Socialism and Democracy

ISSN: 0885-4300 (Print) 1745-2635 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csad20

“The Seattle Model”

Lesley Wood

To cite this article: Lesley Wood (2020): “The Seattle Model”, Socialism and Democracy, DOI:
10.1080/08854300.2019.1675125

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Socialism and Democracy, 2020
https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2019.1675125

“The Seattle Model”

Lesley Wood

Introduction
I almost attended the WTO protests in Seattle. A few days before
N30, I had been part of a Reclaim the Streets protest against the
World Trade Organization (WTO) in New York’s Times Square. We
had narrowly escaped being grabbed by the overzealous NYPD officers
and were awaiting our arrested comrades outside of the precinct. One
guy stepped up on the low wall beside us and called “I’m driving to
Seattle right now, if anyone wants to go!” I froze, worrying about my
bank account and my classes. But those who did go, still tell stories
about the sense of possibility, the sense that the people had the space,
the strength and the leverage to disrupt.
Uncertainty is powerful. The protests in Seattle in 1999 shut down
the WTO meetings in a way unanticipated by the authorities, and
visibly destabilized existing political traditions, identities and under-
standings. It was a moment where movements converged, and commu-
nicated in new ways, with new technologies, in order to counter a new
international financial institution. It was an experiment that succeeded.
This fueled a wave of protest that diffused a combination of direct-
action tactics and prefigurative, horizontalist modes of organization.
Twenty years later, the model of how to “summit protest” endures,
albeit without the element of surprise; and the components have been
translated into many new contexts.
Repertoires of contention evolve slowly as a product of experimen-
tation, of interaction and evaluation. The contemporary social move-
ment repertoire of marching, rallying and meetings emerged in the
early nineteenth century in Western Europe, through interaction with
a widening parliamentary democracy, and built through both industrial
exploitation, and colonial extraction. Since that time, this form of politics
has combined displays of Worthiness, Unity, Numbers and Commit-
ment; sustained campaigns of claims-making, and a well-known tactical
repertoire. Social movements have facilitated democratization, the
inclusion of racialized groups, immigrants, women, queers, people

© 2020 The Research Group on Socialism and Democracy

2 Socialism and Democracy

with disabilities and others, and built social programs of redistribution,

and policy change. They have ended wars, and overthrown govern-
ments. They have also pushed to exclude non-citizens, and marched
to protect the powerful. Effective social movements put pressure on
powerholders, encouraging them that the costs of responding to the
demands of the population, and building relationships with them are
less than the costs of maintaining the status quo and suffering protest.
Movements aren’t only used to challenge the state, but university auth-
orities, corporations, landlords, international institutions, and other
bodies. However, some level of state authority is usually involved,
either as a direct target of claims, or as a regulator of those claims.
By the twentieth century in most core countries, the classic social-
movement repertoire of marching, rallying, petitioning and civil disobe-
dience was pervasive and routinized (Tilly and Wood 2012). Many
social movements were professionalized and organizers negotiated
permits, routes and even arrest protocols with the police (Meyer and
Tarrow 1997). The routines were established. This is not surprising, as
Tilly (2008) notes that in a given time and place, people learn and use
a limited number of claim-making performances, most of the time.
They change incrementally as a result of accumulating experience and
when external constraints shift. Things were shifting at the end of the
twentieth century (Choudry 2015). At that time, routinization and pro-
fessionalization of movements, alongside the globalization and neoli-
beralization of economics and politics had limited the influence of
ordinary people on powerholders.
In the face of free trade agreements, the AIDS crisis, the Gulf War,
old-growth logging in the Pacific Northwest and accelerating cuts to the
welfare state, some activists began to return to disruptive direct action.
In 1994, the Zapatistas in southern Mexico took over four cities and
countless farms in response to the privatization of the collectively
owned lands guaranteed in the Mexican constitution. This privatization
was part of a larger process of neoliberal globalization, the trumping of
democracy by corporate rule. Indeed, the Zapatistas launched their
campaign on January 1, 1994, the date that the North American Free
Trade Agreement was signed, and broadcast their communiques
through activist networks on the nascent Internet. They called this the
fight “Against Neoliberalism and For Humanity,” and heralded the
emergence of a decentralized, digitally connected global movement.
Two years later, the Zapatistas welcomed 5,000 activists to Chiapas
for an Encuentro, bolstering the infrastructure and logic of a global
movement. This was formalized by subsequent meetings in Spain and
then in Geneva, with the launch of the “Peoples’ Global Action
 Lesley Wood 3

