Blast from the Past: Shut Down the WTO Action Packet

from Earth First! Newswire

With all the hullabaloo of riots and resistance in Baltimore, we have been racking our brains on what to publish.

Statements of solidarity seem so trite and dull when you live in the midst of sprawl or gentrifying, segregating neighborhoods that are not about to erupt. But we do feel a deep sense of solidarity with the uprising in Baltimore, just like we have supported the Black Lives Matter protests since they began in Ferguson.

So what can our mostly-white movement do in support of a freedom struggle based largely on the movement of oppressed communities of color, besides joining protests, writing and arguing in support of a diversity of tactics, and generally organizing for a better world locally?

That’s when a friend and erstwhile Journal collective member sent us this lovely blast from the past: an extensive packet on shutting down the WTO, released during the build up to the Battle of Seattle in 1999.

Check it out, we’re not even lying: “Shut Down the WTO Action Packet”

For those of you who don’t know, here’s a little history lesson: the Direct Action Network (DAN) mobilized in the months leading up to the World Trade Organization’s summit in Seattle, Washington, to shut down the downtown area and render the meeting impossible. Through a week of lockboxes, civil disobedience, property damage, tear gas, riot police, pepper spray, and mayhem, the massive protest succeeded. The WTO talks were suspended, and the joint efforts of environmentalists and labor activists, as well as autonomous global justice activists, sent a message throughout the world: Even in the so-called First World, resistance is everywhere and growing fast. Ever since that fateful week, November 30 (N30) has been a celebrated day of blockades and disobedience (last year having been the 15th anniversary!).

The DAN, which held loose affinities with the Ruckus Society and the Rainforest Action Network, as well as Earth First!, among other groups, sent this packet far and wide, and a copy of it was even included as an insert in an issue of the Earth First! Journal.

So we are including it here, just in case folks wanted to get rowdy and, we don’t know, help shut down a city or something. Of course DAN wanted a carnival of resistance using nonviolent means, and boldly declared, “We will make revolution irresistible.” Although many condemned the actions of property damage that took place during the WTO protests, they could also be seen as militant forms of resistance that opened up another dimension of struggle.

There’s lots of fun stuff in this packet about tactical teams, cultural resistance, and especially jail solidarity. There’s a really interesting map of Seattle, which could likely serve as a model for other maps, and helpful pointers about pepper spray.

Of course some people have remained critical about the way the Seattle Model was conducted, thinking the stationary mode of “locking down” to be overdeveloped for the kind of intense police presence that it would encounter. An alternative to the Seattle Model is the Chicago 1972 RNC protest model of fast, dynamic tactical engagements (exhibited, perhaps, for instance, ceteris paribus, in the 2009 G-20 protests). By no means are we suggesting that the Seattle Model is the pure paradigm, but hey, why not?