Alternative Press Review 12 - Lead Editorial

What happened when over 40,000 protesters showed up to shut down the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial conference in Seattle on November 30? Alternative media, for the most part, did a thoroughly detailed job of reporting on this major, century-closing event. But if you depended on the mainstream media for an explanation, you’d probably be one of the many people left scratching their heads in wonderment at such an unusual and unheralded turn of events. How could such a large crowd of crazy people who oppose international trade have snuck under the media radar and appeared from nowhere to violently sabotage a universally celebrated and admired group of free trade humanitarians like the WTO?

Perhaps it’s because it didn’t happen that way at all. But then, what really did take place?

The attempt to shut down the WTO in Seattle primarily grew from years of opposition to the neo-liberal globalization policies pursued by the US and European governments and major multinational corporations through the IMF (International Monetary Fund), World Bank, WEF (World Economic Forum), NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and the recently failed MAI (Multilateral Agreements on Investment).

Thousands of groups have joined in opposition to neoliberal WTO policies (or to the existence of the WTO itself) during this time. International opposition includes grass-roots student, consumer, environmental and social welfare organizations, large parts of the labor movement, as well as the increasingly influential NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations which have established a voice in international debates, particularly within the UN). In addition, it includes not just these merely anti-globalization groups, but also explicitly anti-capitalist groups which oppose all corporate power—including as a matter of course any plans for the globalization of that power. The latter, anti-capitalist groups, encompass remnants of the oppositional political left, as well as much of the international anarchist movement.

However, the activities of this massive international opposition are rarely reported in the mainstream, corporate media. And when they are reported, they are persistently minimized and distorted. Instead, these media concentrate on pursuing a never-ending propaganda campaign in favor of what they misleadingly call “free trade,” but what actually turns out on inspection to be international trade pursued under rules set up to systematically favor the interests of multinational corporations over all other interests.

Thus, when an unignorable event like the successful shutdown of the WTO Ministerial in Seattle takes place despite all efforts by the corporate media to prevent it, they are suddenly at a loss to explain it in any rational fashion.

The biggest Big Lie of the mainstream media in its reporting on the anti-WTO protests, however, has been the origin of the violence involved, a small part of which found representation on hundreds of millions of television screens and newspaper front pages.

Almost uniformly, once the corporate mass media began analyzing, evaluating and re-framing the protests, the protesters—and especially anarchist protesters—were blamed for initiating and sustaining the Seattle violence.

Earlier, on-the-spot reports—often by these same mass media—demonstrate conclusively that it was the Seattle police who initiated the street violence on November 30th and continued to escalate it beyond any socially reasonable bounds (though obviously not beyond “reasonable” limits as seen by ruling powers). It was clearly the Seattle police (and those commanding them) who turned a huge, well-focused and predominantly nonviolent political protest into an excessively violent police riot. But it is unacceptable for mainstream media to focus on reporting the truth of this kind of brutal repression of non-violent protest using all sorts of the most advanced available riot-control weapons.

Instead, scapegoats had to be found on which to pin blame for the situation. And improbable excuses were also needed to shift any responsibility for the intentionally brutal and sadistic violence inflicted by police (and other “security forces”) on protesters, uninvolved Seattle residents and tourists alike.

Thus, the Portland Oregonian reported (12/2/99) that “...President Clinton and some organizers of Tuesday’s massive civil disobedience condemned the militant few, who dashed through the downtown business district smashing windows, spray-painting slogans on buildings and even looting a few stores as police were confronting the front-line protesters.” (Notice that police were only “confronting” protesters, not gassing them with toxic chemicals or shooting them—often at point-blank range—with potentially lethal rubber and wooden bullets.)

While the New York Times argued—in a piece titled “The Blame: Clenched Fists in Seattle Lead to Pointed Fingers”—that “How the thin line was crossed from nonviolent protest to urban disorder was being dissected here Wednesday as the World Trade Organization got down to business. The conclusion: the anarchists were organized.”

And, not to be outdone, the Philadelphia Inquirer announced (2/24/00) that “Even march organizers who were present in Seattle said it was only a few protesters there—reported to include black-clad anarchists—who ended up scuffling with police and provoking the harsh crackdown on the opening day that colored the whole event.”

Look at just about any corporate media account and the picture was all but unanimous. Because a few anarchist groups proceeded to smash the windows of some of the world’s most exploitative corporations and spray-paint graffiti on corporate walls, they became after-the-fact the cause of the police riot which had started earlier! And beyond this, in most media accounts, the “violent” property destruction and graffiti of these same anarchists overshadowed all of the police violence aimed directly at injuring and maiming thousands of defenseless human beings.

As usual, it isn’t very hard to figure out which side the mainstream media are on. And it isn’t ever ours.

Jason McQuinn
Tom Wheeler
Chuck Munson

Email Us! editors@altpr.org

Updated: 4/25/2000