For many of the organizers and attendees, the week of November 30, 1999, in Seattle, Washington, was a high-water mark of their activist lives. During the “Battle of Seattle,” an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 protesters descended on the Washington State Convention and Trade Center with one intention: to stop the World Trade Organization (WTO)’s Ministerial Conference. The protesters viewed the WTO as the embodiment of globalization — an unelected group seeking to supersede local and national politics in an effort to deregulate trade and ensure corporate dominance worldwide. Despite brutal police tactics and biased coverage from mainstream media, the protesters were successful in significantly disrupting the conference.

The anti-globalization movement’s momentum lasted for a year or two. After September 11, 2001, its energy dissipated as many of the organizers turned their attention to the US “war on terror.” Nevertheless, the 1999 WTO protests can be seen as an important antecedent to the various mass movements of the twenty-first century: from the Iraq War protests to the Occupy movement to the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign to the Black Lives Matter protests and the recent university encampments in support of Palestinian liberation.

D. W. Gibson’s One Week to Change the World: An Oral History of the 1999 WTO Protests provides an oral history of the Battle of Seattle, as told by the organizers, labor leaders, protest musicians, political commentators, law enforcement, and others who were present that week. Gibson compiles the accounts of sources ranging from Noam Chomsky to members of Soundgarden and Dead Kennedys into a thrilling narrative of that week, which was at turns malicious and miraculous.