Seattle City Council hearing on WTO unrest, the first, lasts eight hours on December 8, 1999.

  • By David Wilma
  • Posted 1/01/2000
  • HistoryLink.org Essay 2146
See Additional Media

On December 8, 1999, the Seattle City Council opens hearings into failures by Seattle police and civilian officials in planning for and dealing with protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) during the week of November 30, 1999. The meeting room at the Seattle Public Library, which accommodates 200 persons, is quickly filled for the 4:00 p.m. meeting. Speakers line up out the library doors and around the block in a pouring rain for a chance at three minutes to testify. Of 120 speakers, only three commend Seattle police for their efforts in controlling crowds and unrest. The meeting adjourns after eight hours of testimony.

After the hearing, Councilman Jim Compton, who was assigned to head an ad-hoc Council investigation of the WTO events, stated, "It galvanized my determination to get some answers for what the hell went wrong. There were some genuine horror stories I heard."

Mayor Paul Schell (1937-2014) had asked to attend the hearings, but Council President Sue Donaldson told him that the hearing was a "council event."

Because of the large interest in the hearings, Council President Donaldson scheduled a second hearing on December 14, 1999, at the Seattle Center.


Sources:

The Seattle Times, December 9, 1999 (http://www.seattletimes.com/news/local/html98/ coun_19991209.html).


Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Major Support for HistoryLink.org Provided By: The State of Washington | Patsy Bullitt Collins | Paul G. Allen Family Foundation | Museum Of History & Industry | 4Culture (King County Lodging Tax Revenue) | City of Seattle | City of Bellevue | City of Tacoma | King County | The Peach Foundation | Microsoft Corporation, Other Public and Private Sponsors and Visitors Like You