Imagine: November 1999, the streets of an American city—Seattle. Among thousands of people with placards, you see… giant turtles. Not real, of course—people in green cardboard-and-fabric shells. They wave their “paws,” chant slogans, and look a little ridiculous. But it was these turtles that became one of the most memorable images from protests that went down in history as the “Battle of Seattle”—and their story is surprisingly similar to what’s happening in the world right now.
What was happening in Seattle in 1999
In late November 1999, representatives from nearly 140 countries arrived in Seattle. They came for an important meeting of an organization called the WTO—the World Trade Organization. Think of it as a kind of club that sets trade rules between countries: who can sell what, what taxes to pay, and how to protect your own producers.
Sounds boring? Maybe. But those rules affect how much your sneakers cost, where your phone came from—and, most importantly for our story, whether it’s possible to save sea turtles.
About 50,000 people took to the streets of Seattle. Among them were factory workers, farmers, students, teachers, and environmental activists. They came from across the United States and from other parts of the world. Police used tear gas, a state of emergency was declared in the city, and the WTO meeting was derailed—delegates simply couldn’t get through the crowd. It was one of the loudest protests of the late twentieth century.
Why turtles?
This is where the most interesting part begins. A year before the protests, in 1998, the WTO made a decision that enraged environmentalists around the world.
In the United States, there was a law: shrimp fishers were required to use special nets with small “turtle exits”—openings through which sea turtles can escape and not suffocate. That saved thousands of sea turtles every year. Sea turtles are astonishing creatures—they’ve lived on our planet for more than 100 million years, survived the dinosaurs, but they cannot survive fishing nets.
A handful of countries that also sold shrimp to America complained to the WTO, arguing that the requirement was unfair and interfered with trade. And the WTO… agreed with them. The organization ruled that the U.S. “turtle law” violated the rules of free trade.
Environmental groups were furious. It seemed to them that trade rules mattered more than the lives of animals— that profit from selling shrimp mattered more than the creatures that had survived every mass extinction in Earth’s history.
That’s why the activists dressed as turtles.
