"Battle in Seattle"

[PatSeg]

Just watched this movie about the protests in Seattle against the WTO in 1999. I don't know how I'd missed it. Evidently it didn't get much exposure. I rented it because there was a preview on another DVD.

It was a very powerful movie. If you get a chance I highly recommend it. I am appalled at my former ignorance.

[tavalon]

1. My hubby was involved

I've been to WTO reunions and I promise you the stories they tell are not the media approved ones.

[PatSeg]

3. Thats for sure

which is probably why I never heard much about Seattle. Hopefully this sleeper will get some exposure on DVD.

[Matariki]

51. Yep, I was there too.

It was both appalling and exhilarating. On one hand it renewed my faith in my fellow citizens showing up in such vast numbers - all sorts of people, a vast range of age and economic classes. I had thought that America had become completely apathetic and it was good to see that this wasn't entirely the case.

The stand off with the police was chilling. They even shot rubber bullets & tear gas at a crowd that included our City and County Council Members.

[paulsby]

91. i was involved from the riot cop side

it was interesting times, that's for sure

[SeattleGirl]

2. I lived through it.

It was ugly.

Most of the people involved in the WTO protest marches were very cool, but then the goddamned self-proclaimed anarchists had to come in and start busting windows, turning over trash cans and newspaper stands, and putting the ugly all over it.

And the cops sure as hell didn't help, since they kicked into high riot mode.

I totally backed the protest marchers, but I wanted to gobsmack the anarchists (many of whom, if I recall, had no idea what the WTO was or why people were protesting it). I wasn't too fond of the cops either.

I felt I lost my city to insanity for a couple of days.

[PatSeg]

4. In 1999

I have to confess I didn't have a clue what the WTO was and the media made sure no one knew what really happened there. As is often the case, the truth eventually comes out.

[SeattleGirl]

5. Frankly, I didn't either, until they met here. I didn't understand what

they were or why people were protesting them, so I did some research.

And as I said, I could totally support the protesters.

But the anarchists? No fucking way.

They trashed my city, and I resented the hell out of it.

Cops didn't help matters.

It hurt, what happened here. It was almost like a home invasion.

[PatSeg]

6. I first heard about the WTO

in an independent film and I too did some research. This particular movie filled in a lot of the blanks for me. It brings to mind a lot of futuristic movies about corporatist governments and it is frightening to see it become a reality in my lifetime.

[SeattleGirl]

7. Agreed.

I had heard the WTO mentioned, but until I started looking into them, I really didn't understand what they were about.

Now I know, and my reaction is: :scared: :grr:

BTW, what was the film?

[PatSeg]

8. I learned more from movies

than I have from the media - "The Constant Gardener" was very revealing. I own a lot of political films.

The movie was "Battle in Seattle" with Wood Harrelson, Ray Liotta, and Charlize Theron. It was directed by an Irish guy who read about it in a book and spend several years researching it. The characters are fictional, but the overall stories obviously are true.

[SeattleGirl]

9. Thanks. I didn't go see the movie when it was playing here.

I wasn't ready to relive those few days.

I, too, have learned a lot from movies, especially documentaries and movies based (pretty realistically) on true stories.

[PatSeg]

10. I put off watching it for a few days

as I knew it was very disturbing - reminded me of film clips of Chicago in 1968, I thought those days were behind us.

Parts of it were hard to watch, but the ending was surprisingly positive.

[Truth2Tell]

54. Some things to remember when you're freaking out

about the "anarchists:"

- There were very few anarchists at the WTO protests, numbering in the dozens out of 50,000+ demonstrators.

- The Seattle Police were using chemical spray, teargas and other violent tactics long before any anarchists arrived on the scene. 99% of the people arrested at WTO were not anarchists and most violated no law.

- the damage caused by vandals and anarchists amounted to a handful of broken windows and a few spray painted walls, hardly "trashing" our city.

- The media and the police chose to highlight the troublemakers at WTO in order to divert attention from the legitimate concerns of the protesters and in order to justify their own criminal behavior.

I know these things because I was smack dab in the middle of the action the whole time. The first teargas canister launched that day missed my head by inches.

[SeattleGirl]

79. Pardon me, but I wasn't "freaking out".

The propensity on this board to assign words, thoughts, and actions to people by others is amazing.

I didn't like what happened.

Not at all.

Not by the anarchists.

Not by the cops.

So sue me.

[Truth2Tell]

80. OK, fair enough

although you did say anarchists "trashed" our city, which is utterly absurd. More vandalism happens on an average weekend in Seattle than was caused by anarchists at the WTO protests. The reason this "anarchist" meme touches such a nerve is because it's directly in line with baloney story that the media and the police contrived to justify their abusive and undemocratic behavior.

I'll admit, your "blame the anarchists and the cops both" storyline is the most widely held by people who watched the events on TV, it is not widely held by people who were actually there.

[paulsby]

92. and i was smack dab in the middle from the riot cop side

let's look at some other facts.

mayor paul schell was a complete idiot. he conclusively determined riots 'can't happen here' cause it's oh so peaceful seattle and thus left his force with WAY WAY WAY too little supplies and training.

also, in nearly every european city where they had WTO riots, there were very significant injuries and even deaths from the hands of the riot cops.

in seattle, there was very minimal # of injuries, and no deaths.

i had metric assloads of crap thrown at me to include bottles.

yes, it was a small %age of idiot protestors but there were plenty of people there who didn't even know what the WTO was, but were just using it as an excuse to get off rioting.

two guys standing right in front of me typified this "what's this whole WTO thing?" "I don't know. who cares? this is fucking cool. we get to fucking go off in the streets dood. " and crap like that.

again, the vast majority of protestors were peaceful and restrained and so were the cops. i was frankly amazed at the restraint on both sides, and we compared very very very favorably to europe cops

[Truth2Tell]

100. Well, I watched the police

use violence, ie tear gas and pepper spray and kicking etc in large doses on non-violent protesters LONG before any violence or vandalism was committed by ANY protesters that day. It was disgusting, large scale and organized police violence against non-violent citizens. There are ways to reasonably address non-violent civil disobedience that aren't deliberately sadistic, but the clear policy of the police that day was to deliberately hurt people in order to send some kind of extra-judicial message. You should be ashamed of yourself for being a part of that disgusting anti-American thuggery, IMO.

[paulsby]

102. what i saw

was 100% different from what you saw.
and contrary to your suggestions, i am fiercely proud of my performance that day, as well as my fellow officers.

restraint was immense

[Truth2Tell]

104. Plenty of videos of the violent police behavior

out there. I can link them up if you like.

Or maybe they are fake? :shrug:

[paulsby]

106. i've seen plenty of the videos

including the ones WE made (we videotaped all our actions per protocol).

the use of force was immensely restrained.

