While most hippie capitalist enterprises that lasted ended up going for the big bucks, it's nice to see that some companies managed to stay true to their vision of contributing positively to the community. Seattle's Environmental Works is a great example of this, an architectural firm with a mission to provide good design to projects for the poor, which over the years has included child care centers and low-income housing projects.
Today, I am researching at the Rem Koolhaas designed Seattle Public Library, which is the permanent winner of the coolest and most architecturally significant building I will ever research in.
To push back a little on Erik's view of the Battle in Seattle, I'm posting the video from GRITtv's discussion yesterday. Don't get me wrong; I think Erik has a lot of valid points (Ann Friedman made some similar ones in this excellent post from the other day at the Prospect).
I think in general that it's often wrong to classify progressivism (and feminism, and many other things) as movements. They're belief systems, often stagnant ones. By comparison, the Obama campaign WAS a movement--a moment where hundreds of thousands of people came together to fight for one objective, even if lots of us did it with clear-eyed knowledge that a year out we'd be disappointed and arguing with the president we gave so much of our time and effort to elect.
We do need movements, though. We need those moments where we can come together and accomplish something, like in Seattle--and we need to extend those beyond moments. How do we turn those moments into sustained pressure? I like what I've seen from the National Equality March, and the fight in Maine (even though it too lost). But I want more. Anyway, I digress.
People asked what the organizers of Seattle would say if they were asked: well, it was only ten years ago. They're still around, and a bunch of them were on GRIT yesterday. You want to know what they think? Here's video.
10 years ago today, thousands of activists gathered in Seattle, Washington to protest the meeting of the World Trade Organization. Anarchist-started riots and an over the top police response dominated the news headlines, but it seemed that this event might really change the world. Environmentalists, unions, local activists, and people from the developing world all came to Seattle to protest globalization. We wondered whether a new progressive movement had begun which would provide stiff resistance to neoliberalism.
And nothing happened.
Why did this movement die as it began? It's only 10 years ago, but for something that seemed so important at the time, virtually none of my students have even heard of it, and that includes the more activist students. This was amazing to me when I discovered it, but it makes sense. Why would they remember such an irrelevant event, even if it seemed so important at the time?
A common answer to why turtles and Teamsters alliances disappeared so quickly is 9/11. This line of thought says that September 11 and Bush's war on terror took national attention away from neoliberalism and undermined activists' ability to organize effectively, not to mention. Bush's crackdown on radicalism that created a climate of fear. I don't really buy this. I think it is a factor. But it's not as if the 2 years between Seattle and 9/11 really saw anything happening.
Another answer is that governments and international entities found ways to contain protest. The creation of so-called "free speech zones" and isolating activists into non-threatening zones while holding meetings behind tight security may play a small role, but an effective movement would find away around this, either through massive non-violent demonstrations that would rivet the world's attention, through violence (though this would have been a really bad idea), or through new organizing tactics. None of this happened. A real movement is not dependent on the ability to protest exactly where they want.
I think the far bigger problem is that there was no movement in the first place. That's why the event has quickly become irrelevant. 1990s protest events were an amalgamation of interest groups that occasionally came together. Environmentalists (and 20 different stripes of them), labor unions, food activists, indigenous activists, farmers, peoples from the developing world, and many others all came to Seattle in common cause, but that cause didn't extend beyond the confines of the city. While they might all have opposed free trade as it was defined 1999, they often had nothing in common beyond that.
There was a classic 2004 Daily Show sketch where Stephen Colbert went to the Democratic National Convention, brought activists from different movements into the same room and asked them what John Kerry should focus on first. They all chose their own movement and instantly began arguing. It was a classic piece on the disjointed Democratic Party, but is also a pretty good description of the constituent groups in Seattle.
I think we've moved beyond this a little bit. The Iraq War provided a unifying event that brought progressives of all stripes together. And I think younger people realize the mistakes of the past in building organization and community across traditional lines. The first year of the Obama Administration certainly hasn't reflected discord among progressives over what he should work on--foreign policy, health care, the economy all seem really important. This is less true of the gay rights movement, but then Obama could do real things for them quickly and hasn't to his discredit.
It'll be curious to see how historians see the Battle of Seattle. Will they see more long-term meaning than I do? Or will it seem like an isolated event of the late 90s that eventually led to very little.
I just found out that there is a monument to the Confederacy in Seattle. Apparently, it has a history of being vandalized. I knew I liked Seattle for a reason.
Anna Louise Strong, Seattle communist and major player in the 1919 Seattle General Strike.
Advertisement for Seattle's Coon Chicken Inn, a west coast restaurant chain, 1930.
Officers of Cannery Workers' Farm and Labor Union Local 18257, 1933. This was an almost all-Filipino union of cannery workers in the Seattle area.
United Construction Workers Association rally, early 1970s. The UCWA was dedicated to fighting hiring practices in Seattle's segregationist construction unions.
Regrading Denny Hill to (relatively) flatten Seattle and further its growth, 1914
90 years ago today, on February 6, 1919, the Seattle General Strike began.
The Pacific Northwest was a hotbed of radicalism in the early 20th century. The large Scandinavian population brought a tradition of socialism with them when they immigrated to the region. The longshoremen that worked the region's ports were among the most radical labor unions in the country. The logging industry became a center of radicalism because the conditions workers lived in were so bad that people turned to the Industrial Workers of the World out of desperation. Although many of those terrible living conditions had been ameliorated during World War I, radical loggers still dominated many lumber camps and mills. Seattle had one of the most respected labor newspapers in the country, the Seattle Union Record, and this publication whipped up support in favor of various radical causes.
