The Third Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) was held in Seattle from November 30 to December 3, 1999. Trade ministers and other officials from the WTO's 135 member nations met in an unsuccessful attempt to plan negotiations to further deregulate free trade. Tens of thousands of activists for many causes gathered to protest what they saw as the WTO's favoring of corporate interests over social and environmental concerns.

Thousands of college and high school students joined the WTO protests on November 30th. Here, University of Washington (UW) students from the activist Chicano student organization MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlan) get ready to march. The group dressed in black and wore red Zapatista masks as a symbol of the struggle for Indigenous sovereignty, and freedom from political and economic oppression.

Caption information source: "MEChA and Chicano Student Organizations 1967-2012" for the Mapping American Social Movements Project at the University of Washington, retrieved from https://depts.washington.edu/moves/MEChA