Over the course of the year leading up to the Seattle WTO Protests in November/December 1999, I was involved in five different groups, each of which had its own founding principles, strategic guidelines and organizational narratives assisting the writing of their respective members into the common story of the unfolding events: mine were the Industrial Workers of the World, Direct Action Network, Workers and Students For a Walkout Network, Seattle Tenant's Union and Seattle Anarchist Response. As things proceeded, each of these "characters" were joined by thousands of others also seeking to write their experiences into the common story, most of which entered the fray bearing mutually-exclusive concepts of Truth. While one group assumed that capitalism was the overarching influence driving the world into a race to the bottom, others held that it was Eurocentrism, while still others argued that it was technology. Thus, as anyone who has played the children's game "telephone" knows, it was all but inevitable that once the events were over, significantly divergent themes would emerge, particularly with respect to the finer details. And this necessarily decentered writing process only gets more complicated once the Seattle Police Department, large-scale non-profits, the military, corporate news and conservative think tanks start adding their own concepts of Truth to the mix. Well now, nearly a decade after the events, another character is adding elements to the plot with the assistance of iconic popular culture figures such as Woody Harrelson, Michelle Rodriguez, Ray Liotta and Outkast: this time it's Stuart Townsend's docudrama feature film "Battle in Seattle" (2007). While many activists and sympathizers find it tempting to refuse a Hollywood-funded narrative out-of-hand, perhaps we might take it as an opportunity to affirm the uniquely acentered yet tremendously resonant nature of the events that participants have almost always recalled as its most profound features.

After all, if as is widely acknowledged not only by participants, but by also by outside analysts, it was because so many of us strayed from our own organizational and personal concepts of Truth that the protests succeeded so thoroughly, on what basis could we now fail to extend the same dynamism and critical capacity to the potential audiences of Townsend's film? Self-professedly "non-violent" Direct Action Network activists for instance, did not always successfully avoid physical confrontations, nor did black-clad anarchists who preached the virtues of "militancy" always engage in property destruction. AFL-CIO unionists subject to a hierarchical organizational structure did not always follow their marching orders and universalist environmentalists often didn't amplify their own issue alone. Each of these characters in other words, entered the fray under the assumption that they would parrot the script assembled by the organizations with which they were affiliated; but more often than not what actually occurred was that they reinterpreted it within the contingent terms of particular situations. Similarly then, we should not forget that mass media audiences routinely rewrite the scripts of films such as Battle in Seattle on their own situationally-defined terms: the raging arguments on IMDB make this as abundantly clear as do the endless catalogue of "mash-ups" on YouTube. It is quite likely that Townsend's film contains many errors that could conceivably congeal over time into a distorted image of "history" - which suggests that there is some truth to the assertion that those of us who were on the ground organizers should probably try to intervene with our own subjective and intersubjective "memory". But as Stephen Duncombe points out in the book Dream: Reimagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy, in our time it is precisely on the terrain of fiction rather than non-fiction that the most truly consequential political battles are being waged.

While the "Spectacle" may seek to rewrite everything that exists within its own image (including in particular of course, its opposition), it may turn out that in doing so, like Bush's cynical appointment of African-Americans in his cabinet, it opens up the possibility of precisely that which the current configuration of reality cannot represent. I would argue then, that what really succeeded in Seattle was not the triumph of Truth over fantasy but much to the contrary, the dissolution of the narrative center from which everything might otherwise have proceeded, and most likely, collapsed. Essentially, what happened was that the mutually-exclusive script that holds sway over the imagination of much of the progressive left became liquified as all of the characters involved found they had to concede a certain amount of contestability to their own versions of it if thing were to proceed any further. It was in this manner that a network-centric "order out of chaos" emerged between them, one that successfully outmaneuvered one of the most well-planned police and military strategies ever conducted in a major American city. Even while they attempted to transform their clunky, hierarchical organizing logic into a more decentralized, network-centric one worthy of the protests, they could not compete with constituencies who proved highly capable of abandoning previously agreed-upon strategy in favor of situationally-defined tactics. This, I think was the most truly radical moment in the entire affair: the realization that no "script" can ever ensure that the center will hold and that the task in the thick of things is to figure out how to work in a manner that allows significant differences to resonate for a greater purpose. What was learned on the ground in Seattle was that by liquifying our respective scripts of Truth, this can be done without denying conflict in the process; not reducing the common story to the preferences of a particular group but instead by emphasizing difference and similarity alike within a plural framework of *truths*, an ethos William Connolly has dubbed "agonistic respect".

