Seattle's checkered history of radicalism
As we near the eighth anniversary of the WTO protests, a look at the city's reputation as a capital of protest. In reality, save for a couple of exceptions Seattle has been a sleepy capital of capitalism.
By Knute Berger
November 17, 2007.
Seattle is paralyzed by protest. Tens of thousands shut down the city. The mayor tries to restore order. Extra police and troops are called in. Protest leaders are arrested and civil liberties violated. Headlines around the world portray our Northwest seaport as a bastion of leftist anarchy and a threat to global capitalism.
You remember that, right?
Actually, you probably don't, unless you're in your 90s or older. Because I'm not talking about the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests of 1999, or the protests in Olympia this week, but about our first "WTO" that for decades made Seattle synonymous with labor radicalism. It was the Seattle General Strike that began in January 1919, when some 65,000 union workers shut down a busy city of 315,000 people.
It was the first strike of its kind in the U.S. and a high-risk gamble for labor. While business leaders called the strike action "Bolshevism," writer and activist Anna Louise Strong was less certain where "the iron march of labor" would lead. Writing in the pro-labor Seattle Union Record just before the strike, she exclaimed, "We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by labor in this country, a move which will lead – NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!"
The Seattle General Strike did not lead to socialism or a communist utopia. There were struggles and conflicts ahead, but eventually labor and industry worked out a compromise. Seattle evolved into a largely middle-class town of quiet streets inhabited by Boeing families. When Strong wondered about where her great movement would lead, I doubt she imagined the revolution dying with less of a bang than a whimper, subsumed by a town blanketed with bungalows.
Of course, as 1999 showed, Seattle's radicalism wasn't entirely dead. Or rather, our sympathy for radicalism. The dirty little secret of the infamous WTO protests is that they were mostly organized by out-of-town activists. More accurately, Seattle played indulgent host to a protest movement made up of right-wing nationalists, European socialists, angry Teamsters, black-clad anarchists, turtle-costumed environmentalists, and anti-Illuminati nut jobs, to name a few. They came from all over and turned Seattle into protest's Woodstock.
The anti-WTO activists knew our hospitality could be exploited. At a Seattle Center labor rally on the eve of WTO, filmmaker Michael Moore laughed at the choice of Seattle. "WTO in Seattle?" he cried with disbelief. "What were they thinking?" Then-mayor Paul Schell was thinking that massive protest and Christmas shopping could coexist downtown.
The next day, Nov. 30, 1999, began an updated version (a more violent one) of the events of 1919. For a few days, the world was riveted by images of rioting and protest in quiet old Seattle. They were less afraid of Bolshevism than astonished by the sight of such passions in a place known to be a major beneficiary of the policies it was protesting. Prosperity from trade in software and jet planes – what's to protest?
It's now eight years since the "Battle of Seattle." For almost a decade people have been trying to decide what the WTO legacy is. A new movie of that title is due out in December, starring Charlize Theron and Woody Harrelson. It's been described as Sleepless in Seattle with tear gas.
For a time, the name Seattle became synonymous with international resistance to unfettered free trade. In law enforcement circles, it meant "debacle," as in "we don't want another Seattle." A few years ago, the 1960s radical Tom Hayden, the former Mr. Jane Fonda, suggested the city erect a monument to the WTO protests as a reflection of the city's "progressive heart."
But in the first decade of the 21st century, we're fatter on global trade and investment. We're building more skyscrapers, and New York and foreign investors are buying up downtown. Last May, a study found that King County has more than 68,000 millionaires. The top one third of residents is prosperous; the rest of us can't afford to buy a house.
And then there's the "convergence center" on Capitol Hill, where the colorful WTO protests were planned and coordinated. A good place for a commemorative plaque, perhaps. But today it's a monument of another sort: It's an urban dog lounge.
Just as 1919 has faded from popular memory, I think the radicalism of 1999 is only a heart murmur.
Comments:
Posted Sat, Nov 17, 7:34 a.m. Inappropriate
I don't think that radicalism is gone. But the George Bush years have brought so many hardships on so many fronts for activists that maybe the last several years have been a) depressing, b) divisive, c) distracting. The last time I saw a group in Seattle evidencing the "spirit of 99" was not long after WTO, when Ralph Nader came to speak to a packed Key Arena. From my point of view, Nader was (in hindsight) a bit of a Pied Piper. taking all of that energy and leading it off the cliff of rejecting politics per se. It's now so painfully clear that there was indeed some meaningful difference between what Al Gore and George W. Bush had to offer the country--
Anyway, don't write us off; I think the WTO protests did reflect some genuine Seattle passion for fairness and for creating a livable future for our children and grandchildren, and those feelings are more than a murmer in my heart.
Posted Sat, Nov 17, 9:02 a.m. Inappropriate
Historically this has been perhaps nowhere more evident than in the Courts - put up a lefty jury against a farmer from Eastern Washington and the poor sap is going to, reliably, start bleeding money, both to his Seattle 'defense' team and the beneficiaries of any judgment, deserved or undeserved.
In more recent years, with the advent of public/private 'partnerships' and their ilk this common strategy has expanded. The WTO illustrates nothing but a useful tool getting a bit out of hand - not unlike a rip saw going to quickly and binding as it cuts across the grain.
Perhaps coincidentally 1999 also, roughly, marks the zenith of this strategy. They certainly have quite a bit of fight left in them, but the expansion of the strategy only has made it easier to fight the abuse on all fronts.
Frank Chopp, speaker of the House in Olympia, is most certainly a liberal. But he is also honest, and not stupid either. Seattle's future largely relies on his ability to tell those that seek to profit at the expense of the rest of the State that they are going to have to start earning it - as well as paying their fare share of the State's burdens.
I have no idea if he is up to the task.
-Douglas Tooley
Lincoln, Tacoma
Motley Blog
Posted Sat, Nov 17, 6:02 p.m. Inappropriate
Several of us were arrested.
Anna Louise Strong was a fascinating woman. I was fortunate to meet and talk with her in LA in 1948, before she left finally for China.
And there may be some old radicals around who remember the riots and unrest in Centralia, Tacoma and Evertt.
Posted Sat, Nov 17, 8:45 p.m. Inappropriate
As Freud said, before he plunged into cocaine psychosis, and came up with that oedipal stuff, "all progress is in the opposition of the generations".
Growing up is facing the reality of needing to do business with the rest of the world. And that's business with a small 'b', Knute. And Dick, that's reality with a capitol 'R'. (inside story)
Growing up as a society is progressing towards those goals we held as youth, realisitically. I'm betting history will look more kindly on the generation of which I am among the first than it looks at the generation the two of you bookmark.
When the leaders of your generation go around accusing everyone who disagrees with them of being 'anti-business' or harrassers for their personal benefit we all lose, big time.