RAND_MR1382

Chapter Seven
NETWAR IN THE EMERALD CITY: WTO PROTEST STRATEGY AND TACTICS
Paul de Armond
Editors’ abstract. In a free society, netwar can run wild—sometimes literally. The Battle of
Seattle is the best case of this to date. De Armond (Public Good Project) offers an eyewitness
account, analyzing all players and their strategies and revealing how and why the Direct Action
Network did so well. This struggle featured a rich mix of activists and anarchists, from around
the world, who were intent upon disrupting a gathering of governmental and international
institutional actors that were assembling to launch the World Trade Organization. The chapter
is largely condensed from a longer paper titled “Black Flag Over Seattle,” Albion Monitor,
No. 72, March 2000, www.monitor.net/monitor/seattlewto/index.html. Reprinted by
permission.
Seattle, like many American cities, has self-appointed nicknames. One of Seattle’s
nicknames is “The Emerald City,” a reference to its perpetually soggy evergreen
vegetation and to the mythical Land of Oz. On November 30, 1999, Seattleites awoke to
the reality of an emerging global protest movement. This movement was not created in
Seattle. Other protests with similar motives, participants, and strategies had been
happening in the United States and around the world for a considerable time. What
made the “N30” protests remarkable was the shock that we, like Dorothy and Toto, were
no longer in Kansas.
For the next year, roving protests continued the agitation that exploded in Seattle. In
the United States, Boston (Biodevastation), Washington, D.C. (A16), numerous cities on
May Day (M1), Milwaukee (animal rights), Detroit and Winsor, Ontario (OAS),
Philadelphia (Republican Convention), and Los Angeles (Democratic Convention) were
visited by what protesters called the “spirit of Seattle.” Around the world, protests took
place in Bangkok, London, Prague, Melbourne, and other cities.
On N30, all that lay in the future. Previous protests, particularly the J18/”Seize the
Streets” protests in London and other cities around the world on June 18, 1999,
foreshadowed the N30 demonstrations in Seattle. The J18 protest was ignored,
dismissed, or misinterpreted. Seattle was where the protests broke through the
infosphere and into the notice of the world. Oz did not fall, but the walls were breached.
Networked forms of social organization distinguish the new protest movement. Dubbed
“netwar” by David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla, this style of conflict depends heavily on
information and communications technology, nonhierarchical organization, and tactics
that are distinctly different from previous forms of civil-society conflicts. Understanding
what happened in the Emerald City on N30 requires identifying the numerous actors,