OT: Seattle's Wild Day (Long)

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Seattle, November 30, 1999 11:40 p.m.

No one expected the crowds to be so huge and and the protesters to be so tirelessly persistent. No one expected the police to use tear gas so early in the day. The first volleys of gas were hurled at about 10 a.m. at Sixth & Union. Shortly after this I left home and headed west to the city through Capitol Hill, which has in the past few weeks been a hotbed for the anti-WTO mass movement. Large warehouses have served as training and camping areas for the hard-core protesters, i.e., the young, green, keen activists from all over the world committed passionately to various political and social causes.

The east/west streets of Pike and Pine were closed by lines of these brightly clad anarcho-punks and peaceful protesters linking arms. I took Olive Way down and swerved back into the core of the city, taking advantage of the emerging sunshine to appreciate the leisurely carnival atmosphere at Pine & Fifth. It was immediately clear that many of the people milling about were European. I saw the same "Le Monde" correspondent who had breakfasted at the Sheraton on Sunday morning. The streets were closed to auto traffic, which allowed protesters to mill freely back and forth variously in the sunlit squares, as the Northwest Coast Native Americans once zigzagged the Puget Sound freely (the waterways being their marketplaces), and as old European cities that still have town centers foster crisscross access.

But I digress. In short, Seattle was magically transformed into Amsterdam. It felt strangely as though it were 1985, when hardly anyone was around on the streets downtown on a winter day.

MORNING EVENTS

I walked to the plush Belltown office where my friends work. After greetings, we took in the view from the building's roof then headed out on the street. The first business casualty we spotted was the little jeweler on Fourth Avenue that had had its window smashed, its alarm emitting a shrill protest. No police were about. Further down was a graphitti scrawl: "I don't know what the WTO is about; all I know is I hate rich people." This seemed an apt anthem for the anarcho-punks. We stopped at an Italian deli and ordered sandwiches. Then we wandered to the corner of Union & Fourth, milling about. I gave half of my sandwich to an exhausted looking protester. We then ambled slowly north down Fourth when suddenly there came from the crowd a loud cry and a surge of people. The police were clearing Union Street with tear gas. Clouds of the noxious stuff billowed overhead, and I groped in my pocket for my handkerchief.

What is tear gas like? It is very sharp and stinging to the eyes, throat, and lungs, and leaves an acrid odor in the air. I watched a few victims wash each others' red eyes out with water from their canteens and water bottles.

Luckily, we had just escaped direct attack in the nick of time. I felt strangely exhilarated. We milled about in the sun, waiting patiently for the arrival of the "big crowd" from the Seattle Center. I ordered a machiatto at a streetside espresso stand (in fact, the oldest surviving espresso stand in Seattle). I drank my espresso and noticed that my cohorts (a sibling group of three), were talking to a reporter. I joined the genepool. Bill was waxing on about something, then the reporter asked if I was a local, and what I thought. I mentioned the strange disconnect between seeing clouds of gas a block to the south and ordering and drinking a machiotto a block to the north. According to another friend, my sardonic comments were later broadcast on NPR at about 3 p.m.

THE BIG AFL/CIO MARCH ARRIVES

At the time my voice warbled on the radio I was still on the streets. We had walked south all the way down Fourth to meet the huge AFL/CIO procession, which had gathered earlier at Seattle Center under the Space Needle. They were further joined by a large contingent of University of Washington students. In addition to the teamsters, the steel unions, the machinists, the textile unions, etc., the march included all sorts of international splinter groups: environmentalists, pro-democracy watchers, those who would free Tibet, etc.

At one station (Fifth & Virginia), one could look down the hill and see a bright mass of blue Teamsters, a walking wall filling the streets, and down the other hill, simultaneously, came a sea of yellow coats: more union members. It was like Macy's Thanksgiving parade squared. These by-and-large American workers presented an inspiring picture of solidarity. The chants were, variously, "Hey hey, ho ho, WTO has got to go!" and "Hell no WTO!"

