By Tom Price

To hear it from the corporate media the Battle of Seattle was fought by a coalition of anarchists and flat-earth believers who wanted to destroy trade and starve the people of the Third World. Fortunately, we don’t have to rely entirely on them.

Now, after the rubber bullets have been swept up and the riot gear stashed away, two videos have been released on the subject of the World Trade Organization’s Seattle ministerial meeting during the week of Nov. 30-Dec. 3, 1999 that present another point of view.

A coalition of more than 100 independent videographers, writers, editors and techs produced “Showdown in Seattle: Five Days that Shook the WTO.” With little regard for individual ownership, the camera operators pooled their footage into a cooperative effort under the umbrella of Seattle’s Independent Media Center.

The other documentary, “Labor Battles the WTO in Seattle 1999—Workers of the World Unite” by the Labor Video Project, was produced by Steve Zeltzer and edited by Kazmi Torii.

“Showdown” weighs in at 150 minutes and comes in five segments. Each chapter could stand alone, but together they make up a comprehensive report on the week of action and the reasons as many as 50,000 people braved the cops, gas and weather to make their statement.

Chapter One provides an overview of world trade and the role the WTO plays in rendering labor and environmental laws null and void on an international scale. The first interview with author Michael Parenti sets the tone: “There is only one thing the ruling interests have ever wanted and that is everything.”

“We’re talking about trade agreements that are not just about trade, but have to do with every aspect of life,” said Anuradha Mital of Food First. “They have to do with agriculture, forests, environment, nature—and what kind of human rights we have.”

“The WTO is a court that decides on trade disputes between corporations or governments, decides how it will come down,” said Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange. “Its instructive to look at all the disputes—sea turtles verses corporations, dolphins verses corporations, small farmers verses corporations—in every single case the WTO has ruled for the corporations.”

But “Showdown” isn’t just a collection of talking heads. The editors got footage from an unidentified Third World sweatshop showing young girls pat searched, interspersed with action shots from the streets. Several young people from Japan express their views, as well as rappers and Native Americans—right next to steelworkers discussing their lockouts and the destruction of American jobs.

“It’s going to take all of us getting together to stand up for our rights and those of our brothers and sisters and those of the next generation and the generation after that,” an unidentified woman steelworker said.

Chapter Two chronicles the day of gassing Nov. 30 and the 30,000-strong labor march beginning at Memorial Stadium and includes speeches from some of the labor leaders. In a clever juxtaposition of images, a man making police billy clubs is interviewed, demonstrating the half-finished club in his workshop, followed by a cutaway to the police using the clubs against non-violent protestors.

Chapter Three shows the steelworkers’ march to Pier 63, where they held a modern version of the Boston Tea Party and, with the assistance of ILWU longshore workers, dumped mock steel off the pier to protest unfair trade. Later police attacked the march and arrested steelworkers.

“I’m a locked-out steelworker, this starts our fifteenth month,” a worker said. “I don’t appreciate our jobs going overseas, but if they would pay them a comparable wage it wouldn’t be as bad a deal. But if they pay them pennies on the dollar so the company can make the money, it’s not right.”

Activists from the Philippines describe the 50 years of globalization in their own words, interspersed with U.S. workers talking about their support for third world workers.

Chapter Four begins with the police riot, juxtaposing the police chief’s statements to the press on the cops’ professionalism with shots of demonstrators getting indiscriminately gassed and beaten. Legal teams organized by the demonstrators list the Constitutional laws violated by the police, a parallel to the WTO’s violation of national sovereignty.

“The black farmers were the canaries sent down the mineshaft first,” a member of the Black Farmers Agricultural Assn. said. “They saw how they could get rid of us and they’re using that to get rid of the small farmers in this country and all over the world.”

Talk show host Jim Hightower ends the segment with a call to unity: “We need to link arms and build a coalition, not just with the bean sprout eaters, get those snuff dippers on our side too!”

Chapter Five begins with an interview with Kevin Castle, a longshore woman out of Local 19: “We’ve demonstrated that this is an issue of great importance to ordinary Americans of every stripe from every political spectrum. In addition we have discovered ourselves, we have discovered we are part of a larger group, a family of people who believe, still, in democracy.”