The precipitating event for the General Strike was a strike in the Seattle shipyards. In solidarity, the Seattle Central Labor Council called the larger action with the active support of the I.W.W. This became the first and only general strike in U.S. history. For 5 days, Seattle shut down. 25,000 workers joined the 35,000 already on strike. The strike committee worked hard to keep basic services running in the city, though the lack of cooperation from the Seattle city government and the strike's disorganized nature made this very difficult.
The Seattle power structure went nuts. Mayor Ole Hanson, elected the year before with labor's support, armed the police and threatened to declare martial law. Although the strike was entirely peaceful from the workers' side, the threat of police or military violence grew daily. The strike had the rapt attention of the nation. Radicals hoped it was the first step on America's revolutionary road. Politicians and business leaders were mortified that the Russian Revolution had spread to America and called for a crackdown. In response to heavy pressure, the Central Labor Council declared the strike over on February 11, though many workers had already gone back to their jobs as the threats mounted.
Perhaps the worst effect of this was that it made Hanson a national figure for the rest of the year. He took advantage of the Red Scare dominating the country in the immediate post-WWI years to launch his a national political career. He toured the nation, giving speeches about the threat we faced from radicalism. Hanson turned completely on his base of support, and in one of the greatest acts of hypocrisy in American political history, called for the suppression of labor. His stock faded with the end of the Red Scare. He tried to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1920, but the Republicans, wary of the crazy Seattle mayor, went for the bland Warren Harding instead. Awesomely, the Wikipedia site on Hanson claims he ran in 1922, which of course was not a presidential year. Classic.
This is one of the most forgotten about events in American history; even among those who are aware of the major events of American labor history, the General Strike gets short shrift. Perhaps this because nothing came of it, but most of the major American strikes of this period were also failures. It was something of a last gasp of pre-communist leftism in American thought. Because of the success of the Bolshevik Revolution and the outright suppression of the I.W.W. after World War I, many radicals turned to the Communist Party and Soviet leadership. There was something beautiful, if almost completely futile, about pre-communist labor radicalism in America. That almost undefinable something was central to the Seattle General Strike, but it was soon lost. Incidentally, Seattle lost its radical edge during the 1920s. The most prominent labor leader to come out of Seattle during that period was Dave Beck, the Teamster head before Jimmy Hoffa, who cut his teeth opposing the General Strike. Beck, like Hoffa after him, lost his position as Teamster president when he was sentenced to prison for corruption. Beck's rise serves as something of a metaphor for the general fall in labor's power in Seattle after the General Strike's failure.
After his 15 minutes of fame ended, Hanson decided to leave Washington altogether. He ended up founding the town of San Clemente, California. There is a beach club named after him there today.
Before you skip past a post about a road you have never heard of, I urge you to read on for a larger discussion of cities in the early 21st century.
The Alaskan Way Viaduct is one of the most hated freeways in the United States. A couple of years ago, I wrote a post arguing that we needed to save this road. This is how I closed that post:
One great thing about the Viaduct is that it is a reminder of Seattle's industrial past. We need to remember that cities used to be places of work. Seattle played a vital role in building America. Literally, as it was a lumber town. The industrial past is increasingly hard to find in modern Seattle. The old Rainer brewery that was originially taken over by Tully's Coffee has now been sold to a developer to create live/work spaces for artists. Little if any lumber is milled in Seattle today. The warehouse district in south Seattle is seen as a blight, despite its absolutely necessary function in creating and moving products around the nation. Today, the best reminder of this past in Seattle might be wood carvings of salmon in upscale shopping malls. The Alaskan Way Viaduct is both a democratic structure (all you need is a car to get those views) and a reminder of Seattle's past. For me, the fate of the Viaduct comes down to this question--does egalitarianism and unsanitized history have a role to play in 21st century urban America?
First of all I am uncomfortable with the Congress of New Urbanism, even if I agree with many of their highest aspirations--to make a more beautiful, walkable, healthy, and just urban environment. According to their ideas then, the viaduct should never have been built in the first place. And if I had been around in the 50s when it was being built I think, with my current attitudes, I would have opposed its construction. I have a lot of trouble now with the idea of demolishing or removing mid-century evidence of bad design or good. The New Urbanists want the viaduct gone so they can build pretty condos on the waterfront and big lame open spaces--instead of strange and creepy cramped ones. I've grown to love--in a perverse way--the viaduct. It feels dangerous, and I like that. There's never quite enough room on it for all the cars. But you get the best view of the city and the Sound from it. You pass right through downtown and peak into windows as you pass through. And under the viaduct is a whole other skanky McQ world that I remember from my childhood (I went to the Ace Novelty Shop just under the viaduct to purchase fake vomit when I was a kid). I like the shadow it casts and the danger that it suggests. I saw Bill Frisell at the OK Hotel in the early 90s--right under the viaduct. I love the loud crazy sound of cars clack clacking above. The viaduct creates a kind of environment and suggests a creepy history. I would hate for it to be eliminated. If they wanted to make a highline kind of thing with it I'd be happier, but not much. And I realize it's really, really unsafe. But the New Urbanists want to build a tunnel to accommodate its traffic for billions. I say leave or shore it up. Ultimately I think a city needs some ugly. And this tells me that time is critical here. Time for structures to grow on you and for you to create sets of associations with them, no matter how ugly.