WTO/99 We’re the filmmaking team behind the new documentary, WTO/99, a film that examines—purely through archival footage—four days of protests in Seattle during 1999 against the World Trade Organization (WTO). We’ve spent over two years living in the footage of the largest US demonstrations since the Vietnam War captured by protesters on the ground, the Seattle Police Department and local and national new crews. We’ve reviewed roughly one thousand hours of footage that followed protesters, police and governmental officials as they participated in what would later become known as the “Battle of Seattle”—the week in 1999 when over 40,000 people took to the streets to shut down the conference for the newly established WTO, who had gathered on American soil for the first time. The parallels between the WTO protests and what we’re seeing across the country today cannot be ignored.
The “Battle of Seattle” the media brought into millions of homes across the nation is suggestive of a two-sided violent conflict. But if there were two sides to find in the footage, they are the Seattle Police Department (SPD)—armed with clubs, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and chemical weapons—and 40,000+ demonstrators armed with signs, banners and chants. Listening to the tapes of police radio comms from that week, we heard officers warning one another of protesters wielding chains and pieces of wood with nails sticking out—the footage shows neither. Reviewing the footage that the officers captured themselves, we can see their POV from the police lines, and these cameras capture not one weapon. After the police deploy tear gas and an arsenal of projectiles just four hours after the protests began, a camera captures a single person in the crowd spraying something back at the police. Much of the property damage the police later used to justify their attacks wouldn’t occur until after this initial police escalation. Footage from that week shows unarmed civilians being beaten and shot at point blank range with what the SPD deemed “sub-lethal projectiles” over the course of four days. Officers tear-gassed non-violent, seated individuals. They used so much tear gas on the very first day of the protests that they had to go out of state to restock that night.
The police and national guard response to the WTO protests ushered in the state of policing we see in the 21st century. Shortly after these protests in 1999, the SPD went around the country teaching their suppression tactics to other police departments. Kettling (the act of encircling a group of protesters within a limited area to prevent escape) was used in the US for the first time in Seattle. It was the first large-scale use of pepper balls against American protesters.
25 years later, the police response in Los Angeles over the ICE protests has played out like a heavily militarized tribute to the Seattle Police Department. The LAPD has used tear gas and pepper spray. They’ve shot pepper balls and rubber bullets—the latter, as shown in WTO/99, can cause serious injury. The LAPD have wielded batons and flash bangs to beat back civilians. They have shot journalists. The footage from LA has shown police firing on people without provocation and at point-blank range. And just as each of these weapons can have a lasting effect on the person they are violently used against, the government’s use of the police to violently crack down on civilians taking to the streets has and will continue to have damaging effects to our society.
Excessive use of force has only increased against protesters and journalists in the US, and with it has come the alarming suppression of the media. One of the key sources in WTO/99 is KIRO7, a local on-the-ground news team who are reporting live all day, every day from the streets of Seattle. They are not relegated behind barricades as reporters have been in LA. This is an important distinction to make, because limiting the area media outlets can access limits the historical record of an event. We are on the ground with KIRO7, and their access is essential in our rebuilding of this historical record. We know the timeline of events and the weapons used against protesters in Seattle because of the strong archival records that exist from this week of action. Through archival footage we can see events as they unfolded, framed by the people living them and responding in real time.
Already, reporters have filed suit against the city of Los Angeles and the LAPD claiming they were blocked from accessing areas they should have been allowed in and subjected to excessive force by police officers. A CNN crew was detained and escorted away from a protest zone. Multiple media outlets reported being pushed and harassed by police officers while attempting to cover the events. This type of media blackout is a typical authoritarian tactic to control the narrative in order to prevent a social movement from spreading.
While the media must be given full access to report on the ground, it’s also imperative to understand how the media can manipulate the narrative. In 1999, both local and national media consistently echoed claims of violence as something being enacted by the protesters—even when local footage showed a different reality—with police aggression being sold as the natural and lawful response. The media repeatedly focused on areas with broken windows and graffiti, equivocating property damage with bodily violence. The protesters were framed as aimless and angry and their messages rarely shared with the viewing audience. In WTO/99 we show a protester loudly stating to a crowd, “The TV stations are not telling you why there is a protest” as he hands out a flyer listing the protester’s demands to onlookers. In 1999, demonstrators were vividly aware of how damaging the media narrative could be to their protest and the legacy of this event. 25 years later, what most people remember about the WTO protests is the news coverage of broken windows and the Starbucks that got looted.
The question, for both then and now, becomes why: Why is such excessive force used against protesters? Why are journalists relegated to the sidelines in LA? Why did a sitting president send the National Guard to LA against a governor’s wishes? (Something that has not been seen since 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson deployed the National Guard to protect civil rights marchers in Alabama.) We believe one can find the answer in Seattle. The police began their initial tear gassing of protesters just two minutes after the first WTO sessions were delayed. This immediate and stark escalation of violence happened only because this disruption could not be seen as successful. The protesters could not be seen as achieving their goal. On the first night of the WTO protests, a reporter on the street interviews Tom Hayden, one of the Chicago Seven. Hayden says, “After the 60s, I saw an intelligence community document that said the whole game now is perception management. Making sure people don’t perceive protest as a path to be successful.” It is in these words that we can find hope. The arm of the state would not come down so hard if collective action was not inherently powerful. The act of protest is both an inherent right that needs to be protected and one of many effective strategic forms of resistance. It was true then and it is true now: the people have the power.