What can I say? Everything just sort of came together by word of mouth, such that I found myself arriving in Seattle with a group from the U of C, having driven non-stop together in a rented van. That was very much the spirit of those days: an event directed by no one, the power of which surprised everyone.

A massive union march, NGO deliberations, civil disobedience, and real anarchy in the streets. There were so many different strains, so many different faces were present. I especially remember the spirit of effective, creative anarchy in the air. This ranged from affinity group based organizing and planning of protests blocking the WTO's meetings, to the pluralism and spontaneity of expression in drumming and art, to the variety of approaches to contesting space between demonstrators and the forces of the State.

The mood on the ground was really one of discovering that you had much more to fear from riot cops and their various arsenals of truncheons, plastic bullets, tear gas, concussion grenades and possible arrest, than you did from the anarchy going on around you. Ah, to breathe the free, albeit sometimes tear gas filled air, of those days.

So what happened after those days? Well, an immediate result was that the neo-liberal drive by the WTO to subvert the power of governments to choose differently for their economies, a sort of NAFTA for the entire globe fell apart. Up until 9/11 at least, I'd say the clash between the power of the elite state, of global capital, and of the (misnamed) anti-globalization movement of people like you and me all over the world, present at various international meetings, grew in intensity at each meeting. From origins pre-Seattle, such as at APEC here in Canada a few years earlier, up to Genoa in mid 2001, the pattern continued to unfold.

The immediate effects of 9/11 - mass fear, lock-step muting of popular criticism of the powers that be, and the new acceptance of an increase in the powers of the police state - all were like a cold shower over the movement. And yet, post-9/11, it received a final flowering in the unprecedented global outcry against the planned US invasion of Iraq. Remember that those demonstrations were among the greatest in world history; no small achievement.

And the influence of that opposition helped such that the common lasting images of the Bush/Cheney years are destruction in Iraq, torture in Guantanamo Bay, criminal incompetence following Hurricane Katrina, and the shoes thrown at Bush's head. Compare the difference with the lasting images for Reagan's decade in the mainstream. Despite the fact that both regimes were pretty similar in spirit and action, George W. Bush couldn't be spun into another "Great Communicator".

One final point: movements of the sort embodied the "antiglobalization" movement, are like vast, unpredictable storms of rage and love - they might begin with the metaphorical flapping of a butterfly's wings, build up into something really big and definite, and then dissipate in many new directions. Phenomena as diverse as Micheal Moore's films having mainstream appeal, the rise of fairly traded products on the highstreet, the riots in Greece one year ago, the emergence of a bloc of broadly left Latin American regimes, the rise of the Linkespartei in Germany, the revitalizing of anarchist inspired collectives, the weakening of end of history "free market" orthodoxy, in these and many other new directions evident all over the world, how could one not trace in them the influence of the wake of the movement embodied in those days in Seattle 10 years ago?