against ‘Free’ Trade and the WTO” network in February 1998. This for-
mation linked movements in the Global South with those in the North. It
tied peasant movements in India and Brazil with squatters in Europe,
cyclists and labor activists in North America, and feminists in South
Africa (amongst others). Its main technique against the increasing influ-
ence of the international financial institutions were summit protests –
one of the first high profile ones being near Seattle, in Vancouver,
British Columbia, in 1997 against the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation, and linked global days of action against neoliberalism,
where creative, disruptive and horizontalist approaches to protest
were embraced.
One of these days was called for November 30, 1999, or N30. On
that day, there were 30 events across the US and Canada, 42 in
Western Europe, 21 in Asia, and three others (Wood 2004). The flows
of information and connection amongst these different sites of struggle
allowed a heightened sense of opportunity and facilitated experimen-
tation with a shift in scale to the international and global.
It appeared that change was afoot. In 2003, social-movement
scholar Charles Tilly wondered whether local grass-roots activists
would continue to target global authorities, or whether this sphere
would become the arena for globally networked professional activists.
When he wrote this, the reverberations of, and challenges to the “local
cosmopolitan” approach in Seattle and the global justice movement
were widely felt. Twenty years later, it looks like he was right in both
his insight and his caution (Tilly and Wood 2012). The global summit
protests against the international financial institutions have waned in
frequency and size – and much of the global work has routinized, but
the tactics from the summit protests have been incorporated into
some movements struggling against local and national opponents.

The Seattle Model

It must be remembered that much of the protest in Seattle against
the WTO was not particularly innovative. More than 700 organizations
participated in daily forums, teach-ins and demonstrations (Juris 2008:
33). There was a massive labor march and rally that looked like previous
massive labor marches and rallies. There was a counter-summit led by
NGOs (Smith 2001). There were meetings and press conferences where
various organizations made claims against elected authorities, and the
international financial institutions. But it was the direct action alongside
these tactics that made Seattle an “eventful event.” This included the
carnivalesque but unpermitted blockades (some with the lockboxes
4 Socialism and Democracy

imported from the radical environmental movement) that shut down

the opening ceremonies and delayed the meetings of the delegates
intent on establishing a global trade regime (Della Porta 2008; Wood
et al. 2017). That disruption of the summit and the black bloc breaking
of windows of corporate giants overwhelmed both the government and
the police. They and the Mayor panicked; the National Guard arrived, a
curfew was declared, and the police reacted with pepper spray, tear gas
and militarized units.
After the fact, the question was – how did we win? The tactics used
there were grouped into a “summit protest” performance, that became
part of the social movement repertoire. It was then explained through
stories and experiments (Della Porta and Tarrow 2012). A generation
of activists became tied to the event – becoming “anti-globalization,”
or global-justice activists. The tactics and identity of this event were
shaped by interactions with various local, national and international
powerholders affecting Seattle in 1999. This confluence created the
Seattle model of protest. Interpretations of its composition differ, but
most would argue that it includes the following elements:
1. A decentralized decision-making, hub-spokes model of spokescoun-
cils and affinity groups – adapted from the anti-nuclear movement
2. Blockades – particularly the use of lockboxes – adapted from the
radical environmental movement
3. Black bloc formations that engaged in property destruction of cor-
porate symbols – adapted from the anarchist anti-racist and anti-
fascist movements
There are lengthy descriptions and histories of these and the many
other elements of this model elsewhere (Dupuis-Deri 2013; Wood 2012;
Graeber 2009; Kauffman 2017). But these elements combined prefigura-
tion of new, more liberatory relationships and forms of organization
with disruption of the operation of the status quo (Dixon 2014). The
emphasis on prefiguration was intended to maximize autonomy and
to counter systemic inequalities. However, the relationship of the
model to the operation of and reinforcement of inequalities of race,
class, gender, sexuality, disability and citizenship status would
remain a question and a challenge (Fortier 2017).

