...’Battle in Seattle’
(From Page 1)
politician, a delegate and a cop.
“We did not want to give only one
point of view,” said Los Angeles co-
producer Mary Aloe in a press state-
ment. “When you see the movie,
you’ll find lots of gray areas. It’s nei-
ther sympathetic nor unsympathetic to
protesters and police.”
The film has a budget of around
$10 million — small by the standards
of major Hollywood productions, but
sizable for an independent film. Fun-
ders include Insight Film Studios of
Vancouver; Aloe’s Proud Mary Pro-
ductions in Los Angeles; Remstar
Corporation of Montreal, Grosvenor
Park of Toronto, and an as-yet-un-
named Seattle-based private equity
firm.
It’s not clear yet to what extent the
film will employ union members. Don
Ramsden, business agent of Vancouver,
B.C.-based International Alliance of
Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE)
Local 669, said he expected to con-
clude an agreement with Insight cover-
ing camera operators, and Ramsden
said the actors and directors will almost
certainly work under agreements with
the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the
Union of BC Performers, and the Di-
rectors Guild of Canada.
With most of the financing for
“Battle in Seattle” coming from
Canada, it may be hard for U.S. film
industry unions to characterize the
film as a “runaway production.”
But increasingly, U.S.-based film
and television producers are moving
production to other countries, with
Canada — particularly Vancouver and
Toronto — among the most popular
locations.
Vancouver, dubbed “Hollywood
North” benefits from a favorable ex-
change rate, lower-wage union con-
tracts, universal health insurance, and,
since 1999, federal and provincial
government subsidies. The subsidies
include a rebate for up to a quarter of
labor costs, provided that the produc-
tion employs local Canadian workers.
U.S. film unions are gearing up to
fight back by filing a trade complaint,
and persuading local governments in
the United States to match foreign
subsidies. Seattle approved its own
film industry tax incentive, but it
won’t start until Jan. 1, too late for
“Battle in Seattle.”
“Battle in Seattle” is far from the
first production to be set in Seattle but
filmed in Vancouver. Still, the choice
is stunning given the movie’s subject,
a protest of corporate globalization.
In 1999, at the invitation of Presi-
dent Bill Clinton, trade ministers from
around the world planned to spend
four days in Seattle discussing the ex-
pansion of the WTO, which negotiates
and enforces international trade agree-
ments. In response, an extraordinary
international coalition of union, stu-
dent, environmental, religious and
public interest groups planned a week
of protests, criticizing the WTO as a
secretive and unaccountable interna-
tional agency writing the rules for a
corporate-led globalization.
Protest organizers’ work bore fruit
on Nov. 30, 1999, the first day of the
summit. About 10,000 mostly-youth-
ful protesters formed human chains
and blocked streets around the Seattle
Convention Center. Their blockades
prevented trade delegates from getting
to the meeting. Police used force and
tear gas to try to dislodge them, but
protesters stood their ground, helped
by devices like tripods, chains and
locked metal cylinders that prevented
police from pulling them apart.
Meanwhile, as many as 35,000
people, mostly union members, rallied
in and around Seattle Center’s Memo-
rial Stadium. Rallygoers included
union members from 144 countries,
and members of 50 U.S. unions from
25 states. To get them to the rally had
taken 185 buses, nine charter planes
and two trains, including one from
Oregon.
After the rally, the unionists
marched, meeting up with other
marches at prearranged locations. The
massive combined march passed near
the Convention Center, where the
blockade continued even after the
WTO announced the meeting would
be called off for the day. With all the
groups converging, police decided it
would be politically disastrous to con-
tinue to use tear gas around such a
large group of ordinary citizens.
As marchers left the area however,
police attacked again, and smaller
groups of protesters got the worst of
it. Some protesters set Dumpsters
afire in the streets, and committed acts
of vandalism, singling out Niketown,
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By nightfall, downtown Seattle
was a police state. Mayor Paul Schell
declared a suspension of civil liber-
ties, including the right to protest.
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area for the rest of the week. Faced
with so much public attention, the
talks about expanding the WTO col-
lapsed on the fourth day.
Over the next two years, similar
anti-globalization protests accompa-
nied nearly every major global eco-
nomic summit. Advocates of so-called
free trade were on the defensive. Lo-
cal backlash over the Seattle police re-
sponse led to the resignation of Police
(Turn to Page 12)
heavy-duty armored vehicles zoomed
around the city, using copious tear
gas, pepper spray and clubs at the
slightest provocation or none at all.
Some 500 people, including protest-
ers, bystanders and even office work-
ers in the wrong place at the wrong
time, were arrested, carted off on
buses in plastic handcuffs, and held in
jails and a nearby naval base for up to
five days. Smaller protests continued
outside the downtown “protest-free”
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NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
PAGE 5