You make an interesting point.
I was living in Seattle in '99, and working downtown at the Westin Hotel, where some of the bigwigs in the WTO conference were staying (including Bill Gates, if the rumors were true). The WTO protests were a fucking hassle. Most of the protesters were literally wearing GAP and Banana Republic clothing while protesting. Hypocrites. Some of them were protesting WTO, but plenty of them were just in the crowds participating in a big clusterfuck.
The police response was pretty bad. If you actually lived downtown, you had to sneak past "curfew" lines just to get home. I had a friend get shot with a plastic bullet just trying to get home after a night out drinking. Those things are no joke. They're non-lethal, but hurt like hell and leave a 3 inch bruise (on torso.. prob. varies).
After curfew, the police were shooting tear gas at peaceful protesters, forcing them out of the downtown area - into residential neighborhoods. Well, now people who were trying to sleep are out in the streets protesting the cops, not WTO. Then the cops tear gas again, and now people who weren't out of their houses yet are literally forced into the streets to retreat from the tear gas. My friends and I were bouncing to each others apartments every night to get away from the smell of tear gas.
Not much of the protests I saw were about the WTO. They started that way, small, but the police response was bad and caused the situation to escalate.