Diffusion
The successes of the Seattle protests against the WTO were widely
broadcast, and discussed. The direct, and indirect channels that told the
 Lesley Wood 5

story of the events were dense and multiple. Trainers like Lisa Fithian
and David Solnit and training bodies like the Ruckus Society travelled
extensively, teaching people about consensus decision-making, block-
ading, and how to build giant puppets. Participants in the protests
spoke at events, and the newly-established Indymedia project spread
videos like “This is What Democracy Looks Like.” Participating acti-
vists did interviews and wrote articles and books about the protests.
Eventually, there was even the Hollywood film The Battle in Seattle, fea-
turing amongst others, Woody Harrelson and Andre 3000.
However, knowledge of an event does not equal diffusion. To bring
a new tactic, form or frame to a new site requires potential adopters to
identify with the earlier users in some way. When transmitters and
adopters share identities, and contexts, identification is relatively
straightforward. When these differ, it becomes harder. Given that collec-
tive action, is well, collective, this involves deliberation – relatively open
and reflexive discussion (Wood 2007, 2012). Most of the time, people do
not adopt what they see elsewhere. But the initial excitement and ambi-
guity during a new cycle of protest can help observers to see define
innovations in ways that help them to adopt.
Many observers were optimistic about the Seattle model. In April
2000, organizers attempted to replicate its success at the protests
against the World Bank and the IMF in Washington, DC (Kauffman
2017). However, while the activists were eager to repeat their success,
the police were less eager to repeat their failure. They had adapted
their strategy. The police used intense surveillance to successfully stop
the full enclosure of the summit, and snuck delegates into the meeting
through a parking garage. Two months later, the police enclosed a
summit of the Organization of American States in Windsor, Ontario,
with a high fence. They used border controls to limit participation,
and pre-emptively arrested activists. By August 2000, at the DNC/
RNC, the militarized police response to the protests was sophisticated,
and hundreds were arrested and held for over a week.

Deliberation, critique, learning and adaptation

As the model faltered, debate intensified. These conversations hap-
pened in trainings, online, in the media, in meetings and informally.
These debates reconfigured the movement, creating distinctive ten-
dencies and new identities. Each of these debates was simultaneously
about the strategy and identity of the model – and these conversations
facilitated and blocked its diffusion to new sites. Three main critiques
affected the flow of the model.
6 Socialism and Democracy

1. White domination/supremacy
2. Summit mobilizing vs. grass-roots organizing
3. Spectacle of Violence – critiquing the black bloc.

The criticism that the Seattle protests were white dominated and an
uncomfortable space for people of color was initially shared by longtime
Chicana activist Elizabeth Martinez. Her piece, “Where Was the Color
in Seattle” (2000) asked why the people of color from the US only
made up 5 percent of the protest. It described the protesters in Seattle
as largely white and college educated. The article was widely read
and discussed by the anti-globalization/global justice activists. It
begins with a quote from Jinee Kim, a Bay Area youth organizer,
which read:

I was at the jail where a lot of protesters were being held and a big crowd of
people was chanting “This Is What Democracy Looks Like!” At first it
sounded kind of nice. But then I thought: is this really what democracy looks
like? Nobody here looks like me.