Meanwhile, at a pocket at Fourth & Union, where the anarco-punks and Euro-journalists were camped, a group of drummers paused to allow a sweetly rendered, unaccompanied version of the old workers' folksong "Solidarity Forever." After listening in respectful silence to the feminine voices, the drummers started back in.

Labor made a BIG STAND, and shipping ports all along the West Coast were closed today in solidarity. The march was huge, peaceful, and successful. Because the fringe anarcho-punks had captured the edgy stage of civil disobedience, the Teamsters and environmentalists came off as the middle ground. NBC nightly news from NYC, caught unawares, took a quick pro-jobs stance in their nightly report, feeling, no doubt, that this was the one issue that most American viewers could sympathize with.

Only here, only in a democracy that protects freedom of speech, could the protests be heard. In America the television and news media are forced to ask "What are they so upset about?" After all, American protesters have every right to gather peacefully. We can complain all we wish about our civil rights being bruised in Seattle today, but at least we are not being shot or rounded up and interrogated, as one could expect in China.

WHO WAS ORGANIZED

Both groups, the protesters and the police, were remarkably well organized. It was only the WTO itself that seemed unorganized. Mike Moore, WTO's spokesman, was on the defensive. "We are on schedule," he said, despite "The Economist" reporting that the WTO has no clearcut agenda at all. And the delegates were stymied access. In fact, a Canadian reporter for "Time" told me he had seen the same group of Canadian delegates twice doomed to return to their hotels, where no doubt they are even now holed up, drinking little bottles of Cutty Sark and lying in bed talking long distance on the phone. They are tamped down in the heart of Seattle, which now looks like a veritable ghost-town, shut down, locked tight, exhausted, smokey, abandoned of all normal commerce and traffic.

MORE TEAR GAS, AND CONCUSSION GRENADES

Eventually we headed back to the office at First & Virginia and watched live local television feeds of various standoffs amidst gas plumes. Then at about 4:30 p.m. we stepped back out into the street. Our aim was to head back home to Capital Hill before it got dark.

We swung back to the core center of activity, the Pike/Pine downtown district between Third & Sixth. The sky was darkening, twilight was casting its dusky glow, and the protestors were gathered peaceably in the streets amid the stench of gas and sweet odors of cigars, cigarettes, and incense. The heady atmosphere was one of solidarity, one of the most striking group situations I have ever encountered. Again, I can only best liken it to nightlife in Amsterdam, where people congregate freely in a marketplace fashion, wandering about in an atmosphere of mellow animalism.

Then something ugly happened. Right under "Nike Town," a huge structure of grostesque black plexiglas, some of the alienated began to show more marked signs of visceral discontent. Some rushing, pushing, shouting. Seeing the danger, we advanced north on Fifth. Then there was a loud piercing cry from the crowd just south on the same block, and like wildfire, the whole herd whooped and ran, ran down the street. My most dreaded fear had suddenly flared up: I was caught in the vortex of a riot.

I ran, terrified, I knew not where. "Stop!" shouted one of the protest organizers. "Don't run!!" screamed others. Still, I ran, I knew not whither.

After I felt safely far from the mad crowd, I stopped running. With a sinking heart I realized I had lost my friends. Then, miraculously, I found one, and we found another. Then a fourth person joined us. (This was S. He was an old friend of twenty years who had originally introduced me so many years ago to one of the friends I happened to already be with. It's a small world.) We all of us linked arms and got the hell out of there. Again, by a stroke of luck or timing, we had just avoided being directly gassed.

It was then that we heard the first concussion grenade set off down by the Nike at about 5 p.m.

What is a concussion grenade like? It is a noise device used by the police to stun the ears and frighten the bejesus out of a crowd. Even at a few blocks' distance the sound of the exploding grenades was frightening. I have more respect now for those protesters who fought on against the gas and the grenades.

