The Battle of Seattle: The New Challenge to
Capitalist Globalization

Edited By Eddie Yuen, George Katsiaficas and Daniel Burton Rose

Overview:
The uprising against the World Trade Organization in November 1999 was the most visible and dramatic protest in the United States since the Vietnam War. From Washington, DC to the party conventions and on to Prague, Cancun, and Genova, the new movement against globalization grew.

The Battle of Seattle roots these events globally in an anti-capitalist history: the resistance to the IMF and the neo-liberal project in Venezuela, Korea, and Chiapas, the mass organizing campaigns of the nuclear-freeze movement in the 1980's, and the innovative direct action tactics of environmentalists in the US. In this volume, the street-level reporting covers the action while involved thinkers ask the questions on the collective mind of the movement: How can a movement that claims to be global root itself in local communities? What happens to non-violent tactics in an environment of increasingly ruthless policing? Can NGOs be agents of social transformation, or are they only a mirror of the dominant society within the movement? How can a predominantly white activist scene in the US and Europe form respectful ties with activists of color? Does trashing Starbucks damage capitalism itself?

Essays from the front lines and engaged analysis tackle all of these questions. The Battle of Seattle ranges wider and cuts deeper than any other book published in the aftermath of November '99, and invites readers to join the intensive debates within the anti-globalization movement and to make some history of their own.

Review:
"The Battle of Seattle recounts an important era in the history of people's struggles against international corporate domination of our lives. It has the immediacy of on-the-street journalism and the perspective of thoughtful observers. I hope it will be widely circulated."
- Howard Zinn