This piece became a foundational text in Colors of Resistance

network, which described itself as “committed to helping build an
anti-racist, anti-imperialist, multiracial, feminist, queer and trans libera-
tionist, anti-authoritarian movement against global capitalism.” (2000)
The second but related critique of the Seattle protests, was against
“summit hopping.” It argued that protesting at the summits of inter-
national financial institutions, while an opportunity for convergence,
alliance building and media attention, was not accessible to ordinary
members of the community and could not succeed in building the
enduring ties that are part of revolutionary movements. This was
partly because summit protests favored (white, wealthier) activists
who had access to the resources that would allow them to travel dis-
tances to participate. Instead, critics argued, there needed to be a
return to serious, local, grass roots, community organizing.
The third critique challenged the use of property destruction by the
black bloc. There were different ways that this critique was explained –
that the black bloc was overly masculine and adventurist and spectacu-
lar, that it distracted from the issues, that it didn’t prefigure a peaceful,
and just world and that it inspired police violence.
In some cases, these critiques led activists to reject the identity and
strategy of the Seattle Model and the Global Justice movement more
generally. Some argued that the tactics were not appropriate for their
identity. Others noted that their context was different to Seattle. This
distancing had different implications. Where identification was
 Lesley Wood 7

successful, the tactics were adapted by different activists, who recoded

them in new ways. In this way, activists of color working against the
criminal justice system in New York City adapted the affinity group
and black bloc tactics in ways that would protect themselves from
repression (Wood 2012). At the same time, some global justice activists
began to shift towards local anti-racist work, while others remained
committed to the emphasis on global corporations and the environment.
By the time the attacks of September 11, 2001, occurred, the debates had
begun to shape the translation of the model to a new era.

From anti-globalization to anti-war

In the wake of the September 11th attacks, the relationship between
authorities and movements shifted. Particularly in the US, there was a
sense that “things were different,” that “now was not the time for
protest.” Issues of immigration, security, nationalism, Islamophobia
and war were front-page news. Many global justice activists persisted,
being joined by activists from earlier generations from the peace move-
ment and anti-nuclear movement. The two generations combined to
lead a movement against the War on Iraq, sometimes collaboratively
and sometimes more competitively (Kauffman 2017). Responding to
the critiques of summit-hopping racism and adventurist property
destruction, alongside experiences of police repression, some global
justice activists, deepened their work against the criminal justice
system. Others used their networks from anti-sweatshop organizing
to organize against immigrant detention and the arrests of Muslims, dis-
rupting defense industry offices and meetings and bringing their skills
(somewhat naively) to do solidarity work in the Middle East – on the
ground in Iraq, Afghanistan, or most frequently, with the International
Solidarity Movement in Israel’s Occupied Territories.
Different formations played key roles. The Colors of Resistance and
the Critical Resistance networks helped to reinforce an anti-racist analy-
sis amongst the global justice activists, some of whom encouraged a
deeper understanding of equity, the need for caucusing, and encour-
aged grounding the movement through its engagement with People
of Color-led campaigns around prisons and policing, immigration and
colonialism.
Especially after the mobilizations in 2002 and 2003 appeared to have
little effect on the War on Terror, many global justice activists moved
into local, grass roots and anti-racist struggles tied to environmental,
queer, urban, or anti-corporate campaigns rather than put more
energy into the anti-war movement.
8 Socialism and Democracy

In this context, the combination of tactics within the Seattle model

declined. So too did black blocs. Protest policing militarized. This
became obvious by the November 2003 FTAA protests in Miami,
Florida, when it appeared that the Seattle model had been successfully
countered by the police, and was no longer any guarantee of success,
but instead, predicted repression, and demonization. The message
was hit home at the Republican National Convention in 2004 in NYC,
where 1,800 were arrested.
By 2005, far fewer people were calling themselves global justice acti-
vists, but those who been part of the Seattle wave, were engaged in a
plethora of projects. That year, Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans
and activists from the movement brought their skills to the Common
Ground collective that took the direct, alternative institution-building
skills developed as medics, legal support, infrastructure building and com-
munication (contra state) and brought them to assist. Chris Dixon (2014)
interviewed dozens of such activists during this period and he describes
this politic as “Within, against and beyond,” meaning that activists recog-
nize that the movement operates within and cannot avoid capitalism, colo-
nialism, patriarchy and white supremacy; it fights against these systems,
and aims for another world beyond them. At its best, this model has
within it a new world – even as it organizes for reforms, against the build-
ing of new prisons, for food security through community gardens, for the
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel, for indigen-
ous solidarity and land defense, and against the criminalization of
migrants through groups like No One Is Illegal.

