ABSTRACT
In November 1999, when thousands of protesters shut down the WTO (World Trade Organization) Ministerial meeting in Seattle, Washington, something new was added to the global repertoire of contention. Although there had been “counter-summits” against major international organizations in the past (Pianta 2001a and Pianta et al. 2004), the Seattle campaign coordinated scores of protest events around the world (Lichbach and de Vries 2004, table 5). That campaign also employed a set of colorful and contentious public performances that would be remembered and imitated elsewhere under the label “the Seattle model” (Wood 2004) for years to come. Those tactics, and the clumsy and repressive reaction of Seattle’s police and public authorities (Levi and Murphy 2004) in part inspired a cascade of transnationally organized events around the globe, from Genoa to Göteborg, from Prague to Cancún, from Porto Alegre to Mumbai.