We walked back up the hill. All around us we heard the gossip and rumor of curfew and martial law. By this time a state of civil emergency had been declared by Governor Gary Locke, who had been huddled with Police Chief Norm Stamper and Mayor Paul Schell.

In fact, a curfew was to go into effect at 7 p.m. "Marshall law" per se had not been declared, but a state of civil emergency.

POLICE TACTICS

The police continued to slowly advance on the crowd downtown the rest of the night, pushing them east toward Capital Hill ("We'll send 'em on home," the mayor probably strategized). From about 5 p.m. until 10 p.m., when the bulk of the protesters reached the border of the designated curfew area (about Pine & Bellevue, just east of I-5), the general tactical strategy the riot police employed was to bellow from their Darth Vader headgear "This is a warning. Please cooperate and disperse. A citywide curfew has been declared" (or words to that effect). After this they would lob tear gas pellets at the youths. The protesters would run madly (this was the sort of freaky dash I had been caught in). Then a protester would rush up to the canister of gas laying smoking on the street, pick it up, and hurl it back at the riot police. The group would then cheer wildly and advance back toward the police and face them off again at their respective lines. Generally the protesters and police were formed in opposing lines separated by about six feet. The police worked methodically, patiently, slowly, working foot by foot to push the protesters out of the downtown core.

Which leads us to speculative questions any thoughtful person is bound to ask:

1) Why did the Seattle Police use tear gas and pepper spray on peaceful protesters? Why didn't they simply co-exist all night with the protesters in their respective camps?

As far as we could determine, one of goals of the police was to keep certain streets open for WTO delegates to pass into the convention center, which was not wholly successful -- some WTO delegates had to physically and literally climb over protesters, and at least one delegate attacked a protester who was dressed as a sea turtle! Astonishing footage showed a riot policeman pull the furious delegate off the beleaguered turtle.

The second goal was to enforce the curfew that the mayor declared. The mayor wished to push the crowds out of the downtown core which was being vandalized at a few points. All in all, the real losers of the night were a few local Starbucks, Nike, MacDonald's, and Gap franchises. Many other businesses suffered broken glass and graphitti. This out-and-out vandalism and thievery was conducted by a tiny minority of black-clad youth who called themselves "The Anarchists." It is noteworthy that they were themselves policed by other protesters who exhorted them to stop the violence. Also noteworthy: most of the clubs and cafes on Capital Hill were quiet at night, leading one to expect that many of the protesters were from out of town. The violent fringe destroyed paper boxes containing the popular weekly "The Stranger," for example. Local youths simply wouldn't do that: "The Stranger" is their paper of record.

2) Why didn't the police make mass arrests, or at least arrest the core protesters who kept resisting the gas and surging back toward them? If the police had decided to make mass arrests, they would have certainly made the already volatile atmosphere even more explosive. Moreover, they were grossly outnumbered, which is why they called in reinforcements in the form of National Guardsmen and state troops. In short, they would have had to go physical in a vulnerable situation. At last count, they made only about 20 or so arrests. Reports of the arrestees, detained at the old Sand Point naval station in the north end, painted them as peacefully awaiting processing while playing cards.

EVENING ON CAPITAL HILL

We ordered some takeout Thai food at a joint on 15th, took it home, and sat in front of the TV watching the local news, whicih stopped feeding at about 8:30 p.m. Kudos to KIRO News, station 7, for making a wide range of voices and views heard. Many of the journalists were repeatedly gassed, and we even heard the heroic chokings of Chris Legeros as he went under while still on microphone.

After recounting the events of the day, my good friends saw me home, where we heard in the distance the last vestiges of protesters who had gathered on Capital Hill, in my backyard, so to speak, returning to the place they had started out from at 7 a.m. in the morning.

Oddly, no estimates of crowd sizes were hazarded today, but the word on the street ranged from 30 thousand to 60 thousand, including the AFL/CIO, Capital Hill, and UW contingents.

