January 15, 2000

“Nonviolent Protest” in Seattle

In the aftermath of the November 1999 protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization, it was commonly heard in “progressive” and mainstream media outlets that there was “a majority of nonviolent protesters,” that “most of the protesters” had abided by the tenets established in the Indian decolonization movement and the civil rights movements. The implication is that there was violent protest. But there was no violent protest, no armed struggle. Accompanying the profession of the essential goodness of the nonviolent protesters was persistent criticism of a group of anarchists from Oregon who destroyed certain items of corporate property, implying by means of a fallacy that this form of protest is violent. In the most generous interpretation this identification of the destruction of property with violence indicates a strategy of conceptual coattailing, an attempt to power human rights/labor rights by the strength of property rights. “If destruction of property is violent, how much moreso that of human life?” But even this most generous interpretation reinforces the subordination of the value of human life to capital, and for capital the price of life can never be low enough.

nonviolence battle.of.seattle media