2009–10 years after Seattle – economic and climate crisis

In 2008 the economic crisis created new uncertainties. Economists
who had assured the public and politicians that the system was stable,
were eating their words. The system struggled to maintain its legitimacy
as banks closed, and mortgages were foreclosed upon. There was no
immediate turn to the streets. At the same time, the consensus about
the climate crisis had consolidated, alongside an analysis of the need
for a dramatic, and equity-based strategy that required cooperation
amongst the world powers. In 2009, all eyes were on Copenhagen for
the COP15 summit (15th Conference of the Parties, also known as the
UN Climate Change Conference). At this summit, Naomi Klein argued
that the event should be the next chapter in the movement; “If Seattle
was the coming out party, this should be the coming of age party.” She
continued, “this was a chance to carry on building the new convergence,
the movement of movements that began ‘all those years ago in Seattle,
 Lesley Wood 9

fighting against the privatization of life itself’.” Here was an opportunity

to “continue the conversation that was so rudely interrupted by 9/11”
(van der Zee 2009a).
In Copenhagen, the Seattle model was refreshed, adapted and
applied to the question of climate justice. One-hundred thousand pro-
testers, some dressed in costumes and holding puppets, marched on
the summit, aided by a black bloc. But the militarized, pre-emptive poli-
cing strategy became evident (Van der Zee 2009b). Organizing centers
were raided and equipment like bicycles seized, border controls were
newly enforced. Police arrested hundreds and beat many. Other large
summit protests of the period saw similarly high levels of repression
when activists attempted to breach the perimeter of the summit.
In this repressive context, with accelerating austerity alongside
increasing communication, a new generation of direct-action activists
began “taking the squares.” First young people occupied Tahrir
Square in Cairo, then across in North Africa and the Middle East,
then in Spain and Portugal, and then back to New York City to
Occupy Wall Street in the fall of 2011 (Bennett et al. 2012; Castañeda
2012; Castells 2015; Flesher Fominaya 2015; Sitrin and Azzellini 2014).
Given the speedy turnover of activist generations (Whittier 2010), it
was a new era. But continuities existed. Some of the leading organizers
of Occupy Wall Street had been involved in the New York City Direct
Action Network (NYC-DAN), a core of NYC global justice activism,
but the movement had learned from the deliberations and relationship
building since the Seattle protests. The medical, legal, and communi-
cations infrastructure from the global justice movement was revitalized
for Occupy. Seattle-era activists offered other elements of their model to
the new generation (Catalyst Project and Chris Crass 2012). Facing dif-
ficulties in coordination, spokescouncils were introduced to Occupy
Wall Street in November 2011 by NYC-DAN activists, but the tactic
no longer had the gleam of Seattle’s success – instead it was resisted
by a vocal minority as a move to centralize (Holmes 2012). The
General Assembly with a modified version of consensus had come to
be the standard model for decision-making in mass protests. Other
elements of the Seattle model were also marginalized – including the
black bloc tactics that attracted police attention, and the disruptive
blockading techniques used to “shut it down.”

