Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, November 30th, the Battle for Seattle.

November 30th, 1999 was set to be a big meeting of the World Trade Organization,

with delegates from around the world gathering in Seattle to discuss free trade,

globalization, commerce, and neoliberal economic policies which had been

ascendant throughout the 90s.

Instead of a wonky and comfortable summit of economic thought leaders though, these WTO meetings

turned into a massive street battle with some 50 to 70,000 protesters hitting the streets,

raising the alarm about the economic and

environmental impact that they saw from the policies that the WTO was pushing

Streets were blocked windows were smashed banners were raised around the city, and at least for a lot of people I would say in this country maybe a new protest movement really did kind of burst onto the scene.

But there are so many threads in this that continue to this day the debate over free trade

Economic populism certainly the nature of street protest and internet-fueled organizing and

also this fascinating thing which we will get into about how

populism on the left and populism on the right can kind of circle around and

meet each other so tons to discuss with the battle in Seattle.

Here to do that, as always, are Nicole Hammer of Columbia

and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello there.

Hi, Jody.

Hey there. Battle for Seattle or battle in Seattle, or Battle of Seattle. I've seen all of these.

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