Her sister, Candice, also of Local 19, is quoted as saying we need to keep the pressure on the WTO so they can’t make decisions behind closed doors.

“Our membership has always been counted on when it comes time to stand up and deal with issues around the world,” then-Local 19 Vice President Tom Roach said.

The next shot is of ILWU International President Brian Mc-Williams announcing the port shutdown on Nov. 30 at the labor rally, and then more of Local 19 members discussing their union’s long history of social activism in their own hall.

“Showdown” provides something utterly lacking in our media-dominated universe—the direct expression of ordinary people standing up to the system. The fact that non-violent demonstrators successfully blockaded the ministerial conference of the WTO, contributing mightily to its failure, would be lost to history if we left it to the corporate media to write the record.

From its very first frame the intent of “Labor Battles the WTO” is clear—to show the role the working class played in the Battle of Seattle. The video’s first scene: the ILWU banner, emblazoned with the words “An Injury to One is an Injury to All.” More than a dozen members stretched the banner across several lanes of 5th Avenue for the Nov. 30 labor march, with two other ILWU banners to the side.

Even before the picture starts the sound comes up with a basso profundo chant “I! L! W! U!” That’s what the contingent of 1,000 ILWU members called out to begin the march from Memorial Stadium under the shadow of the Seattle Space Needle. The main narrative of the video takes place as the camera follows marchers uptown to the Convention Center where the WTO was attempting to meet to decide the world’s fate.

After a few scenes of the march comes a flashback to an hour before with President McWilliams addressing the 30,000 unionists assembled at the stadium:

“The global economy will not run without the consent of the workers, and we don’t just mean longshore workers, but workers everywhere,” he said.

From the back corner of the stadium where the ILWU contingent gathered, to the front of the stage, the “I! L! W! U!” chant rang out as McWilliams recapped the history of the union’s support for social justice and international solidarity.

Original footage is interspersed with clips crimped from CNN, ABC and other TV news broadcasts. Those bits show some of the ways the events in Seattle made even the corporate media have to explain the protesters side of the issue. It even includes the clip—played over and over again on the news that week—of a cop stepping up to an unassuming man on the sidewalk and without cause or warning, kicking him straight in the groin.

In a clip from a local news broadcast longshore Local 10 BA Bobby Gillory is interviewed from San Francisco. “And we feel that the three-member panel that can declare our laws illegal, people that no one voted for, we don’t even know who they are, we feel that this is a restraint of trade,” Gillory said.

These news segments also show by contrast the low technical quality of the original footage, with shaky, hand-held camera work, uneven exposure and poor sound quality. Another weakness of the video is the way the producer interviews a number of workers, asking leading questions aimed at getting his own point of view across—mainly that AFL-CIO President John Sweeney’s idea of giving labor a seat at the WTO table is a wrong and unworkable strategy and that the U.S. needs a Labor Party. While there may be some truth in those arguments, the heavy-handed way of getting them across detracts from their credibility.

On the other hand, many articulate union activists are interviewed and given the room to express genuine concerns of the working class.

“People are very concerned about the WTO, what it’s possibly doing not only to our jobs, but what it is doing to our rural communities and to the farmers,” said Scott Ripling, a sugar factory worker from Red River Valley area of North Dakota/Minnesota. “The farmers are just getting kicked off the land at an incredible rate.”

Jimmy Kelly, a letter carrier from Santa Cruz, California suggests the effects of the protests will be wide spread.

“I think we’re having an impact,” Kelly said. “More people are talking about the WTO today than in any time in its secret history and it’s not going to be a secret any more. Whether it’s the World Trade Organization, whether it’s the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the investment policy has to stand up to question.”

Terry, a steelworker from Pitts-burg, offered a blunt solution to the debate over the beneficial effects of the WTO.

“We should be going into buildings with baseball bats and taking these corporate people outside and say “Okay, now tell us why WTO, why NAFTA, why Fast Track, tell us why all this stuff is good for us. Now with me standing here with a baseball bat in my hand, tell me the truth about how it effects me,” he said.

“Showdown in Seattle: Five Days that Shook the WTO” is available from Whispered Media / PO Box 40130 / San Francisco, CA 94140 / (415) 789-8484 / www.videoactivism.org. The price is $50 plus $3 postage.