Dedicated to Tibak/Activist friends! Read the whole post!
However, without the global focus that the protests provided, the delegates from the world's poorest countries would likely have continued to be ignored. Today many poor nations are stating that a similar process is being enacted in regards to climate change policies. The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen may turn out to be as much of a rallying call for organizations worldwide as the WTO Ministerial was ten years ago. However, the arguments that the protesters at the WTO in Seattle were uniformly violent or that they were spoiled white kids who were standing in the way of institutional reform are clearly flawed. The policies that were being implemented at that time affected so many people, in so many various ways, that the differences between environmentalists and labor unions, American students and Korean farmers or rabble rousers and WTO delegates were erased. In that moment people came together to initiate the first shot in a struggle that continues to this day.
via Misconceptions About the Battle in Seattle : The Primate Diaries.