SEATTLE (AP) – Nancy Haque worried about the conditions in sweatshops around the world. For Lynne Dodson, it was the possibility of attacks on public education. The plight of imperiled sea turtles got Lisa Wathne.
An array of issues brought tens of thousands of protesters to Seattle 20 years ago Saturday, with one unifying theme: concern that the World Trade Organization, a then-little-known body charged with regulating international trade, threatened them all.
With their message amplified not just by their numbers, but by the response of overwhelmed police who fired tear gas and plastic bullets, the protesters delayed the WTO’s conference and raised awareness of the international trading system and its implications for the environment, labor standards and human rights.
While many of the problems they identified are unsolved two decades later, some still credit the protest with restoring a sense that mass demonstrations and civil disobedience can effect change.
Demonstrators’ criticisms of economic inequality, rapacious capitalism, environmental degradation and worker exploitation are at home in the platforms of progressive Democratic presidential candidates such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.