http://chronicle.com/free/2000/12/2000121901t.htm
U. of Washington Professor's Site Recalls 1999 World Trade Organization Protests By JESSICA LUDWIG <mailto:jessica.ludwig at chronicle.com>
Margaret Levi and many of her students and colleagues participated in the Seattle World Trade Organization protests in late November of 1999. Ms. Levi, who is a professor of political science at the University of Washington and the director of the university's Center for Labor Studies, says the events were far more positive than many people outside of Seattle believe. "There was a tremendous amount of planning, debate, and various coalitions going on," she says. "It wasn't a mess."
After conducting informational forums on the protests and their legacy, Ms. Levi saw a need to document the movement from labor's perspective. Last spring, she began the W.T.O. History Project, <http://depts.washington.edu/pcls/WTO_History_Project.htm> a collaboration among the Center for Labor Studies, the university's Center for Communication and Civic Engagement, and the Manuscripts, Special Collections and University Archives division of the university libraries.
The protests brought more than 40,000 activists to downtown Seattle. The city is still assessing its costs -- from lost tourism revenues, damage, and security expenses -- but they are thought to be in the millions. The history project focuses on labor's organization before, involvement during, and impact after the demonstrations.
The project's staff members, who are graduate and undergraduate students, conduct interviews with activists that are transcribed and posted on the site. Visitors to the site are invited to submit personal accounts as well. Links to news articles, photos, and video clips of the protests are also included.
So far, some 85 interviews have been conducted with representatives of organizations like Global Trade Watch and the United Steelworkers of America. To gain a "very pluralistic" historical representation, the project includes interviews with members of national and international groups, and it involves a range of activists, including environmentalists and anarchists.
"Our focus is on the protesters, rather than on the city's response," says Gillian Murphy, the project's coordinator, who is a second-year graduate student in sociology at the university. "Someone else will write the other parts."
Ms. Murphy says: "Very rarely are these materials preserved. We're in such a unique position, being in Seattle at the site of the protests." She adds that the university's proximity makes it easier to collect fliers, leaflets, and "ephemera such as turtle suits and picket signs," which will be displayed online.
Ms. Levi cites the Seattle general strike of 1919, which caused a city-wide work stoppage, and the waterfront strike of 1934 as episodes where "histories are extremely flawed, sources are poor -- all you had were printed media accounts and occasional firsthand accounts." She says that in such situations, often "one person becomes emblematic" of the whole event. The W.T.O. Project wants to avoid a one-sided historical account by considering a number of voices.
The W.T.O. History Project is a pilot program that will become part of the University of Washington's Global Citizen Project, <http://depts.washington.edu/ccce/global_citizen_project.htm> an interdisciplinary collaboration on research in international trade, the corporate economy, and democratization. Ms. Levi says the W.T.O. component will contribute to larger questions, like "What does it mean that nation states are no longer making crucial decisions or they're being made in some other country? What happens to democratic accountability?"
Ms. Levi says she hopes the site will become a research portal for scholars and activists with a fully indexed and searchable multimedia database. In the future, staff members will develop the project's resources into undergraduate, secondary, and elementary course modules on the Internet that will supplement classroom-based learning.