[Truth2Tell]

107. immensely restrained?

Orwellian. Up is down and truth is fiction. When police spray pepper spray directly into the eyes of protesters sitting cross-legged in the middle of the street by pulling their heads back by their hair that is not "immensely restrained." When police kick and shove protesters standing with locked arms in a peaceful line, that is not "immensely restrained." When police fire rubber bullets at short range into crowds of non-violent people that is not "immensely restrained." Maybe you have constructed some alternate reality in your mind so you don't have to face your personal complicity. The human mind works in strange ways.

The police initiated the violence that day. It was a deliberate policy to use violence against non-violent protesters. The fact that a riot broke out as a result should have been no surprise to anyone.

This series of videos provides a nice overview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mAWslHmiok

Lots more at the link.

Edit to add: the courts that issued all the judgments to the abused protesters after the fact apparently saw things differently than you did as well. Weird.

[paulsby]

108. that is complete crap

and the courts did NOT issue judgments negatively about the force being unrestrained.

the complaints were primarily about the unlawful arrests which were brought about by idiot mayor schell's unconstitutional "no protest zones" and other such crap.

the use of FORCE was immensely restrained.

the injuries suffered were minimal and sporadic despite the fact that we were pelted with bottles, and there was full scale rioting going on.

we didn't start firing rubber bullets, etc. until we were attacked. i was on the line 16-19 hrs per day for 5 straight days and saw it first hand

[Truth2Tell]

110. It's all on video.

At this point you are just denying what anyone can can see with their own eyes. Saying over and over that it didn't happen won't make it so. Sorry.

[paulsby]

111. sorry

i've seen the videos too

and they don't show what u claim

[Truth2Tell]

114. I linked to bunch in my previous post.

People can watch and decide for themselves. All very clear. Denial isn't just a river in Egypt.

[paulsby]

115. yes, people can

use of force is never pretty. (neither is comedy, just ask steve martin).

it was a RIOT

and of COURSE innocents got deluged with pepper spray, etc. there is NO way around that. heck, *i* got deluged with pepper spray.

the fact is - check the hospital and injury reports. despite 5 days of riots, despite scores of skirmishes, crap thrown at us, shit lit on fire, windows smashed, etc. etc. harborview hospital etc. reported mostly minor injuries etc.

that is amazing and compares VERY favorably to nearly every WTO incident in europe that preceded the battle in seattle.

it was a dangerous and delicate situation, we were GROSSLY outnumbered, and at times we only had a tenuous hold on maintaining the streets and public order.

there has NEVER been a riot in the history of mankind where there were not some incidents of over (and under) reaction by authorities. WTO was no different.

i can't tell you how many assmunches TRIED to goad us into overreaction, but we were incredibly restrained.

i was standing right next to a buddy of mine and two (probably anarchist) idiots stood right in front of him and yelled at him "you fucking ni**er" " i fucked your mother last night" and crap like that for 15 minutes before they gave up. and of course i am sure they had their buddies standing behind them with video to catch any reaction.

that's the kind of crap that people were doing, and the cops were remarkably restrained. i got hit at several times with projectiles.

again, it was remarkably restrained.

the primary "issue" imo was the unconstitutional reaction by idiot mayor paul "i am not a wuss" schell with his "no protest zone" and other such crap.

[Truth2Tell]

116. Which part of "no protester violence or vandalism

took place in the first six hours of the protest" do you not understand? The tear gas and pepper spray were used FUCKING BEFORE anyone broke a single window. It was not a "riot" until you (or your compatriots) started deliberately hurting people. And even then it was barely a riot. If you consider that a "full scale riot" then I can't imagine what you would think of an actual riot.

People were engaging in non-violent civil disobedience. The police chose to respond with violence as a deliberate policy. That has been so well established that you simply make yourself sound like a fool by trying to claim otherwise.

[paulsby]

117. except its crap

i saw who threw the first blow, firsthand. and it wasn't us.

the vast majority of protesters were engaging in non-violent civil disobedience.

unfortunately, the ones who chose to engage in riotous asshattery had to be dealt with.

in the first 6 hours, i heard on my police radio cops desperately PLEADING for help as their lines were overrun, for instance.

idiot schell and his lackey police chief sent forces out initially in "soft gear" and they got overrun.

i've seen this dynamic play out in other protests, n30 comes to mind. the protests remain peaceful until and if some assmunches start the violence.

[Truth2Tell]

124. cops desperately PLEADING for help as their lines were overrun

Utter bullshit. Fiction. I'm done with this discussion. You take take your fascist revisionism to your grave.

Here's a special video just for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3UbqM537KY

[paulsby]

125. ooooh how special

you used the "f" word.

[winyanstaz]

120. well since both of you were in the middle, let me put in my two cents worth...

because my family and myself were also watching and recording what we saw..as well as watching what the tv was showing us and guess what? Those of us watching were also watching the police..sitting there and WATCHING as a young man got beaten so badly he had to be carried out on a stretcher. He was beaten by a gang of street thugs simply for trying to protect someone else....and many others were assaulted as well by this same gang and the cops did absolutely NOTHING to step in to stop it.
The cameras were following these thugs from above, we all saw them..and the police did NOTHING.
The majority by far of the protesters were peaceful as were the majority of people just there to party. It was a small group of Anarchists that ran around knocking cans over etc..most I saw was about 12 and who knows if they were agent provocateurs or not?
I also watched the police spraying people in the face, knocking down the elderly and shooting rubber bullets at random into the crowd and tossing tear gas at peaceful citizens. And they were doing this BEFORE the "Anarchists" showed up.
We each perceive the world from our own place in reality and from the place I was at..the police totally failed that day. It was frightening.

[Hannah Bell]

12. how many windows *was* that? cause i was there too, & the reality was quite different

than the tv coverage. even the local coverage.

"ugly" isn't the word i'd use to describe that week.

nor did anyone "trash" seattle, despite the propaganda.

christmas shopping went on in full swing immediately afterward.

there was no epidemic of broken windows. i'm quite sure of that, because i physically canvassed stores in the downtown core to check out the reality for myself.

there was no takeover of peaceful protest by "anarchists" who turned things "ugly". there were a couple of incidents, looped over & over by the media.

the seattle protests were a week long, & i was there every day but one, downtown & elsewhere. the busses were running most of the time, most stores were open most of the time, for heaven's sake, & there was *heavy* police coverage.

[SeattleGirl]

20. Gee gosh golly wow! I guess my eyes much have totally deceived

me then. I really didn't see broken windows. The anarchists were nothing more than cute little cherubs spreading sunshine and fairy dust all over. And of course, the cops, every last one of them, are bad, wrong, hateful, nasty pieces of work who just have to get in there and alaways spoil things. Those poor little cherubs! Those big bad mean cops (every last one of them, of course).

