ChuckO wrote:
"There was is no casuality associated between the Seattle protests and the economy of the 1990s. Seattle was part of an international day of protest called N30, which was the result of much hard activist work and the culmination of several long-running struggles which reached synergy during N30."
Actually, there was a link between the two. The change in budgets in the Puget Sound region due to broad underfunding of services during the 90's led to the deployment of too many overstressed police officers. Anybody who lives out here can tell you that those police officers put the Seattle protests on the map. Their over-reaction to what was basically a harmless crowd with a few agitators in it put the protests on the news. Moreover, the Internet economy was pumping money into hippiedom as never before, leaving people with plenty of free time.
I believe also that the coming adoption of the euro had something to do with the WTO protests. The anti-globalization protest movement is really a European phenomenon, by and large, and the European protests were a model for the Americans in Seattle.
peace,
boddi