The Battle in Seattle: Then and Now

The movie Battle in Seattle is a great film for anyone that wants to learn about the events of 1999 with the standard romanticized nostalgia that Hollywood brings to national events. The film directed by Peter Townsend includes not only the battle against the World Trade Organization (WTO) by protestors, but also the personal battles of six main characters and their involvement with the uprising against the WTO. By use of actual footage from the resistance, the film was successful in showing some of the brutality and raw emotion that surrounded the movement in 1999 as portrayed on the website realbattleinseattle.org, although the violence seemed present only to help the viewer connect with the main characters as they went through their individual plot lines. I would highly recommend Battle in Seattle to any teenager feeling angst about government control or destruction of the environment. Besides introducing secondary plot lines, the film stands true to what actually occurred by using actual footage from the event. A better, shorter, and more unsettling version of the tale is available in a YouTube documentary created by Leon and Si in association with Guerillavision titled “WTO Protests: Seattle (1/3-3/3)”. In this documentary people can see police force brutality and the core values present in the protestors without the use of plot fillers such as stereotypical activists and love stories. The movement itself had more than enough storyline to fill a film without including imaginary personal battles.

The real battle that took place on November 30, 1999 in Seattle, Washington was not the activist love story that the film presented. There was a love story present during the revolt, but Townsend seemed to miss it. What Townsend showed instead was a whitewashing of history to make it more palpable for the general masses. The love story that Townsend neglected was between the people in support of the World Trade Organization and their love for corporate globalization and power. Townsend attempted to explain the problems with the WTO when Django, played by André Benjamin, begins discussing the problem with the WTO using the holistic perspective after a reporter asks why he was there that day. Before he can really complete his thought, the reporter abruptly cuts Django off as something more interesting to the media arises. This scene does represent the role of the media in current events. Even now, the media blankets the truth for United States citizens so that we may stay within a bubble, enjoying a culture of consumerism. An excellent example of the media’s alteration of events is visible in the different covers of Time magazine found in the eight images below.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/these-time-magazine-covers-explain-why-americans-know-nothing-about-the-world-2011-11

It is apparent why some of the covers are unavailable in United States releases, such as the first and eighth cover. The first image is of a scene during the Egyptian uprising, reminding people of the injustices that some face, something that most people find more globally important than whether or not stress is good for us. In the eighth cover, the headline could undermine the need for war and be detrimental to the patriotism of the citizens if viewed repeatedly at each newsstand. Time includes both features in every issue and anyone who actually reads Time magazine would be educated on both of the current events. The problem with the different covers is that it makes actual global issues less apparent to the public that crosses a newsstand and moves on. If people were more aware of global issues, perhaps it would not be as difficult to get them involved in finding solutions.

Battle in Seattle should have focused on is what corporate globalization through the World Trade Organization means for the United States and the rest of the world. The WTO began as a successor to, and enforcer of, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1995 as a way of giving rights to corporations by privatizing commodities and resources such as agriculture, water, and health care. The WTO takes on the task of coordinating trade in the global economy through the consensus of over 140 countries by enforcing different agreements. The consensus itself is fraudulent because of the disproportionate value of third world voters. The primary decision makers, or “quad”, recognized on the WTO’s website, wto.org, include the United States, the European Union, Japan, and Canada. When proposed, an agreement receives a vote by consensus between 20 to 25 representatives who choose whether the proposal should pass. The intrinsic injustice is that bias is impossible to ignore in a scenario where 20 to 25 officials from only the more powerful nations are deciding on what is best for over 140 countries, and those living within them. Through those biases, the WTO passes agreements such as the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). 

The Agreement on Agriculture created rules that, in concept, work as leveling mechanisms between developed and non-developed countries. According to wto.org, the rules on agriculture pertain to market access by diminishing restrictions on imports, domestic support through subsidies, and the introduction of export subsidies to make exports artificially competitive. In theory, these rules sound balanced, an underdeveloped country's farmers receive subsidies to make up for the lost income from imports, and if a developed country cannot make profit from exporting their goods, subsidies alleviate their costs. These mechanisms make it sound like through subsidies and regulations there is opportunity to enjoy globally-distributed products in a fair environment. The problem is that mass amounts of agricultural products are dumped from developed countries to the underdeveloped, and the domestic farmers cannot compete with the pricing of the subsidized crops. Meanwhile, their governments cannot afford to make up for that loss due to their lack of funds, leading to an agricultural collapse and ultimately dependence on foreign imports or starvation. The WTO does have rules against dumping, but through the rules’ specificity, it is possible for companies to stay within the rules by only dumping for short periods with small, calculated hits. The problems that arise with agricultural collapse in lesser-developed countries are similar to the issues seen in the United States’ manufacturing sector. By allowing cheaper labor, imports, and exports the WTO can pit the people of different countries against each other, one through food and one through manufacturing, when in fact the entire scenario is a manipulation that segments