Join us in learning, creating and amplifying a People’s History of the Battle of Seattle told by the people, groups and movements who participated and made it happen. It will only work if we participate and make it work.

We seek to turn history upside down. We aim to replace their corporate media and elite "history from above" and dis-information with our own people’s "history from below." We are challenging ourselves, our diverse movements and you to not merely criticize corporate media, but to proactively document and publicize our own history ourselves.

'History from Below,' author and historian Jeremy Brecher writes, "Until recently, history was often regarded as solely a matter of what the powerful, the famous, and the wealthy thought and did. It was "history from above." What ordinary people felt and what they tried to accomplish was regarded as insignificant, not even worth regarding as part of history."

At the 2007 United States Social Forum activists issued a call that reads in part:

The story of popular resistance to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle in 1999 is a story of how people power can change the world. It is a dangerous example for the global elite, and a powerful one for movements.

For eight years, the US corporate media, global elites, and their police have been twisting and marginalizing the truth, in order to invent their own story of Seattle 1999 and the stories of social movements' resistance and victories. These lies and revisions of history have been used in an attempt to criminalize and repress our protests, movements, and mobilizations.

It's time that we in the social movements tell our own stories, reclaim our own histories, and publicly fight damaging myths of our movements past and present. We must intervene in the public understanding of what happened, what is happening, and what it all means. Stories are how we understand the world and thus shape the future—they are part of our fight against corporate power, empire, war, and social and environmental injustice and for the alternatives that will make a better world.

LET THOSE WHO MAKE HISTORY TELL IT!

We want you, your organization and/or community to tell your story and share your photos and video. Check out the People’s History of the Battle of Seattle and contribute your stories!