Guess I'd better take myself to the corner, because obviously everything I saw (with my own eyes, not the eyes of a TV camera) was nothing but an illusion.

Bad eyes! Bad, bad eyes!!!


--------------------------------

Did I SAY the entire city shut down?

Did I SAY all the busses stopped running?

Jeezily crow, I saw what I saw.

[PatSeg]

23. People who witnessed it

said their city (downtown Seattle) looked like Beirut.

[Hannah Bell]

25. i witnessed it. it didn't.

[PatSeg]

28. Its interesting

the different viewpoints from those who were there.

I was in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention. I walked past Grant Park every day on the way to the train station and wasn't aware of what was happening until later when I saw film clips.

I can't explain the varying accounts of Seattle in 1999, so I have to assume there is an element of truth to all of them, with different perspectives.

[Hannah Bell]

31. i think if you were to go into more depth, you'd find the accounts aren't so divergent

as you think.

[Matariki]

52. That's really a big exaggeration.

There was a lot of tear gas and police, but it didn't look like Beirut. No.

[BlooInBloo]

75. I was there (WTO). Anyone saying it looked like Beruit is a liar.

[Hannah Bell]

24. you may have seen boarded-up windows. did you go in to see if the glass was broken?

i did, all over the downtown core. it wasn't.

i don't want to get in a fight with you, but i was there too, & i also know what i saw. the downtown was *not* trashed.

[SeattleGirl]

43. Just seems you are wearing rose colored glasses, that nothing happened

at all.

I agree that the media distorts things like "the battle"; they love to sensationalize as many of us know.

But that doesn't mean it was all smoke and mirrors.

Did you check out each and every window?

I'm just saying that I noticed things when I was downtown; maybe you saw things I didn't in different parts of town, I don't know.

It just seems that you are trying to insist that I didn't see what I saw, just because you didn't see it.

I don't want to get into a fight either, but I tend to get my back up when it appears that someone is telling me I didn't observe certain things, just because THEY didn't.

[Hannah Bell]

46. something happened, definitely. but that something wasn't anarchists

trashing the city.

we did a walking tour, block by block, about 2nd up to 6th, the whole of the downtown core, the last day of the protests. it *looked* bad because so many windows were boarded up - but not broken. We did this deliberately precisely because the news reports gave the impression of massive damage & we wanted to be sure of the truth.

i'm sorry your back is up, but i know for a certainty that the window-breaking thing was *highly* exaggerated.

i also had the experience of telling this to people who weren't there, after the event. 100% did not believe me, because they saw something different on tv.

[Truth2Tell]

55. I was right there the whole time and I can back up

Hannah Bell 100%. Very little actual damage, lots and lots of hype.

[Missy Vixen]

26. I'm a Seattle native

I clearly remember this.

Nice to know that your memories completely contradict mine and my family's. I might also mention that we have a friend who's a Metro driver. He was beaten by a group of anarchists that tried to commandeer his bus.

[Hannah Bell]

35. i'm a renton native, 4th-generation washingtonian, went to school & worked at uw, boeing, etc.

with a relative on spd during the protests.

& i'd like to see the documentation for that beating.

[Missy Vixen]

45. Oh, so now we're going to play the "one-up game"?

My family's only been here for three generations. I guess my information isn't as accurate as yours is. :sarcasm:

We also had a friend from Redmond PD who was part of the group on Capitol Hill that night. You can't talk to him. He's dead.

As for the buddy who drives a bus, if you want medical records, you'll have to talk to him. Hope you're not calling him or us liars -- it's against DU rules.

[Hannah Bell]

47. you started the one-up game. your friend didn't die at the wto protests.

i didn't call anyone a liar. i said i would like to see the on-the-spot reports.

[Missy Vixen]

58. No, he just got beaten by several anarchists

>your friend didn't die at the wto protests<

So being beaten was okay, right? Plus, I don't have his medical records. I'll be sure and dig through the Seattle Times archives to satisfy your curiosity, though. :sarcasm:

[Hannah Bell]

59. i'm talking about your friend on the police force. you said he was dead.

not sure why you mentioned he was dead, unless you were implying he died at the protests. but no police died there.

yes, if you'll link the st article describing anarchists beating a metro driver, that would be good.

[Missy Vixen]

62. Well, you were so interested in documentation, I'm sure that would have been the next question

Feel free to look him up -- John Miner.

In the meantime, you know what? I could post medical records here, and it wouldn't be enough for you. I believe our friend. I don't need to supply you with research.

[Hannah Bell]

63. preliminary search with "bus driver" beaten seattle wto turns in no reports of bus drivers

being beaten by anarchists during the wto protests.

doesn't mean it didn't happen, but i'd think such an event would have gotten quite a bit of press, since "anarchists" kicking over newspaper dispensers were front-page at the time.

[arcadian]

71. Actually you do. If you make claims like that.

You need to back them up.

[Downtown Hound]

82. Interesting you should say that

Just the other day I was talking with a guy on another board who claims to have been beaten by anarchists at the 2008 RNC. When I asked him to provide some proof of this account, he refused to do so.

I find it hard to believe that when petty vandalism makes front page news that a story of someone being beaten seems to go unnoticed at both protests except for the "victims" telling the story. I'm sorry, but I don't believe your friend for one moment. But if I'm wrong, then he suffered an injustice and those responsible are no friends of the movement.

I will say one other thing. I think it's very irresponsible for you to post your friend's name on the internet like that and subject him to potential harassment. The fact that you do so so quickly and without even thinking of the consequences for him kind of makes me doubt your story as well.

[Matariki]

53. Your friend was part of the police force on Capitol Hill that night?

The ones who shot at County Council Member Brian Derdowski and a number of City Council members who were trying to get the police to act reasonably?

I was there. I was right next to Derdowski and saw him get hit in the leg with rubber bullets. It's like the police were aiming at him.

[Missy Vixen]

57. I wasn't on Capitol Hill that night

And yes, our friend is dead. He died in an avalanche a few years ago.

[Hannah Bell]

61. my relative (by marriage) is on spd & was part of the capitol hill thing.

he says the police *blatantly* overreacted, & furthermore, the initial overreaction came from just a couple of members of the force, which snowballed into others doing same, which others tried to defuse the situation - to no avail, since stimulus/response on both sides took over.

[uppityperson]

27. Yup. Talking to friends in it, family there, watching on tv from here, I agree.

Good summation and yes.

[martymar64]

64. The "anarchists" were undercover cops - aka agent provocateurs

They started breaking shit to allow the cops to have carte blanche to bust heads.
Oldest tactic in the book.

