Thousands of students and young activists who joined the Battle in Seattle against the WTO have taken their lessons back home where they are making films, planning forums and panels, turning to e-mail and other media to sustain the momentum into the new year. PNS correspondent Diana Scott, a freelance writer living in San Francisco, covered the anti-WTO protests and has stayed in touch with many of the demonstrators.

For a new generation of activists, the anti-WTO "Battle in Seattle" was a massive teach-in whose lessons a month later are rippling out across campuses and communities around the world.

Before Seattle, Pomona College sophomore Danilo Trisi, 20, knew little about the WTO's rules governing patent law and bioengineering. But what he learned at a workshop at the Plymouth Congregational Church during the week of protests was enough to turn him into an avid opponent of his school's plan to build a new biotech institute.

Knoxville organizer Cheryl Brown, 32, of Tennessee Industrial Renewal Network (TIRN), a coalition of labor, community and religious groups promoting fair trade, a living wage and immigrant rights, saw Seattle as "an opportunity to show militia folks who the real enemy is." She came away from a workshop on "Women, Democracy and Development", held at a United Methodist Church, fortified by the notion that "our work is just beginning."

Japanese student environmentalists Etsuko Nakamura and Daisuke Naito, staying at the local youth hostel, went to Seattle unsure what the difference was between global trade, which they credited with rebuilding Japan's post-war economy, and corporate-style globalization. At a WTO-sponsored symposium for NGOs (non-governmental organizations), they learned how new trade rules were jeopardizing Japan's ecology, in particular its sustainable hardwood cultivation -- by promoting cheap softwood imports -- and concluded that WTO rules needed to be democratized to give more NGOs a voice.

In contrast to the college-centered protests of the 60s, NGOs were, in fact, the organizing force behind myriad panels, workshops, teach-ins and rallies held in churches, community centers, warehouses, arenas and labor halls all across Seattle. Groups like Seattle's Direct Action Network and People for Fair Frade, India's Diverse Women for Diversity, Washington D.C.'s Public Citizen and San Francisco's International Forum on Globalization transformed the city into a decentralized campus, as thousands of students swarmed to classes, undeterred by drizzle, teargas or police blockades.

Rather than seizing on one or two issues, their focus runs the gamut -- from promoting fair trade, human, animal and labor rights, environmental protection and democratic decision making to ending racism and sweat shops, organizing spiritual protests and teaching non-violent direct action.

Ray Giroux, a 25 year old Boston-based design engineer, found the synergy between campaigns galvanizing. Feeling "locked into the societal structure by my job" Giroux went to Seattle because he believed WTO rules destroy cultures by undercutting local industries. He also "needed to find something important to do with my life." Seattle "showed me new ways in which protesters can demonstrate in harmony, which creates an incredible sense of solidarity." He also found tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience, like banner hanging and forming human chains as powerful tools he plans to use again.

Although the full impact of the Seattle experience may be delayed by exams and holidays, returning students are using e-mail, print and visual media to sustain their momentum for the new year. At Southern California's Claremont Colleges (of which Pomona is one), students fired several rounds of e-mail to the entire student body and to Seattle Mayor Paul Schell to protest police violence in Seattle. They are scheduling teach-ins, panels and photo exhibits for the new year, as well as drum-beat articles in student newspapers.

In Middletown, Connecticut, Wesleyan students -- including several who were pepper-sprayed during non-violent direct action -- marched downtown to call attention to WTO rules' impact on local sovereignty, and plan to continue speaking out through forums and other "constructive actions," according to sophomore Sarah Norr.

At Humboldt State in Arcata, California, a slide and video session was scheduled during finals week, and teach-ins and community outreach are planned all next semester, says Lisa Di Pietro, vice president for student affairs of the Associated Students.

And a five-person interdisciplinary team from Metropolitan College of Denver is assembling a videodocumentary they shot in Seattle to "raise the consciousness of those who didn't attend." Team member Charmaine (no last name), a communications major who cites food safety along with child and slave labor as her primary concerns, no longer shops at the GAP or buys Nikes or hormone-tainted meat from mainstream supermarkets. In Seattle, she reclaimed her faith in speaking out, asserting, "We either become prisoners or warriors."