The documentary This Is What Democracy Looks Like (2000), directed by Jill Friedberg and Rick Rowley, captures the essence of the protests against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Seattle in November 1999. Filmed on location with cameras provided by activists, the film compiles first-hand accounts of demonstrations that brought together more than 50,000 people from all walks of life and backgrounds (from trade unionists to environmentalists, from First Nations groups to anarchists) in what was a key turning point in the establishment and spread of the anti-globalisation movement, which viewed democracy not as an institutionalised representative process, but as a practice of collective construction from the streets.
The images focus on the direct actions that took place in those last days of 1999 in the American city: tactical blockades of infrastructure, sabotage of corporate headquarters, horizontal assemblies, collective resistance to police repression… But above all, it highlights the closure of the WTO opening ceremony through a multiple blockade that ultimately forced the suspension of negotiations.
This documentary serves as a historical bridge between current struggles and the protest movements of the 1990s against the Washington Consensus (1989). The video shows how decentralised networks coordinate through effective, horizontal tactics. The repression, with more than 600 arrests and the use of all kinds of repressive equipment (batons, rubber bullets, pepper spray, etc.), marked a turning point in the conception of Western police forces, as it paved the way for the contemporary criminalisation of civil disobedience.
The film, produced independently and financed collectively, was released in 2000 in activist circles and became an educational tool for understanding and differentiating key concepts and practices of dissident movements.
For the anti-globalisation movement, Seattle symbolised the first victory against fierce neoliberalism. That ‘blockade of the century’ of the WTO conference inspired global collective action campaigns in Porto Alegre and Genoa.
https://archive.org/details/ThisIsWhatDemocracyLooksLike