[SeattleGirl]

78. Proof?

I know it happens, but do you have proof that all the anarchists were undercover cops?

[Captain Hilts]

11. It delegitimized liberal and anti-war protests for years afterward. nt

[Hannah Bell]

13. no, it didn't. it shook up some of the ptb, though. they took to remote locations,

[G_j]

14. in your eyes

well. that's cool

but watching the movie is highly recommended, btw.

[Peace Patriot]

17. Who decides which "liberal and anti-war protests" are legitimate?

I'm an old lady and I've been in protests since 1967 (the first big anti-Vietnam War march), so I have a lot of experience of anti-war and other protests, and of corporate media handling of protests. And I was in Seattle in 1999 primarily to protest the WTO's illegitimate power over state/federal environmental regulations, and generally to protest the lack of democracy in the WTO, and lack of consultation with the American people in the signing of various global trade agreements. Others were there to protest the impacts of bad trade agreements on organized labor, and on other human rights issues. I and the 50,000 other peaceful protesters in Seattle--including the 10,000 people who entirely peacefully shut down the WTO meeting, by sitting down in Seattle's intersections, in a time-honored act of civil disobedience--were a "legitimate" protest, and one that the American people badly, badly needed to hear about. How this protest got portrayed as somehow "illegitimate" and violent is a study in our loss of all objective journalism in this country.

There was no violence on the day of the massive civil disobedience by any protestors until very late in the day--about 4-5 pm, after six straight hours of the ugliest police violence I have ever witnessed--for instance, pulling up this big blower machine to an intersection where hundreds of people were sitting peacefully, getting out a big hose, and hosing pepper spray directly at the heads and faces of seated protesters. Just before this started, I turned to one of the cops in the long Darth Vader line (I was a legal observer) and asked him, "What are you going to do to us?" His answer: "We're not going to kill you." Then they released cs gas over the whole region, and everyone ran to get out of it--with police chasing people and beating the crap out of them, and shooting them with rubber bullets.

By late in the afternoon, after hours of mayhem created by the police, the police then permitted a few "anarchist" youngsters to run wild, burning trash cans and breaking windows downtown. The real protesters tried to stop them. The police clearly sat back and let this vandalism proceed. And I was amazed, when I got home that night, to watch the evening news and the first thing they showed was a young "anarchist"'s foot going through a store window. The sequence of events had been reversed. The late in the day vandalism was being used as an excuse for the daylong police violence against peaceful protesters. The police proceeded to riot into the evening, tear-gassing and cs-gassing large swaths of the city, even into completely uninvolved neighborhoods. They even beat up a city councilman.

So, IF, as you say, the Seattle protests "delegitimized liberal and anti-war protests for years afterward," that delegitimization was a planned effect of the twisted-around 'news' reports by the corpo/fascist 'news' monopolies, in service to the global corporate predators who control them.

The peaceful shutdown of the WTO meeting was THE most amazing protest I have ever seen or heard of. It was a brilliant civil disobedience action. And if it's extremely important point--the lack of democracy in global trade decisions--had been objectively reported, and if more Americans had understood that protest, it is at least possible that we wouldn't be in the grave situation we are in today, with global corporate predators absolutely robbing us blind, and destroying our sovereignty as a people, our democracy, our economy and our planet.

The corporate powers-that-be had much reason to "de-legitimatize" the Seattle protest, and all protest. They had an oil war to pull off--and more jobs to outsource, and much more looting to do. Hell, they've even outsourced the manufacture of the very voting machines by which they steal our elections. (See "The Trouble With Touchscreens," by Dan Rather, www.HD.net.)

You are, unfortunately, buying into their line, that the Seattle protest was...wrong, non-mainstream, violent, "illegitimate." How many times do they have to lie to you, before you become skeptical of the self-serving impressions they give you about people and events? They were lying about Seattle, and they were soon lying about Iraq. Please, think hard about how you formed the impression that the Seattle protest was "illegitimate."

[PatSeg]

19. Thank you

Very interesting and informative - your post could be its own thread. Your account seems to reflect much of what I saw in the movie.

[uppityperson]

29. having friends and family there, I agree with your post also

"the ugliest police violence I have ever witnessed" and the "anarchist" window breakings, done by a few making a big mess.

Mostly peaceful, some not, the police were a big part of the problem.

[PatSeg]

32. In the DVD extras

witnesses said the police were ill prepared for the event and were very scared. As she was arrested, she said the cop was actually shaking. The movie gave a very balanced account and there were no "bad guys" except possibly the corporate lobbyists.

[uppityperson]

33. Sounds like Kent State also.

[Hannah Bell]

38. spd brought in reinforcements from all over the state & the nation well before the event.

they got extra equipment as well. the protests were long in the planning & spd was well-informed.

they weren't ill prepared. they over-reacted.

this is the assessment of an spd member who was involved in the capitol hill incident.

[Peace Patriot]

66. I haven't seen the DVD, but I saw bad guys with my own eyes--

pepper spray hosing hundreds of peaceful seated demonstrators, right in their faces; bruising people with nightsticks, beating on people, and I didn't see the rubber bullet shooting, but I saw the bloody heads and bodies aferwards, and I also took a hit of cs gas which drenched the city. And that was just me, from my perspective, what I saw and experienced. There are many, many reports similar to mine. Totally, totally unnecessary violence. Brutal and uncalled for. The protesters in Seattle's intersections weren't hurting anybody. We were just holding up a meeting at which ours and others' jobs were being outsourced to the cheapest labor markets abroad, and at which the plotting of the end of this planet's ecosystem was being conducted, in an entirely undemocratic forum. So what were these cops scared of? Who were they scared of? Their bosses? The Corporate Rulers? We were no threat to them, which they could have seen with their own eyes if they hadn't been blinded by propaganda about "the enemy"--the American people! And, I'm sorry, but a guy in Darth Vader gear, with pepper spray machines, and guns, and nightsticks, and armored vehicles, and horses, have little right to sympathy when they attack peaceful citizens. They were shaking because what they were doing was wrong, and the best of them knew it.

I read a Mona Charon op-ed in some paper after the Seattle protests, in which she said they should've used real bullets! That is the kind of brainwashing that cops get. She said the protesters were addicted to violent video games and should be given a taste of reality by being shot dead. Well, there were 50,000 adults involved in those protests, probably most of whom had never played any kind of video game, let alone a violent one. Steel workers, and postal workers, and teachers, and human rights advocates, and environmentalists, and students, and parents--a broad spectrum of Americans. Yeah, there were a few black-masked kid vandals around, who should have been arrested the moment they put their foot in a window, and were not arrested. No, they brutalized and arrested the peaceful people--and they kept large numbers of people in appalling conditions, without water or food, and without medical care, for hours on end. This was a deliberate effort to smash peaceful opposition to global corporate trade and corporate control of all of our lives. And a year later we had the Bush Junta inflicted upon us. That horror, and the 2004 (Diebold) election, were all of a piece with Seattle--an all out effort to destroy the potentially most progressive force on earth--the American people--and one of the few forces on earth that has the actual potential power, and sovereignty, to curtail these global corporate monsters who launched their predatory multinational enterprises from our shores.