For this reason, rather than asserting Truth against "lies", I would argue that Townsend's film should be engaged as a demonstration of how powerful the network-centric approach can become when it adopts a more dynamic posture to the political identities our respective scripts solidify, by trading in a mutually-exclusive politics of "big-T Truth" for the more acentered, resonant one of "small-t truth". Ironically, such truths are best discovered not in abstract scientific or economic reports, but instead in such sources as a powerful narrative film, a heartfelt personal account, a well-crafted song or a sublime natural encounter - all of which approach the question of reality subjectively and intersubjectively rather than assuming some kind of divine access to it "objectively". In other words, a very different manner than that which still seems to hold sway over most of the progressive left today. Interestingly then, rather than any particular activist account per se, it is actually a chapter in the RAND Corporation book Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy called "Netwar in the Emerald City" that seems to grasp this sensibility more thoroughly than any account I have read. What it suggests is that what allowed the WTO Protests to successfully overcome the police and military strategy was not solidifying the different groups in the form of discrete organizations or larger coalitions so much as it was their dissolution in the zones of indistinction between divergent constituencies. As the report states, "at the critical moment in the street actions, the balance shifted to the Direct Action Network as nonunion protesters and a few union members left the AFL-CIO parade and joined the street protests, effectively sealing the success of the Direct Action Network’s day-long blockade". While some would dismiss this information since it's based on military and intelligence sources, I would suggest that it is precisely for that reason that it tells us so much about what went right on that particular day. Whereas most activist groups' primary gripe is often why their own issue didn't receive the greatest amount of attention, from the perspective of power, the ultimate concern is why they couldn't stop all of them (http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1382/MR1382.ch7.pdf).

This then, is how we should read RAND's observation that rather than sweeping the protestors out of downtown and into the redirected labor march back towards Memorial Stadium as police had planned, it was those who refused the logic of mutual-exclusivity (which is to say, to fall in line with the Truth asserted by their particular groupuscule), that had the greatest impact. As they note, "several thousand people broke away from the march, just in time to run into the renewed police push to move people away from the Convention Center. The momentum of the thousands moving toward the Convention Center carried several blocks south, past the parade’s planned pivot at 5th and Pike…the vandalism and looting occurred in the area evacuated by police to create a buffer zone between the DAN protesters and the AFL-CIO parade. The center of the vandalized area coincides with the turning point of the parade…[all of this meant that] the WTO protests succeeded in the streets through a combination of strategic surprise and tactical openness. The three key phases of the street actions leading to this success consisted of the Tuesday morning 'swarm', which blockaded strategic intersections; the collapse of the police strategy to suppress the Direct Action Network protests while allowing the AFL-CIO parade; and the failure of the AFL-CIO parade to engulf the Direct Action Network protests. Three things distinguished the N30 protests from the others that followed in other cities and countries. None of the later protests had an AFL-CIO contingent, a rampage of vandalism by anarchists, or a divided police command. The much-touted 'Teamsters and turtles together' alliance evaporated immediately". Clearly then, Townsend's film can't be much more threatening than any one of the groups was to the common story: just as the AFL-CIO members, DAN protestors and black blockers did when boxed-in by one of those groups, my argument is that we can most effectively intervene into this development not by shoring up mutually-exclusive identities all over again, but instead by positioning ourselves in the interstices between them.