2014–15 years after Seattle

Summit protests still exist. If we look at the G20 protests in
Hamburg in 2017, we see many of the components present in Seattle.
10 Socialism and Democracy

At that summit there were dozens of official and unofficial protest

events including a counter-summit, a dance protest march of over
15,000, performance art, puppets and a massive black bloc. There was
also widespread burning of vehicles, the disruption of trains, and
clashes with police. The largest event was organized by 174 organiz-
ations and attracted 76,000 people around the theme “Solidarity
without Borders.” When there is a summit or summit-like event that
symbolizes global capitalism, the full Seattle model is most likely to
appear. We can see this in Hamburg or for other global events like
the Climate meetings of COP. In North America, one is most likely to
see the model used at “summit-like” events such as the conventions
of the Republican or Democratic National Convention, or the Presiden-
tial Inauguration.
Most of the time, we see a return to more traditional marches and
rallies. But elements of the Seattle model persist in Canada and the
US, for local- and national-oriented protests in very particular contexts.
Interestingly, these contexts are the ones which offer some sort of
implicit or explicit resolution to the critiques of the model as white
dominated, globally ungrounded and celebrating gratuitous violence.

Spokescouncils
While the General Assembly has trumped the spokescouncil as the
main model for decision-making in mass protest – spokescouncils con-
tinue to be used in two main ways since 2014. The first is by Black Lives
Matter and the Movement for Black Lives, including its allies Showing
Up for Racial Justice (SURJ). In 2015 and 2016, Oakland’s Anti-Police
Terror Project used spokescouncils to organize its protests against
racist police brutality on MLK Week of Action. The project describes
itself as, “Anti Police-Terror Project is building a replicable and sustain-
able model to end state-sanctioned murder and violence against Black,
Brown, and poor people (Anti-Police Terror Project 2016).” In Washing-
ton, DC, the Movement for Black Lives began organizing a “Spokes-
council General Assembly.” There have also been spokescouncils used
by anti-fascist/anti-racist mobilizations, that often involve some
engagement with Black Lives Matter and/or the Movement for Black
Lives. For example, in 2017 there was a Spokescouncil in Charlottesville,
Virginia, to coordinate different communities and organizations mobi-
lizing against the Unite the Right march, and there was one used in Gai-
nesville, Florida, in 2017 to mobilize against alt-right speaker Richard
Spencer (Crimethinc 2018; Eaton 2017). Madelaine Hale, an antifascist
organizer describes a scene the scene in Gainesville:
 Lesley Wood 11

… the day before the action was a flurry of activity. There was a morning press
conference, a teach-in, direct action trainings, and a spokescouncil with legal
training and breakouts for various logistical functions including medics, jail
support, food, and communications. (Hale 2017)

The description is strikingly familiar. This is not to say that the anti-
fascist/anti-racist mobilizations, and anti-racist police brutality mobiliz-
ations do not suffer ongoing dynamics of anti-Black and other forms of
racism and exclusion, but the incorporation of spokescouncils by these
movements (alongside the chant “This is What Democracy Looks
Like”), suggests that the conflation between a white dominated
Seattle Model and spokescouncil decision-making has been broken.
The second way that spokescouncils are being used in the last few
years is as a means for coordinating ongoing, sustained local commu-
nity organizing where there is a need to ensure that different commu-
nities are represented. The Tacoma Park Mobilization uses a
spokescouncil, as do more issue-oriented, local organizing projects
like the Vermont Climate Action, the Idaho Peace Coalition, the Tide-
water Solidarity Center (which links prisoners and prison justice acti-
vists) and No More Deaths (which offers solidarity to migrants on the
US–Mexico border), each use the form in different ways. The dualism
of spokescouncils as a “global” formation, versus sustained local orga-
nizing has dissolved.1

Lockbox blockades
This tactic spread from its origins in the radical environmental
movement to the Global Justice movement but continues to be used pri-
marily within its source movement. Almost every use of lockboxes over
the past five years has been by the animal rights or environmental
movement – largely in protests against pipelines or fracking.
However, like the spokescouncil, the lockbox has spread to the
newest movements who are engaged in anti-racist, and anti-militarist
efforts. In Seattle in 2015, a group of young white people “primarily
Jews and queers” used lockboxes to block a highway in their response
“to the call from Black leaders, locally and nationally, to show up in soli-
darity and disrupt business as usual.” Some of these activists were part
of Jewish Voices for Peace. They had also used lockboxes in 2014 to
block access to weapons manufacturer Boeing during the Israeli bom-
bardment of Gaza (Herz 2015). In 2016, protesters fighting against
police brutality used a lockbox while protesting a Fraternal Order of

