1999 Seattle WTO protests

1999 Seattle WTO protests
Part of the anti-globalization movement
A police officer sprays pepper spray at the crowd
Date	November 30 – December 3, 1999
Location	Seattle, Washington, United States
Resulted in	Resignation of Seattle police chief Norm Stamper; Increased exposure of the WTO in US media; 157 individuals arrested but released for lack of probable cause or hard evidence; $250,000 paid to the arrested by the city of Seattle; Creation of the Independent Media Center
Parties
Anti-globalization movement Direct Action Network NGOs Labor unions Student and religious groups Seattle Police Department King County Sheriff's Office Washington State Patrol 81st Brigade, Washington Army National Guard
Number
~40,000 Unknown

The 1999 Seattle WTO protests, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Seattle,^[1] were a series of anti-globalization protests surrounding the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, when members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) convened at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington on November 30, 1999. The Conference was to be the launch of a new millennial round of trade negotiations.

The negotiations were quickly overshadowed by massive street protests outside the hotels and the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. The protests were nicknamed "N30", akin to J18 and similar mobilizations, and were deemed controversial by the media. The large scale of the demonstrations, estimated at no fewer than 40,000 protesters, dwarfed any previous demonstration in the United States against a world meeting of any of the organizations generally associated with economic globalization, such as the WTO, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.^[2]