SEATTLE TARNISHED

Seattle today witnessed THEE major American protest of the decade. No one has seen action like this since Vietnam. Ironically, the protest began at about 7:30 a.m. right under the Paramount Theater at Fifth & Pine, which is showing "Miss Saigon." Bereted youths camped on the tops of Metro busses were singing under the Paramount's marquis which bore the musical's title.

The major media will harp on the pockets of violence and gas, forgetting that the major incentive of at least the more hard-core protesters was partially accomplished: to shut down the ministerial meeting at all costs, and that thousands of sincere protesters from across the country staged a successful anti-WTO rally.

The hospitals have reported only minor physical injuries. Everyone, police and protesters alike, evinced remarkable restraint by and large, even when costumed as sea turtles, trees, and Darth Vader automatons.

Will this day's historical events forever tarnish Seattle's glow as a hipster tourist town of laid-back nihilists with a live-and-let-live philosophy? Will Seattle once again return to its prior incarnation as a sleepy backwoods outpost for losers?

We can only hope so.

Apologies for having rambled on. For the record, I support free trade, but believe it must be conducted in a democratically accountable fashion. Also for the record, I stand behind my prediction that Seattle will not be shut down by Y2k, despite the tension, turmoil, and tear gas of today.

Choppers are still flying overhead, and the President is due to arrive any minute at Boeing Field.

-- Celia Thaxter (celiathaxter@yahoo.com), December 01, 1999

Answers

Celia,

Now I haven't followed this story very closely, but, I'm just curious -- Why would American workers and others, many of whom probably wear boots made in China, protest the WTO conference?

-- eve (123@4567.com), December 01, 1999.


A very wonderful and accurate report of what happened yesterday. I am NOT a writer so you have said it in a way that would be impossible for me to do. Wasn't it so SPECIAL yesterday while being down there. All of us there together from so many organizations and so many places in UNITY to have our voices be heard and try to make a difference in this world we live in. Also I remember that there was also some joking between the Police and us in the line as people would try to get thru us but would NEVER get by the police except if had WTO credentials. How special it was unknowing how ugly it was to get a short time later. It was one good and special day.

-- Kayla (kaylam@jetcity.com), December 01, 1999.

Thanks for the cogent update Celia. Well written.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), December 01, 1999.


Celia

Wow. Great reporting! Interesting to see how this pans out. I know there are plenty of Canadians down there. They had the press interviewing folks that were "training" for effective protests. The borders had lines of buses, cars whatnot heading for the big event.

I know the protesters in BC can be very militant although anti violent. They are used to living in trees and bugging the loggers,(who have a tendency to be violent).

Good to hear the injuries were minimal, and you managed to get a thrill with out getting hurt. Thank you very much for the first hand report.

-- Brian (imager@home.com), December 01, 1999.


BTW... Celia,

You ought to send in a copy of your comments to the Seattle Times.

Diane

See thread...

Seattle Times: What Do You Think? (E-Mail Feedback Request About The WTO & Protestors)

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id= 001ttL



-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), December 01, 1999.



Thanks Celia for the eyewitness view of how things are going.

Free trade? Not free lunch to other countries workers and hugh profits to fat bulging pockets of American CEO's at the expense of our fellow American's jobs. The American people's first priority should be the protection of it's ---own people's--- livelyhood "jobs" or we are killing ourselves, to help someone else live. I did not give birth to children to see them starve.

Obo

-- Obo (susanwater@excite.com), December 01, 1999.


Obo,

I don't understand what you are talking about. Could you expand on your explanation?

Thank you,

-- eve (123@4567.com), December 01, 1999.


Not to worry. Y2K will KO WTO.

-- go local (forced@village.solutions), December 01, 1999.

Celia...

Drop me an email, please.

-- Ken Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), December 02, 1999.


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