[PatSeg]

67. If you get a chance

you should see the movie. It would be interesting to compare the movie to people's actual experiences. Much of what you recall matches what I saw in the movie.

Is Mona Charon still a journalist in Seattle? Sounds like something Rush would say.

[Peace Patriot]

85. Mona Charon was a columnist to the right of Ann Coulter, who showed up on

corporate 'news' monopoly op-ed pages intermittently during that period. I don't remember where I read that column, but it was a major newspaper. Wish I'd saved it. She was not a journalist in Seattle, that I know of. A nationwide syndicated columnist (possibly out of New York or Washington DC? --and possibly associated with some rightwing think tank?) I was amazed that any newspaper would print a call for shooting protesters with real bullets--a call for the crime of murder! Charon seems to have disappeared since then. Maybe she "found Jesus."

[Blue_Tires]

86. I was living near Kansas City at the time

and the media was generally in the sentiment of 'bash the hippie anarchist operatives!'...My hometown paper in Virginia essentially echoed the same thing...

[PatSeg]

93. When I Googled her

she appears to write for National Review Online.

Here she is, Left to right: Kate O'Beirne, Mona Charon, Kathleen Lopez (K-Lo of NRO), Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham.



She didn't find "Jesus" evidently, but she found Michelle Malkin and Laura Ingraham.

[Hannah Bell]

30. "a young "anarchist"'s foot going through a store window"

this is one of the loops that was run over & over & over, for days. if memory doesn't fail me, it was a starbucks & it was about the *only* broken window in the city.

I & my friend would spend every day downtown then go back to the u district at dark & watch the tv coverage. the disparity between the reportage & the reality was mind-blowing. i deliberately surveyed the downtown core on foot because the tv made it sound like people were breaking windows right & left.

lots of boarded-up windows, but the stores were open & the windows behind the boards were *not* broken. this on the final day of the protests.

[uppityperson]

34. Odd, I didn't know my friends and family were such liars.

Yes, the media showed the same loops over and over, but yes, there was violence and windows broken also.

[Hannah Bell]

36. i didn't say there was *no* violence. i said a couple of incidents, one being the capitol hill

incident, another the sequence described by pp.

here's what i said:

"ugly" isn't the word i'd use to describe that week.

nor did anyone "trash" seattle, despite the propaganda.

christmas shopping went on in full swing immediately afterward.

there was no epidemic of broken windows. i'm quite sure of that, because i physically canvassed stores in the downtown core to check out the reality for myself.

there was no takeover of peaceful protest by "anarchists" who turned things "ugly". there were a couple of incidents, looped over & over by the media.

the seattle protests were a week long, & i was there every day but one, downtown & elsewhere. the busses were running most of the time, most stores were open most of the time, for heaven's sake, & there was *heavy* police coverage."


i was there in the heart of the protest area, all day long & into evening, for every day but one of the protests. i deliberately surveyed the damage done, on foot.

there was no broken window epidemic, & christmas shopping resumed immediately after the protests.

the anarchist "foot through window" looped over & over *was* the broken window. you'd be downtown, all you'd see was people, music, drumming, giant puppets, speeches on sound cart - go back home in the eve, & it was all grim reporters talking about "anarchists". it was surreal.

[uppityperson]

39. My friend was beaten by cops, thrown into jail, for trying to get past it all

Was not part of any protest, simply trying to get from shopping to the ferries. In my friend's view, it was ugly.

My family members were in the protests, saw damage done, saw police in riot gear in lines.

I didn't say there was a "takeover of peaceful protest by "anarchists" who turned things "ugly"", but there were a few places where it was ugly, due to "anarchists" and cops.

[Hannah Bell]

40. my original post on this thread was to another poster who said anarchists took over

& trashed the city. that mischaracterization is why i posted in this thread, as it's straight from the media storyline.

i'm in full agreement with pp. police heavy-handedness & outright provocation was the source of most of the violence that took place, not hordes of window-breaking anarchists.

[PatSeg]

42. I guess one's perspective

is dependent on where you were, what you witnessed, and what you experienced. Clearly your friend's memory of the protest is understandably "ugly", whereas someone a few blocks away might see things differently. As I mentioned in another post, I did not see the violence during the 1968 Chicago convention, but I was nearby. Until I saw the news and later films about it, I was unaware of so much.

[tama]

37. There are

many kinds of anarchists, as many kinds as there are anarchists. The corporate media drewls over those - anarchists and others - that tend to respond to police and state violence by various means, the problem is not so much anarchists and hooliganism but that many still continue take corporate media propaganda seriously.

Other anarchists do guerilla gardening and build ecocommunities. In Gothenburg when the police attacked the peacefull protesters quarters (given by the city!), from what I've heard from those at site, the anarchists defended the peacefull protesters with some success to the gratitude of those preaching pure-non violence.

I've been to one black block demonstration in my life, that was interesting experience. Few dozen people marching the streets dressed in black, what was novel and astonishing to me that when police took in custody one demonstrator - for no legimate reason AFAIK - the other demonstrators (mostly young girls!) immediately surrounded the police car where their comrade was held while also stopping all the traffic at the crossroads with their bodies. After few minutes of mayham the police released the prisoner and the march continued peacefully.

[suffragette]

48. Peace Patriot, You depicted it as I remember it

I was one of the marchers among the 50,000.

An irony was that the original route for the march was supposed to go along the street with the blocked intersection. So, the police who set upon the protesters at the intersection to "clear it" already knew that it was about to be blocked by the march anyway. We were rerouted and it was done calmly, effectively, and peacefully by the march leaders.

In the following days, it was hard to get around safely, not because of protesters, but because of the police. It was especially hard for those who worked or lived on Capitol Hill. I had friends who would leave work on the Hill and who were turned back from leaving it after work - they were just trying to get home. I also knew people who weren't involved at all, but had cs gas entering their apartments or who were hit by rubber bullets as they tried to go grocery shopping.

I remember at one point being fed up with feeling as if I were under house arrest because of the curfew(I lived in Belltown/downtown and worked on Capitol Hill) so I went to hear the French farmer, José Bové speak near Pike Place. There were many people there and quite a few eloquent speakers. The crowd was supportive and peaceful. Later, when I turned on the news, they showed none of that, but repeatedly showed some guy elsewhere supposedly "protecting" a flag from protesters. As biased coverage as you get.

