Battle in Seattle: The Movie and The Re-Discussion
Posted by Mike E on September 21, 2008
“Battle in Seattle” — the movie — is about to hit. The actors include Charlize Theron, Ray Liotta, Michelle Rodriguez and the rather prickly radical Woody Harrleson (playing a cop). This could be a quite positive development — depending, of course, on both the content and reception of the film.
Democracy Now segment with filmaker writer and director, Stuart Townsend, and with David Solnit, an organizer of WTO protests and co-founder of the Seattle WTO People’s History Project.
Articles and Links from “The Real Battle in Seattle” — an anarchist site that seems to assume that filmmakers can’t possibly treat the events well or fairly.
Inevitably there has been controversy from the beginning — including a recent confrontation between some @ forces and the filmmaker at opening in NYC.
Though obviously one of the issues will be how the more radical political elements are portrayed in the film, one currently available anarchist leaflet is itself rather startlingly non-radical — playing down the politics of revolutionary struggle and controntations, while promoting a non-revolutoinary approach of undermining this global system through building local alternative zones and community. Not exactly the radical legacy and lesson to uphold from Seattle — imho. (Thanks to shanedanger for posting the leaflet on his blog.)
So a question remains — do we want to share revolutionary politics with people attending these film showings? Do we have some things to say about the film itself — and its portrayal of the struggle of humanity against the global capitalist machinery?
Thoughts? Reviews? any participants in the Seattle events want to speak?
orinda said
I saw the movie and think it is worth seeing. Of course, many many things happened that had to be left out of a two hour fictionalized drama. To me, the most essential thing missing was what an astonishing and exhilarating day November 30th was. I’ve been to many protests where activists declared their intention to shut something down. It really happened this time. Downtown Seattle felt like liberated territory and it was for one day. 50,000 protesters filled downtown, not just the core of it. There were at least three different marches that ended up in downtown. One was mainly students that came from the U of Washington and took over the freeway en route. I was with the People’s Assembly, the only march that had not been granted a permit. This group was made up of revolutionary and radical forces from Korea, India, and the Philipines as well as many American radicals. Then there was the labor march, which was shown in the movie. The DAN and others had been downtown for hours by the time I got there. The movie shows several activists agonizing and crying at various times. What I actually saw was thousands of very upbeat people. I had no part in planning for the WTO and had only started participating the week before as activists gathered in the city and had daily marches with giant puppets and lots of singing. I was not the only one who was amazed the activists actually succeeded in shutting down opening day of the WTO.
The movie showed how by nightfall the police had succeeded in pushing hundreds of protesters out of downtown up Pine Street into the edges of the neighborhood of Capitol Hill. There it became a standoff. Police shot tear gas at us, people threw the canisters back at the police. The residents did come out on their balconies and yell at the police to get out of their neighborhood. That’s where the chant “Whose streets? Our streets!” came from. Which was righteous under the circumstances but irks me that this chant has become so popular. It’s one thing for non-activists to use it against the police but most protests are about much bigger issues.
The week building up to the WTO talks the media had steadily ignored all the protests and the newspapers were full of glowing endorsements of the WTO. That all changed on the 30th, at least for a few days. I remember some footage of a media team following a groups of anarchists as they moved through downtown smashing windows of corporate stores. One of them turned around and sprayed paint at the camera lens. The shocked reporter said, “They seem to think we’re the enemy!” Gee, I wonder why.
It was very interesting to see the film’s portrayal of what the mayor was supposedly doing because none of us knew what was going on behind the scenes at the time. And the story of the cop’s wife was a good touch. Many people are quite naive about what the police do under they’re on the receiving end of police violence.
The movie left me feeling uplifted and brought back memories of the most exciting period of my life.
The RCP had only one real contribution to these events but it was a very important one. The media tried to divide the movement between the “good” and “bad” protesters. The local RCP quickly wrote up a leaflet denouncing this and calling for unity. The leaflet was well received and was the only written summation available for many days. The people who were toppling newspaper boxes, breaking windows at McDonald’s or spray-painting boarded up businesses were a minority and criticized by many, including other anarchists. Others had no problem with it. But the majority agreed that actions against buildings are not violence and that it was the State that had been violent