NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | November 15, 2019 | PAGE 3
...BATTLE IN
SEATTLE
From Page 1
MASSIVE LABOR TURNOUT. All over the West, labor organizations sent members. Colorado’s AFL-CIO booked 100 plane
tickets. Montana’s AFL-CIO organized a car caravan. The Oregon AFL-CIO mobilized an estimated 1,600 union members,
including 15 busloads and a specially chartered 350-seat Amtrak train. In Washington, every central labor council sent at
least three busloads, and Tacoma sent over 30. Forty-two busloads crossed the border from British Columbia, Canada.
Photos by Mike Barkin.
many as 1,000 members from 19
Teamsters locals in Washington
mobilized. Portland Machinists
Local 1005 paid lost wages so
members could afford to take the
day off work. Seattle Machinists
Local 751 volunteered several
hundred members as marshals
for the march.
And that was just the union
side of the coalition.
Today, Mike Dolan works as
the Teamsters Union’s top trade
policy lobbyist in Washington,
D.C. But in 1999, he was the
field director for Global Trade
Watch, a division of the non-
profit group Public Citizen.
More than anyone else, Dolan
was the Paul Revere of the Seat-
tle WTO protests. Starting in
March when Seattle was an-
nounced as the meeting site,
Dolan invited local, national and
international labor, environmen-
tal, and non-profit leaders to
form an ad hoc coalition. The
coalition soon opened an office
in downtown Seattle and under-
took a region-wide mobilization
against corporate globalization.
Staff and volunteers working
with Dolan spent the next six
months visiting college cam-
puses, churches, union halls, and
neighborhood groups with a call
to join the WTO protest.
Dolan’s vision was for a week
of massive protest demonstra-
tions led by labor and non-profit
groups — to send the message
that WTO was a threat to work-
ers’ rights, the environment, and
democracy worldwide. Others
got busy with plans for non-vio-
lent civil disobedience, and
formed the Direct Action Net-
work, a West Coast network of
local grassroots organizations
opposed to corporate globaliza-
tion. To train hundreds of protest-
ers in Greenpeace- and Earth-
First-style blockade tactics, the
newly formed Ruckus Society
held three-day “Globalize This”
training camps at a farm north of
Everett, Washington.
As the WTO meeting neared,
there were tensions between
those who wanted to protest the
WTO and those who wanted to
shut it down by preventing WTO
delegates from getting to their
meeting. Labor officials wanted
nothing to do with the street
blockades.
The week of activity began
Friday Nov. 26, with a teach-in
THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING: When 50,000 protesters filled Seattle streets, journalists from all over the world
were there to document it. The coverage inspired solidarity protests in cities around the world, and woke the global
public up to undemocratic aspects of the World Trade Organization.
that packed Seattle’s 2,500-seat
Benaroya Concert Hall for two
days. On Sunday, Nov. 28, the
Washington Council of Churches
filled St. James Cathedral with a
“Jubilee 2000” prayer service
calling for Third World debt re-
lief. On Monday, hundreds of
Steelworkers, Teamsters, and
others marched with about 250
environmentalists dressed in
cardboard turtle costumes. That
night, thousands of people
turned out in pouring rain to
form a human chain surrounding
a corporate-sponsored reception
for WTO delegates, while sev-
eral miles away filmmaker
Michael Moore and singer
Michael Franti entertained thou-
sands of others at a Key Arena
“people’s gala” sponsored by
USW, Teamsters, Rainforest Ac-
tion Network, and others.
And all that was trivial com-
pared with what was to happen
the following day.
Whose streets? Our streets!
Jeremy Simer today works as a
strategic researcher for Service
Employees Local 49 in Portland.
In 1999, he was a recent graduate
of University of Washington. In
mid-summer, he began working
full-time for Dolan’s group doing
neighborhood-level organizing.
But after having worked for
months to get people to come to
the big labor rally and march,
Simer himself decided to go to
where the civil disobedience
would occur.
The day activists had dubbed
a “festival of resistance” began
at 7 a.m. with not one but two gi-
ant puppet parades. As the pa-
rades wound through downtown,
organized “affinity groups”
peeled off and made their way to
an agreed-upon intersection
where they linked arms, sat
down, and in some cases locked
themselves together. The tactic
took police by surprise.
But it wasn’t long before po-
lice moved in to try to clear
streets. Twenty years later, Simer
still remembers seeing protesters
prodded by police batons,
bruised by rubber bullets, hit in
the face by gas canisters, and
sprayed at close range with
chemical agents. He also remem-
bers the courage, discipline, and
determination of the protesters as
they stayed put and held on to in-
tersections, or when dislodged,
regrouped to try again.
Over the next six hours, po-
lice managed to clear some in-
tersections, but with most dele-
gates unable to get through, to
worldwide shock, the WTO can-
celed its opening ceremony.
Meanwhile, with streets occu-
pied and tear gas in the air, po-
lice appealed to labor leaders to
delay their march until the streets
could be cleared. But at a certain
point, labor leaders could no
longer control the thousands of
union members. Two hours and
dozens of speakers into the rally,
large numbers began leaving the
stadium to assemble outside for
the march. By the time then-
AFL-CIO President John
Sweeney took the stage, the sta-
dium was largely empty.
The plan had been for labor
marchers to set out, led by
Harley-riding Machinists, be
met by feeder marches from
University of Washington and
Seattle Central Community Col-
lege, and proceed to the Conven-
tion Center, where the WTO
meeting was to be held. But out-
side the stadium, careful plans
melted into organized chaos as
contingents of Tibetan monks,
topless women protesters,
French farmers, church groups,
and students crammed in next to
groups of union members in
matching colored ponchos.
And as the slow-moving
march neared the Convention
Center, the streets they expected
to pass through there were still
occupied, full of demonstrators
linking arms and blocking inter-
sections. Concerned that the la-
bor march would disintegrate or
be exposed to tear gas, the deci-
sion was made to turn the march
several blocks shy of the planned
route. Brian McWilliams, then
president of the ILWU, remem-
bers it as a pivotal moment.
“At the front there was a huge
mass of people determined to in-
tervene with what was going on
outside the Convention Center,”
McWilliams recalls. “I think it
was a huge mistake not to go for-
ward, because we were all of sin-
gular mind about interfering with
the blueprint the WTO had for
workers and business and the
world, and we needed to take it
straight to the Convention Cen-
ter.”
As Machinists in orange pa-
rade marshal hats struggled
mightily to turn the march
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