One of the most surreal moments came one or two days after that when I was downtown at Pine street. The Christmas star was up on the Bon and some tourists were taking pictures of that and each other. They ignored and did not take pictures of the armored cars, the police in riot gear and the National Guard enforcing the emergency/martial law even as they were standing there a few feet away.

[Truth2Tell]

56. Outstanding post PP

That jibes with exactly what I witnessed.

I watched some punks (not even anarchists, as far as I could tell, but just street thugs) breaking a few windows in plain sight of the police. Many of the peaceful protesters tried to stop them and even begged the police for help. The confrontation between the thugs and some peaceful types became ugly as the thugs began shoving and hitting people. The police finally responded by shooting teargas canisters directly into the middle of the assembled crowd. I even watched the cop in charge give the order. This caused a stampede and mayhem. The actual thugs were lost in the chaos and the police began to beat and arrest peaceful people.

And you are "an old lady?" I had you pegged as a 30 something male. Lesson in assumptions there :hi: :)

[eridani]

84. Capitol Hill residents protest was actually a separate event

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19991206&slug=2999781

At a candlelight vigil in the rain outside Seattle Central Community College last night, Capitol Hill residents demanded an investigation of how police responded when anti-World Trade Organization protests spilled into their neighborhood last week.

Community leaders said people inhaled tear gas inside their apartments, were barred from walking on the sidewalk and were arrested outside their homes, even though they were not participating in the WTO protests.

[stevedeshazer]

73. Your story is very powerful.

Thanks for posting it.

[The Leveller]

50. That's rubbish

Where did you get that idea?

As a point of fact Seattle was, if you look at a map, a far removed speck from the majority of the anti-globalization protests. Fortunately the rest of the world does not need the US to "delegitimize" it's dissent against large scale mass murderers who hide in boardrooms.

Your characterization of events is utterly nonsensical.

[Runcible Spoon]

72. What a load of SHIT.

Corporate Media thanks you for swallowing their lies.

[Downtown Hound]

83. How's that corporate media Kool Aid taste? n/t

[rampart]

15. anarchists or agents provocateur?

false flags were common at these type events in the 60s

[Hannah Bell]

16. i was there. the "anarchist" contingent was blown *way* out of proportion by the media,

as was the damage they did.

the media, even the local media, looped a couple of incidents over & over & over. if you were sitting home watching it on tv, you'd have thought you were taking your life in your hands to go into the city, but it was bullshit. i came in the second day on greyhound & spent the rest of the week downtown.

[juno jones]

18. I saw Nina Hagen perform in Seattle a couple of years ago.

I remember her saying something to the point of, "This is where the revolution started, don't forget it."

[Downtown Hound]

21. Great movie

Seattle was really where the modern protest movement began. The movement morphed into the Iraq War protests when that issue became more paramount, but the tactics and issues are largely the same and haven't really changed much. You have the peaceful protesters that stick to their designated parade route, you have the ones committing civil disobedience, and you have the self-proclaimed anarchists breaking corporate windows. I really don't know if most of that is actual anarchists or undercovers, but there is a part of me that wonders if Seattle would be remembered the way it is if it wasn't for the actions of the black bloc.

[PatSeg]

22. It dawned on me that some of the "anarchists"

were planted intentionally. I know it wasn't uncommon in the Nixon years. Anything to discredit peaceful, organized protesters.

[Downtown Hound]

77. Most likely

It's really difficult to know just to what extent it's real anarchists and to what extent it's provocateurs. There are a lot of real anarchists that support such tactics, but a lot of them are just talk. I've marched alongside the Black Bloc before in unpermitted "breakaway" marches, and for the most part, they remained completely and totally peaceful. They made a lot of noise but never really got past the "civil disobedience" phase of protesting. In spite of all the media fuss about anarchists at the 2008 RNC, in reality there were only two broken windows and a busted up cop car. This from a crowd of several hundred. There's more property destruction after a Stanley Cup finals than there was at the RNC.

The sheer fact that the media and police love to demonize the anarchists should tell you that they are public enemy Number One when it comes to protesters. I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't try and exploit that in an effort to divide the anti-war movement.

[tama]

41. "The movement morphed into the Iraq War protests"

Why do you think that happened? Because Seattle and the movement against neoliberal globalization was victorious, beyond their wildest hopes! What's happened in WTO negotiations after Seattle? Nothing, no progress at all, and the participants in WTO know that they are surrounded by walls and walls of police surrounded by masses of protestors and general public who don't like what they are trying to do - those in the inside of the fences are surrounded and they know it and they feel it.

With Social Forums sprouting everywhere (except USA?), revolutions in Latin America spreading and kicking IMF out etc. capitalist pigs started to realize they were loosing so something had to be done to gain initiative and to divert public attention from WTO, IMF and other enemies of the people - issues of bread - to horribly violent circus games of 9/11 and war, war war on TV all the time.

Sadly TPTB succeeded, at least for a while, the "peace movement" did nothing to stop the wars and torture etc. but it did divert the attention from struggle against capitalism to how frustratingly weak and gullible and fearfull most of the people are when state resorts to it's real and only source of legitimacy - war, violence without any constraints.

[PatSeg]

44. Well, that would explain

some of my previous ignorance about the WTO and IMF. I didn't really become a full time news junkie until the presidential election in 2000, which was followed by nonstop 9/11 coverage. I've done a lot of catching up during the Bush years.

[Downtown Hound]

76. I agree, they really did need a new distraction

There are a few things I think the anti-war movement accomplished. In the run up to the Iraq War, when there were massive protests against it, a bunch of European countries refused to support the United States, forcing it to go it alone. I think those protests played a huge part in that. It gave them courage to actually stand up to the United States. With the exception of Britain and maybe a few other countries, most countries either limited their support to meager logistics so that Bush could say he had a coalition of the willing, or they refused to take part in it at all. They forced Bush to go it alone.

Also, I think the recent RNC protests were a major victory. The police did everything they could to suppress dissent in St. Paul. Not only did they fail, they failed to demonize the anti-war movement, which was really what they were hoping for. They wanted a repeat of '68, when the Chicago riots led to Democratic defeat. Not only did they fail to suppress dissent, they failed completely and totally in their strategy. They still got their butts kicked. All they ended up getting were a few broken windows and a whole lot of video on youtube of police brutality. From what I understand, the majority of charges that were brought against protesters have been dropped, and the ones that are going to trial are being acquitted left and right.

Protests do work, contrary to what many people these days think. They just don't always work as quickly or as effectively as we would all like.

