The Battle In Seattle
Nov 30th through Dec 3rd

The World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in late 1999 is a fading memory for many, but it left quite a legacy: Seattle suffered more than $2.5 million in damage, more than 500 protesters were arrested, the opening WTO ceremonies were canceled and eventually trade talks collapsed. The headlines continued well into the new millennium.

From November 30 through December 3, as police took on demonstrators outside the World Trade Organization meeting at the Seattle Convention Center, you couldn't turn on a TV or open a newspaper without hearing how officers were using "tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper spray" to disperse crowds of protestors.

Over the first two days of the WTO protests, police clad in riot gear routinely shot pain-inducing pepper spray into the eyes of nonviolent protestors, fired rubber- and plastic-jacketed bullets at close range into crowds, and charged peaceful demonstrators with armored vehicles--all in front of hundreds of TV news cameras and assembled journalists. One clip, of a heavily armored officer kicking a man in the groin, then shooting him in the chest point-blank with a nonlethal "beanbag" gun, aired on several networks.

"I regret very much that a few people have given the protesters a bad name, because I think the fact that the protesters are there, were it not for those stopping meetings, stopping movements and not being peaceful, would be a positive."
- President Clinton