I used to think that the 21st century didn’t really begin until 9/11, that this was the one event that set the course for the years to follow. Now, I’m willing to admit that I was wrong. Maybe, the 21st century actually began at the end of 1999 with the WTO protests. In late November of the final year of the ‘90s, some 40,000 people hit the streets of Seattle to shut down the World Trade Organization’s conference in the city. They were people from varying backgrounds, including environmental activists, union members and farmers. Those of us who remember the protests only from watching the news may hazily recall reports of “blah blah blah anarchists, blah blah blah Starbucks.” However, a new documentary, WTO/99, drops viewers in the middle of the scene for four days of protests and, in the process, tells a very different story.
WTO/99 is an archival documentary, meaning that it’s comprised entirely of footage captured at the time. These include both local and national TV news reports, police video and, crucially, footage shot by the protesters and on-the-ground reporters. All this material is presented chronologically and without any reflection from the present day. This lends a sort of time travel capsule element to the film, particularly when you see folks who are still active today, like Jello Biafra, Bernie Sanders, Ralph Nader and Amy Goodman. More importantly, though, this narrative style lets the viewer draw their own comparisons between 1999 and 2025.
I watched WTO/99 on Wednesday night at 2220 Arts + Archives and found the documentary to be illuminating for a number of reasons. The first moment that stuck out to me was a clip of Jello Biafra talking about how— and I’m paraphrasing here— the protests weren’t about right-left politics, but rather the top versus the bottom. Elsewhere in the documentary, multiple people mention how the WTO is essentially a global coterie calling the shots on trade without our consent. The American people never voted for it and didn’t particularly want it, was the consensus. Moreover, the general sentiment was that, when corporations have more power than people, it’s bad for labor, bad for the environment, bad for, well, everyone who isn’t a tycoon. All this essentially sums up power in the 21st century, whether we’re talking about finance, health care, tech, etc. The elite capitalists dictate what they want and, if we don’t want to go along with it, well, they have cops armed with flash-bangs and ready to kettle.
Ian Bell, director of WTO/99, was on hand at the L.A. screening and talked about the “broken windows” narrative that people outside of the protests saw and the “police violence” narrative that came from those on the streets. When you watch the film, you can see the juxtaposition of these two narratives and it’s one that has persisted throughout this century. In fact, the filmmakers wrote a fantastic article about how and why the actions that police in Seattle took in 1999 were essentially repeated by police in Los Angeles in the summer of 2025. (Some interesting facts from the article are that the Seattle protests were the first use of kettling in the U.S. and the first “large-scale” use of pepper balls for a protest situation. Plus, the Seattle PD taught their methods to other police departments.)
Another moment in the film that stood out is a news clip of Howard Schultz, then the CEO of Starbucks, baffled as to why his business was hit. At the screening, the audience laughed. It is funny to hear Schultz talk about Starbucks’ “corporate conscious” given that, just last month, workers went on strike. But, even back in 1999, when Starbucks was busy crushing local coffee houses to give people the experience of sipping a venti latte while listening to Sting and Shawn Colvin in a generic impersonation of a third space, that would have been a fucking hoot.
I’ve said this here before, but, at the end of the 20th century, corporate America grew fatter by the day as it swallowed up local businesses and media outlets and regular people were pissed. This wasn’t just an underground/activist phenomenon. It was a part of pop culture, from the Mega Lo Mart in King of the Hill to the infamous “Media-opoly” SNL sketch. The WTO protests in 1999 were a reaction to late 20th century corporate conglomeration and, as the documentary points out, this was the start of a wave of protests that took place across the globe, including the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles where Rage Against the Machine played, and effectively ended when 9/11 happened.
Through the archival footage in WTO/99 a pattern emerges that will look very familiar to today’s audiences. You see government officials and mainstream news outlets characterize the protestors as violent folks on the fringes with no real gripe and the police as just doing their job to keep people– and by “people,” they really mean corporate stores– safe. Even when the on-the-ground footage shows a very different chain of events, that official narrative is what sticks.
The pessimist in me thinks about how this is just how the 21st century will continue to roll: the people voice their discontent, the voices from the street get louder and then something shifts. The people are silenced and, eventually, they forget. The oligarchy gains more power. The cycle repeats. Yeah, it is depressing af, but, when you can recognize the patterns, you have more insight going forward. So, maybe check out WTO/99 when it screens near you.
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Follow on Instagram or sign up for the weekly, Beatique newsletter for updates on new stories and gigs.
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