[Peace Patriot]

87. Yes, the Seattle protests marked the beginning of the end of the WTO,

as a cabal of rich countries' political elites plotting to loot, exploit and enslave their own people and the people of the "third world," and also marked the beginning of the success of "third world" countries in opposing U.S.-dominated "free trade." At the next WTO meeting, in Cancun, Mexico, where equally large demonstrations occurred outside, underscoring the work of NGOs and others inside, Brazil led a contingent of 20 "third world" countries who walked out of the WTO, in protest of U.S./EU domination of trade rules. The WTO still exists, but it has never been the same (a mere tool of U.S./EU global corporate predators). Brazil and the other protesting countries have since become a powerful trade negotiation group, often backing each other up against unfair rules.

The protests in Seattle and in Cancun--and other anti-globalization protests in the U.S. and around the world--have helped to empower the most exploited peoples of the planet in standing up for themselves. In fact, Brazil's subsequent action/organization of the 20-country walkout at Cancun is what first alerted me to what has been happening in South America--a full scale democratic rebellion against decades of exploitation and ruination of the "third world" by the "first world," first led by Venezuela, in the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez, and soon sweeping the continent with leftist government after leftist government elected over the last decade--and a very strong coalition of leftist governments now dominating Latin America (Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, all with leftist governments--with Honduras leaning left, and Mexico likely to go left in the next election). In fact, these leftist leaders have now formed a Latin American Common Market, UNASUR, and have shown strong cooperation in defense of their sovereignty and in fending off U.S. destabilization and coup attacks (such as the Bushwhacks tried to do in Bolivia this last September).

I can't say that "it all started in Seattle," because there was was already a massive indigenous farmers' movement, involving millions of small farmers in South America and around the world, and other such organization, before Seattle. I was just ignorant of it. Latin America didn't go leftist overnight. That "miracle" occurred as the result of several decades of work by grass roots social movements and by international and local election integrity groups (a movement that has begun here, but is still in initial stages of cleaning up U.S. elections). But Seattle was where U.S. NGOs and various groups and movements first came together as one voice against the U.S. corporate-dominated "free trade" that had been launched from our own shores. It was an eye-opener for a lot of people (and scared the beejeebers out of our benighted corpo/fascist political establishment--especially having labor unions in coalition with human rights and environmental groups). I had come up against multinational corporate domination of our laws and regulatory agencies in California, trying to save the last of the redwood forests, and stumbled upon the sweatshop/outsourcing-of-jobs issue, when the family that founded the Gap bought up wide swaths of already over-cut redwood forests and continued clear-cutting them, where I live. Gap clothes are manufactured in dreadful sweatshops in Saipan; and the cotton is obtained from the extremely poisoned cotton fields of Uzbekistan. As the Longshoremen's union has pointed, they are the only workers in the far-ranging loop of Gap clothing that receive decent wages--when they offload Gap clothes on San Francisco's docks. And of course the scion of the Gap family--Donald Fisher--not only helped write the WTO textile rules which resulted in the worldwide proliferation of sweatshops, he has also been active trying to bust the Longshoremen's union.

People in other countries have "connected the dots" before many of us here in the U.S., whose communities have been fractured by corporate rule, and who are therefore vulnerable to non-stop corpo/fascist 'news' monopoly propaganda. (How many people know that their Gap sweatshirt has literally destroyed the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan--or is connected to the clear-cutting of the last of the redwood forest in California?) In Seattle, many of us were just catching up with the rest of the world. It was a seminal event for us. It did help boost democracy elsewhere, but was not the "main event" elsewhere. (Probably the "main event" elsewhere was the people of Venezuela turning back a U.S. (Bushwhack) instigated coup against the elected Chavez government in 2002. See "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"--available on YouTube--possibly the most important even in the modern history of the western hemisphere. And the Cancun 20-country walkout at the WTO, led by Brazil, is a close second--in the same year.)

[LeFleur1]

89. Watched on TV

I couldn't go to Seattle, although I live close. We watched it unfold on TV. I was so proud of the protesters, the union members, those marching proudly and respectably, the sensible signs they were carrying waving in the air, the chants... Then "the anarchists" began to appear. I believe the loop that was run on TV referred to above was of someone breaking windows in the Nike store...while wearing Nikes, clearly visible on TV. Someone said, "It's those damn anarchists from Eugene." :)

The local TV coverage was maybe a bit more fair than the national news, but it seemed that there were definitely two groups of protesters. Those willing to stand for what they believed peacefully and those (or those pretenders) intent on trashing and breaking. Of course since the media must have controversy to survive these days, they played up the rowdy crowd and edited it to appear that all protesters were a danger. Tapes showed police escorting members attending the meetings into the Convention Center for their safety. Our local channel did show a (described) union member telling the trashers to "stop it", and others trying to step in. They did show protesters sitting on the pavement being sprayed for what appeared to be no reason at all. They showed busloads of protesters being hauled off in buses.

As for the actions of the police...who knows why they do what they do, but they looked really really bad. They couldn't/didn't stop the trashers, and they attacked the peaceful protesters.

I haven't seen the film, but I will. Thanks.

[tama]

96. Let's be clear

There is nothing "peacefull" about hindering free moving of people, delegates of the WTO-meating. Hindering free movement of a fellow human being is by definition violence. The whole point of Seattle was violent - and succesfull - hindering of free movement of the delegates. The Seattle was success beyond wildest dreams not despite but because of it was a violent responce to the structural violence those delegates represented and planned to further. Violence comes and exists in many forms and all tactical decisions are allways purely situational - what the "liberals"/socialists bashing anarchist (stereotype) fail in is strategic thinking, falling again and again to the trap of divide and conquer created by the corporate media and powers behind that tool.

[PatSeg]

101. "Hindering free movement

of a fellow human being is by definition violence." I don't see that as violence by definition. It could lead to violence, but the act itself would be more restrictive than violent. Free movement is hindered all the time, either by people of authority or sometimes circumstance. Though in this case it may or may not have been wrong, I don't think it qualifies as "violent".

[tama]

121. Semantics

Restrictions are violations (same root word as violence) of freedoms; authority by virtue of hierarchic power structure is in itself violence - a master-slave relationship.

The prototype of violence of punching and kicking and causing a black eye and/or broken limb etc., which you seem to be thinking... well it's just prototypal sense, not the whole meaning.

[PatSeg]

127. Yes, it is just semantics

and I normally wouldn't even comment on it, but it jumped off the page. Though there may be the same root word, I cannot find a definition for violence that would apply in this case. No big deal. As you can tell by this thread, people viewed the same incidents in very diverse ways, which I find fascinating.

