People from all walks of life marching in the street with giant hand-crafted puppets; large banner-drops with political messages; protesters blocking traffic; police in riot gear, using teargas on demonstrators; mass arrests—these scenes might seem familiar these days, but it is a description of the 1999 protest against a meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle Washington.
Kayte Young talks with Ian Bell and Alex Megaro,the makers of a documentary film, WTO/99. It’s about the events surrounding the meeting of this newly formed international governing body. The film makers came to Bloomington in December of 2025 for the screening of the film at the IU Cinema.
It’s a conversation about how they made this fully archival film, what happened that week in Seattle and how this massive protest in 1999 was, in some ways, the testing ground for new tactics used by both activists and law enforcement that have become standard practice ever since.