It was in connection with my assumption of this network-centric approach which I learned by paying studying the Worker-Student Action Committees as the functioned during the Events of May '68, that I was interviewed by Jeremy Simer of the University of Washington's Center for Labor Studies in March 2000 (http://depts.washington.edu/wtohist/interview_index.htm). Comparing the RAND and CLS texts, particularly in the sections where I speak about my involvement in the breakaway labor march, it became especially clear to me that the primary reason for the Seattle WTO Protests' success was not adherence to Truth, but the temporary scrapping of that conceipt in favor of a more humble openness to truths such that tactics could take over from strategy and difference could resonate. For instance, when those of us in the labor march got word that the meetings had been shut down, we attempted to convince the officials with the megaphones to amplify this message to the thousands of assembled union members so that they would join the protesters downtown. Since they refused, we ran around informing all of the unions known to have militant rank-and-file memberships such as the ILWU and the Steelworkers of the news and when we reached the turnaround point, "we started chanting, 'Go downtown. Don’t turnaround. Go downtown. Don’t turnaround'. Everyone around us started chanting it. So we come to the line of marshals who are completely blocking off the way to get downtown and directing people to go back, and we’re like, 'We’re going downtown'. They’re like, 'You’re part of the labor march. You’re not going downtown. You’re going back. This is what we’ve negotiated with the Secret Service. It’s not going to happen'. We were like, 'We’re an autonomous union. We’re not part of the AFL-CIO, and we can do whatever we want. We’re going downtown'. So we started chanting, 'Go downtown. Don’t turnaround'. We finally just broke through".

While, one could perhaps assert that the IWW actually did stick to its own acclaimed script in this example in the sense of working as a subversive force within unorganized workplaces and already-existing labor unions, the same couldn't be said for the several thousands of rank-and-file unionists who peeled off with us, "effectively sealing the success of the Direct Action Network’s day-long blockade" (in the words of the RAND Corporation). For many of these workers, the refusal of the union bureaucrats to at least honor the spirit of Ron Judd's initial call for a General Strike put them at odds with the received wisdom about how to properly engage the WTO. The statement "Oh, great solidarity there, brother", as asserted to me by one of the parade marshals as thousands of rank-and-filers broke through, demonstrates clearly how Truth can just as easily serve the official line as it can that which breaks with it. From his perspective, solidarity meant following what the organization's officials call for while from that of the breakaway Steelworkers and Longshoremen, it meant provisionally dissolving supposedly mutual-exclusive boundaries, not in the name of affirming some greater strategic Truth that would artificially consolidate everyone, but rather in the name of a tactical politics of truths in the plural. As I replied to the parade marshal at the time, "that’s exactly what this is. We’re going downtown and trying to support the people who are actually shutting this thing down. That is solidarity". The reaction to Townsend's film suggests that much of the progressive left still hasn't learned the lesson our own actions at the Seattle WTO Protests ought to have taught us: that working together in a network-centric manner requires a loosening of one's own sense of self so that the radically democratic politics we espouse can actually function.

Therefore, if one of the most contentious aspects of the film is that it is the riot cop played by Woody Harrelson who receives the most three-dimensional role, perhaps we shouldn't contradict activist critics who suggest that this where critical attention ought to be focused. But instead of trying to redress the inadequate representation of protestors with the Truth, perhaps the contemporary moment as we experience it today would be better served by building precisely on the notion of the "dynamic riot cop" that Townsend's film asserts, championing the notion that like anyone else, they are people who are full of contradictory impulses and potential changes as well. In Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, was it not the seemingly most "patrioitic" soldier who engages in the most direct act of rebellion rather than the more predictable figure of the "rebel" hippie-soldier? Recall the RAND Corporation analysis: "none of the later protests had an AFL-CIO contingent, a rampage of vandalism by anarchists, or a divided police command": the division to which it refers was not only on the upper levels. When Ron Judd called for the general strike and many rank-and-file unionists took him on his word even after the message was watered down as a mere "Day of Action", several officers joined them in copying the more militant General Strike posters, posting them on their own lockers at the station in protest of the conditions they were being exposed to. Maybe if they had seen those in the streets as their natural allies rather than obvious adversaries, things might have turned out differently. The progressive left has suffered under the weight of Truth's universalizing impulse for far too long; indeed, the current political landscape reveals very clearly the costs that can be associated with continuing this legacy.