By Chris Armstrong
Protest and dance. Union members and university students. Trade bodies and civil rights. Sloppy media and inspirational messages.
These contradictions are featured in a new documentary, This Is What Democracy Looks Like. It will be shown at the Ottawa Public Library on Nov. 30, the one-year anniversary of the Seattle protest. The film shows how last year’s protest against the World Trade Organization became a fight for civil liberties.
The movie shows how 30,000 people originally aimed to block the WTO’s meeting. In the film, some of these people say the WTO, which handles trade agreements between countries, is unaccountable to the public and promotes a cold economic agenda.
The movie mixes blaring megaphones and chanting crowds with protesters dancing in the streets.
A crowd of people talks with the police, each side saying it doesn’t want violence.
Then things change. In one scene, the same police officer who said no one would be hurt says if the protesters don’t move, they will “experience pain.”
Then, as the protesters lie in the streets in a human chain of civil disobedience, using bandanas as makeshift gas masks, the police move in, remove the masks and douse the crowd with pepper spray.
From that point on, no-protest zones, 5 p.m. curfews and hundreds of arrests show how the police tried to handle a complex situation, but ended up taking away civil liberties.
The mainstream media didn’t cover the event as a progression from a WTO protest to a fight for civil liberties, says Jill Friedberg of the Independent Media Centre in Seattle. She produced the documentary using footage from 100 different camera operators.
Friedberg says thousands of people have seen the documentary in screenings on the West Coast. She says people believe the film is the only true interpretation of what happened last November.
But the documentary has its flaws. According to Friedberg, some critics point out the film says the WTO is bad, but doesn’t say why it’s bad.
“That wasn’t the purpose of the film,” counters Friedberg. “It’s a film about resistance and empowerment.”
“It’s not just about a bunch of kids in Seattle,” says Centretown resident Darren Puscas, who’s organizing the Ottawa screening. He was in Seattle last year for the first day of protests.
Puscas says the protests weren’t as violent as the media reported last year and the film shows this.
A discussion will follow the film.