Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture: Jamie McCallum

Jamie McCallum, Department of Sociology will give a talk as part of the 2019-20 Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture Series.

 “This is What Democracy Looked Like!  The Long Shadow of Radical Politics Since the Battle of Seattle”

 This talk revisits the Seattle WTO protests on its twentieth anniversary (November 2019), still a hallmark of political activism two decades later. In late 1999, an explosion of disruptive protests shut down the Millennial meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle. For five days activists occupied the city, fighting police, going to jail, and stopping business as usual. In a rare clear victory for protest organizers, the WTO was forced to conclude its meeting without setting new terms for neoliberal governance and world trade. It became known as a “coming-out party” for an anti-corporate social movement that promised to construct a new globalization—for labor rights, ecological security, civil society, and social equality— and inspired dozens of copycat actions across the world. Yet by late 2001 what came to be called the alter-globalization movement was only a memory, gone seemingly as quickly as it appeared. Today, most young activists have no idea it even occurred. Nonetheless, for the last two decades the Seattle moment has cast a long shadow far beyond its brief lifespan. I will examine the movement as it existed, but focus most of my attention on its legacy for protest, activism, and organizing today.

 Refreshments will be served.