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Week In Review: The Battle in Seattle: 10 Years Later
The 90s weren't a great time for the left. A popular Democratic president pushed through undemocratic reforms, like NAFTA, and was poised to support even more regressive policies with the World Trade Organization. But in Seattle in 1999, activists from many different movements and organizations came together to protest what was called "globalization," but would more accurately have been described as "corporatization." They managed to not only shut down the meeting of the WTO, but sufficiently empower opposition to the organization to stop its expansion in its tracks.
Ten years on, what did we learn in Seattle, at the biggest progressive victory in many activists' lives? Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films, Han Shan, formerly of the Ruckus Society and coordinator of Clean Up Ecuador with Amazon Watch, Margrete Strand of the Blue Green Alliance and the Sierra Club, and Eddie Yuen, co-author of Confronting Capitalism: Dispatches from a Global Movement
, join us to discuss the alliances built in Seattle and where the movement is now.
Thanks to Rick Rowley and Jill Friedberg for excerpts from their film This Is What Democracy Looks Like, filmed during the Battle in Seattle.
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