Review of Battle in Seattle and the realization that I am a radical...

So last night I watched the movie Battle in Seattle at the Red and Black Cafe, a worker-owned collective cafe (which I am hoping to get a job at.) For those of you who don't know, Battle in Seattle is a movie about the 1999 protests in Seattle to the WTO (World Trade Organization,) meeting there. You might say, "why would anyone protest the WTO? That sounds like such a good thing, like a group that fosters free, borderless trade for everyone..." This is what the WTO would have you believe, but in reality, they've caused more problems then they've solved. For one thing, the WTO is largely responsible for all those evil campaigns that have allowed Nestle to make mommas in developing nations question their milk supply and start feeding their babies formula, with dirty well water, which has led to uncountable deaths around the world. The WTO has also encouraged Monsanto to expand GMOs (genetically modified organisms,) in all sorts of sectors, by blocking negotiations on a Biosafety Protocol to regulate the use of and trade in genetically modified organisms under the Biodiversity Convention. These are just two small examples of how the WTO has made life for everyone harder/worse and why activists would feel compelled to protest their meeting. For more information about the WTO: http://www.poptel.org.uk/panap/latest/wto10.htm

So the movie is about the protest, which lasted five days and turned Seattle upside down; to the point where many residents of the Capitol Hill district of Seattle joined the protesters, because they where tired of the police flooding their neighborhood with pepper spray, and later, when they ran out of pepper spray, nerve gas. (The whole nerve gas thing supposedly happened by accident, when police went to a nearby military base to restock their pepper spray and someone supposedly accidentally picked up canisters of nerve gas; a lawsuit has been filed by many activists as well as residents of Seattle for damage done to them due to the nerve gas, which they won.)

Anyway, I thought it was a terrible movie for three reasons; reason #1: the only anarcho-black-clad protester the movie showed was a cop infiltrator, who was actually reporting back to the cops about what the anarchists where up to, reason #2, the main theme of the movie seemed to be that protesters are a violent, unruly group who tend to cause more misery by their actions, especially when they "force" the cops to get out of hand by doing things like, say, breaking windows. #3 By disrupting the WTO, the movie seemed to suggest, people who would have had a chance to actually make a difference, like a man who was trying to persuade big pharma to give AIDS drugs to people in Africa, or at least offer them at a cheaper price, was not able to speak to the people who could have possibly made that difference, and therefore, the protesters actually made life worse for some people. I'm not sure I would agree with that hypothetical scenario. Basically, don't watch Battle in Seattle if you want to learn about the evils of the WTO, which was what I was hoping to learn from the movie.

Secondly, I've been thinking a lot lately about what makes a person a radical; are we born radical, or do we gradually assume that role as we grow up and realize how fucked up the world is? I think, speaking for myself, I've always been a radical, by which I mean, I've always have a large amount of love and have always been disgusted with the things I perceived as wrong with the world, starting at a very young age. For example, when I was about seven, my life centered around playing in a creek by our house. A dairy farmer owned the fields on the other side of the creek, and one day, I went down to the creek to play and saw that the farmer had used a bulldozer to change the course of the creek and to knock down some trees. I ran home, furious, and tears streaming from my face, yelled at my mom, "we've gotta tell him it's wrong!" "What's wrong honey?" I remember her saying. "It's wrong and he can't do that....he shouldn't just change the creek like that!" I continued to yell at my mom that we needed to have a confrontation with the farmer for a very long time, and on and off for days to follow. She agreed with me that it was environmentally destructive, but, of course, since he'd moved dirt and trees on his property, she would not go with me to confront him. I often would yell at my mom (which is kind of akin to e-mailing a governor, a state legislator, and the like about some issue that is bothering you; usually it does little to nothing to change things,) whenever I saw evil in the world. I reported to my mom about the child abuse I saw in my school all the way up through, she got to hear about dogs that never got off their chains which I would walk by, and the pain in my heart when I saw girls in my class cutting themselves and threatening suicide to get some much-needed attention. I guess what I'm saying is this; I've always been a radical, I've always, always wanted to change things, and no matter what changes in my life; I doubt this passion, this fire will subside.

Love ya,
Carrot