Amidst the tear gas and noise, it is possible to see something historic in the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in Seattle. Protesters represent a remarkably broad coalition, and are learning -- and will spread -- some vital lessons. PNS associate editor David Bacon writes widely on immigrant and labor issues.

SEATTLE -- Those who march or stand or sit in protest in the streets of Seattle are making history, and they know it. And like the great marches against the Vietnam war, or the first sit-ins in the South in the late 1950s, it is not always easy to see just what history is being made, especially for those closest to the events.

Tear gas, rubber bullets and police sweeps, the object of incessant media coverage, are the outward signs that the guardians of the social order have grown afraid. And there's always a little history in that.

Poeina, a young woman sitting in the intersection at the corner of Seventh and Stewart, waiting nervously for the cops to cuff her and take her away in her first arrest, knows what she and her friends have already won. "I know we got people to listen, and that we changed their minds." It was a statement of hope, like the chant that rose from streets filled with thousands of demonstrators as the police moved in on Nov. 30: "The whole world is watching!"

The Seattle protests put trade on the map of public debate, making WTO a universally recognized set of initials in a matter of hours.

But perhaps the greatest impact of Seattle will be on the people who are here. Just as anti-war demonstrations and civil rights sit-ins were focal points from which people fanned out across the country, Seattle is also a beginning. What will the people who filled its downtown streets take with them back into this city's rainy neighborhoods, or to similar communities in towns and cities across the country?

A certain understanding of the world is being forged in these streets -- based, to begin with, on who was there. Environmentalists came protesting the impending destruction of laws protecting clean air and water. Animal rights activists came to protect sea turtles. Trade unionists came fighting for jobs and protesting child labor. Fair trade campaigners arrived ready to debate corporate domination of the process of establishing which trade rules.

Even the generational culture of the protesters started to spill over from one group into another. Environmental activists in their 20s came armed with the tactics learned from battles in the forests of Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. They carry giant puppets, dress in costumes rather than bearing signs, and lay down in busy intersections at the height of morning rush hour.

Groups of 20 and 30 chain their arms together, slipping metal sleeves over hands and chains to make it hard for police to cut them apart. Two years ago, Humboldt County (CA) sheriffs responded to this tactic by swabbing pepper spray directly into the protesters' eyes. Even for veterans of civil disobedience, the chain tactic demands determination.

As police rush in to cut them apart, a young woman cries out in tears to the helmeted and shielded officers, "I'm your daughter!"

Later that day, tens of thousands of union members march into downtown. Having shut down all the ports along the Pacific Coast from Alaska to San Diego, union members chant and wave picket signs as their ranks fill the streets as far as the eye can see. Members march with their own union's color jacket or T-shirt, carrying banners and hundreds of signs printed for the occasion.

Many protesters were visibly impressed by the strength of the numbers and the planning. For organizer Annie Decker, "The power and size of it made me feel joyful. I was proud that we were together, bringing the WTO into the public eye."

This culture of protest is starting to spread -- protesters in the redwood forests wear union jackets, and giant puppets have shown up on union picket lines in Oakland, California. But under the culture is the germ of an idea -- the linkage.

For unionists, the depredations of a global trading system has pitted workers in many countries against each other in a race to the bottom in wages and workers' rights. Environmental activists see a system which values profit-making over laws protecting health and the environment. Rather than creating an atomized assembly -- each group pursuing its own interests in isolation -- protesters came ready to see what they had in common.

Standing near an intersection filled with sitting bodies, Decker calls her own realization liberating. "We don't have to just express an opinion on one issue," she says. "Trade and the power of corporations are affecting us in so many areas that we can all make connections, and see the common element behind the problems we share."

President Clinton may regret planning a summit of the powerful which has become overshadowed by street protest. It is an indictment, not of a particular company, or even a single country, but of a whole economic order which is uniting its enemies in opposition to it.