> I am too young to have experienced "the sixties," but definitely caught
> the afterglow. All of that shut down with remarkable speed in the
> subsequent decade, with the "oil shock" of 1973, the collapse of the
> manufacturing economy in the US, and the "stagflation" of the late 70s.
> People in the US were scared shitless in the 70s because of the end of
> the post-WWII boom (Hobsbawm's "golden age"), and I have always felt
> that this had a great deal to do with creating the cultural/political
> atmosphere of the Reagan era, which we are in many ways still living in
> today. I think Doug is on to something about low unemployment
> contributing to "Seattle"--"Ah, for the late 90s," as someone said.
> Remember in this connection the big labor victories at UPS and Verizon.
> About Seattle, though, weren't there some important local factors that
> contributed too? I'm thinking of the labor strife at Kaiser Aluminum
> and the fight over logging the old-growth forests, two issues with the
> same villain--thus "Teamsters and Turtles." Put those local issues
> together with the years of work around trade and the WTO coming to
> fruition, against a backdrop of tight labor markets and a general sense
> of prosperity, and you have the "conjuncture" (in other words, plain
> dumb luck) that created "Seattle."
Sure, the cultural side of the 1960s (flower power, hippies, drugs, rock music, volkswagon buses) shut down in the early 1970s, but there was still a shitload of activism happening throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The anti-war movement wasn't making headlines, but women were making headlines with their activism and the peace/anti-nuke movement had some big victories. In fact, if it wasn't for all that activism happening during the 1970s and 1980s, Seattle would have been more muted. The anti-globalization movement has relied on activists who cut their teeth on anti-nuke campaigns and women's liberation movements.
I still don't see the connection between low unemployment and Seattle. Did people go to Seattle because they said to themselves: "I've got a job, but I really must go protest globalization?" Of course not. Seattle (N30) was the culmination of much hard work by activists and the culmination of several movements and campaigns (Fifty Years is Enough, Earth First and environmental activism, Reclaim the Streets, Critical Mass, independent media activism, and the growing anarchist movement).
Chuck0