Film Screening and Discussion: WTO/99

Join us for a screening of this award-winning documentary film followed by a panel discussion and Q&A with the filmmakers and special guests.

The International Trade Education Squad of the Park Slope Food Coop presents WTO/99, an immersive archival documentary that reanimates the clash between the then-emerging World Trade Organization (WTO) and the more than 40,000 people who took to the streets of Seattle to protest the WTO’s impacts on human rights, labor, and the environment.

Background on WTO/99
In November 1999, Seattle hosted the Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), a meeting of international business leaders, power brokers, and other shapers of corporate aims and global markets. Also gathering in Seattle were tens of thousands of protestors—spanning political affiliations, classes, and generations—to demonstrate against this unelected body of policymakers with the power to upend global trade and environmental protections through self-serving deregulation and tariff schemes. With affecting and resonant archival footage, WTO/99 transports viewers to the streets of Seattle a quarter-century ago, employing news reports and pre-smartphone home videos to distill and delineate the trajectory of events, from the activists’ nonviolent protest to law enforcement’s aggressive response. The protests—and the film itself—are testaments to the challenge of organizing chaos into coherence. The result is a potent social document, and perhaps a harbinger of disorder and dissent to come.  

Registration is required.