1. While the environmental direct-action movement Extinction Rebellion promotes

spokescouncils, it is not clear that they use them.
12 Socialism and Democracy

Police event in Baltimore. Most recently, in 2018, protesters used lock-

boxes in their Occupy ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
protests in Louisville KY, and Colorado Springs.

Black bloc
Originating with the anti-fascist movements in Europe, the black bloc
is more popular than it was in the days of the global justice movement.
Since 2015 there have been black bloc formations across North America
and Europe. These days the black bloc is a key element of anti-fascist
street protest. However, much of the time, it operates differently than it
did in Seattle, does not engage in property destruction in the same way,
and plays a role of confronting and defending against the ascendant
extreme right. While its presence still triggers a moral panic in the main-
stream media, its efforts are increasingly seen as legitimate. Particularly
in the wake of killings and beatings by the extreme right, activists from
the Movement for Black Lives, other anti-racists, immigrant communities,
faith-based and human-rights organizations have coordinated with acti-
vists using black bloc formations in many US and Canadian cities. Offering
a counter to the critique of the black bloc as white and male – there are
“intersectional feminist black blocs” within the antifascist movement
(Dupuis-Deri 2013, 2017; Thompson 2010).

Conclusion
Twenty years is a long time in the world of social movements.
Today, the world is both more connected, and more unequal. In 1999
it felt as if the global scale of action was emergent and central. The
Seattle protests were a hopeful intervention, whose success marked a
generation of political activists. However, regimes and repertoires are
in constant dialogue (or battle). The model of organizing for today is
different. Charles Tilly predicted in 2003 that social movements
would split between those involved in grass-roots street protest, and
global elite, professionalized, spectacular mobilizations targeting inter-
national authorities. He was onto something. Today, the connections
between local activists and global authorities are less apparent, less
coordinated and less disruptive. There has been, in many ways, a recog-
nition that the national arena continues to dominate, even as activists
connect different sites, and incorporate tactics from elsewhere, with, cri-
tique and adaptation.
In 1999, the critiques of the Seattle model frustrated many
(especially white, militant) activists who wanted to celebrate and repli-
cate its success. But thinking through the limits of the model was
 Lesley Wood 13

profoundly productive. Indeed, the critiques have allowed its elements

to be incorporated into the most vibrant movements operating in the US
and Canada in 2019.
Although connected in new ways, the classic social movement
repertoire remains dominant. The largest protests of the past five
years are marches and rallies that in many ways resemble those of 50
years ago. But individual direct-action activists and collectivities
thread through the generations of protest. These lives are channels
that transmit information. For example, a recent article describes one
activist street medic who had worked in direct action contexts in 14
different states, as well as in Washington, DC, Montreal and in Pales-
tine. They had:

… passed out socks to the homeless at Occupy Boston, helped prevent a family
from succumbing to carbon monoxide poisoning during Hurricane Sandy in
New York, and bandaged and splinted people following the Charlottesville
right-wing car attack that killed the anti-fascist activist Heather Heyer. (Ber-
latsky 2018)

Such a medic may or may not have been at Seattle 20 years ago.
Regardless, they illustrate a direct-action tradition that ties the building
of equitable relationships and institutions to the disruption of the status
quo. It has a long and proud history that got a shot of adrenaline in
Seattle. But like any other strategy, it depends on the systems, conversa-
tions and forces that surround it. Its endurance depends on its flexi-
bility, and the flexibility of its users. Twenty years later, what we
should remember is the way that flexible direct action can open
spaces of change. By keeping connected, smart and innovative, we are
most likely to experience another such moment, when the peoples’
power to create another world made everything possible.

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