatshirt trying to
cart off a satellite dish from a Radio Shack store.”
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Meanwhile,
alternative news sources denounced the mainstream media’s
“Prattle on Seattle.” As one participant observer told Z
Magazine, “Most of what has been written is so inaccurate that I
can’t decide if the reporters in question should be charged with
conspiracy or simply incompetence. […] The police, in defending
their ‘mishandling’ of the situation, have said they were ‘not
prepared for the violence.’ In reality, they were unprepared for
the nonviolence.”
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Convention