[tama]

129. A thought experiment

Suppose on a busy day, you hurrying up to an important meeting (say, like job interview), and I would pop up on your way and with my body prevent you from moving where you were walking, dancing in front of you, right and left which ever way you tried to go?

Semantics aside, how would you feel? How long before you would try to physically push me aside and if that didn't help, punch me and kick me down to be able to hurry up to the important meeting (say, job interview for torturers and executioners of street dancers, a job to feed your family... ;))?

[PatSeg]

130. Good example

Just imagining it, my thoughts became a tad "violent"!

[tama]

132. That's why I admire those young people

Yes, they understand that annoying violence often begets physical violence.

Of which they are the most immediate victims. Yet they again and again expose their bodies to that kinds of reactions. Not fearlesly but overcoming fear.

Because they understand something about structural violence ruling the world and cannot stay deaf to the voices of hurt of us victims, everywhere.

But yet the hope and trust that "you", despite becoming "tad violent", instead of hurting them physically, might, just might, stop and listen... and perhaps after hearing what they have to say, might refuse to be part of the structural violence...

Love and thanks for listening. :)

[PatSeg]

133. You're welcome

I enjoyed it.

I admire them as well. I don't know if I could do it. Just watching the movie was very stressful.

[tama]

126. On the other hand

I don't see why smashing windows or breaking non-living things should be called violence. ;)

So let's sum up, all the protesters intended to violate - succesfully - the freedom (not to mention legal right from statist point of view) of the delegates to participate in the meeting. Violence

Some protesters who don't recognize state and ownership as creatad and protected by state smashed some material things called "property" by TPTB - which they consider structural violence against everything good and decent. Anti-violence.

Some protesters reacted to police violence by violent acts of self-defence. Justified violence.

[PatSeg]

128. Well, that does seem to sum it up!

Made for an interesting discussion.

[tama]

95. It all started in Chiapas

After the collapse of Soviet block (good riddens!) the first sparkle of hope was the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas and all over the Internet - revolutionizing also the Internet (of which I too came aware only some time afterwards - starting my net career as cannabis activist debating and informing on forums dedicated to those issues and that how I found Narco News and the Zapatista point of view).

And forming a new broad and totally informal coalition / broad spectrum of native peoples and anarcho-leftist leaning anti-capitalists. The coalition behind all succesfull revolutions in Latin America.

[Peace Patriot]

134. You are leaving an important group out: the liberal 'establishment' bureaucrats

who helped reform the election system. I agree with you that Chiapas/the Zapatistas and also the long teachers' strike in Oaxaca are both very important. But Mexico's 2005 presidential election was still stolen and there is no relief yet, nor adequate representation of the interests of the poor, in Mexico. By contrast, the social movements, indigenous tribes and others who organized in South America have been able to elect presidents and other officials who are radically changing government priorities in South American countries, toward social justice, and in some amazing ways--for instance, Bolivia just passed a Constitution by general plesbicite that sanctifies the coca leaf as the ancient indigenous medicine that it is, and the Morales government (and the people in general) have rejected the violent, corrupt, failed, murderous U.S. "war on drugs." But they haven't just rejected it; they have been able to act, politically, with the power of their own government, to eject it--to throw the U.S. malefactors out of their country. Ecuador just passed a new Constitution, also by a general national vote, which enshrines the rights of Mother Nature ("Pachamama") as existing independently of human needs and impacts. And the revolution in Venezuela is also a fundamental re-orienting of society, for instance in the use of the country's chief natural resource, oil, for social programs to help the poor--education, medical care--to institute land reform for food security, and to support local and regional development and infrastructure.

Presidents Chavez, Morales and Correa, and other officials, were able to be elected in transparent, honest, aboveboard elections as the result of years of work by international election monitoring groups, such as the Carter Center, the OAS and the EU, working with local officials and groups. This is fundamental civic work that we badly, BADLY need to do here, in the U.S. And this is where I differ, radically, from all anarchists. I think it is completely unrealistic to think that you can create a society independently of the one that exists all around you. You must have compassion for, and try to work cooperatively with, every one else in society, to effect a fundamental moral change of direction. This does not mean cooperating with evil, but it does mean trying to understand people caught up in evil systems. Gandhi and Martin Luther King are examples of this kind of infiltration of an evil system, focusing on the humanity of individuals--whether cops, governors, presidents, or anyone. It may mean opposing them--as with non-violent civil disobedience--but such action does not dismiss the "other" as unsaveable. It incorporates the "other" into your thinking. You give other human beings room to change, and if the system that they are caught in is very evil, you have to be willing to sacrifice your life, or at least endure pain, to reach the individuals involved.

You have said that non-violent civil disobedience--the phrase by which the practitioners of this form of change define who they are--is violent. I don't agree. To stand between a murderer and his victim is not violent. You are impeding the murderer, yes, but you are putting your body at risk to stop that person from harming another. In less extreme cases, by, say, a civil disobedience sit-down in a segregated coffee shop, or forest defenders chaining themselves to a tree or to a desk (impeding the work of destroying the forest), or, indeed, those ten thousand people who sat down in the intersections of Seattle, to stop delegates from going to the WTO meeting, the non-violent ones are trying to reach those who are committing harmful acts against others, to change them--to alter their outlook. It is an act of hope. It is not violent. It is a strong action; and a risky action, because it can invite violence; but its essence is not to harm anyone or anything, and NOT to inspire fear (other than the fear of doing wrong). The young black-masked "anarchists" in Seattle, and any others who vandalized things, on the other hand, were seeking to inspire fear of physical violence in the state actors and corporate actors, and ordinary employees of same, by burning buses and so on. They were trying to assert their ability to harm. Non-violent protesters, who are properly prepared--by work in affinity groups and internal work--never do this. They never ever seek to present a danger to others. The idea is that, if the others whom you are trying to change react violently to your non-violent action, all the momentum of the violence is theirs, not yours. It's sort of an aikido move. You defeat the "enemy" by using the momentum of the attacker to get him to defeat himself. If you burn things, or throw things, or break windows, you have totally violated that principle. You have lost the struggle to change that person. For now, that person has the adrenalin rush of fear--say, seeing things burning or being broken--by which he justifies more violence, against you and others. And it does take great maturity (which can occur in young and old) to stick to this principle no matter what happens.

I remember seeing one young man in a group of about a hundred people sitting in an intersection in Seattle, who threw his poster sign stick at the police, just before they attacked the group. Clearly, they were going to attack, and he just couldn't help himself. It was a fairly harmless action, but an unfortunate one. I'm sure it convinced at least some of the Darth Vader cops that what they were about to do was justified. He didn't have the proper preparation, or the moral fiber of a Gandhi, to control his impulse to fight back, and to shift the entire onus of violent repression onto the cops, so that they would have to deal with it, individually, in their own consciences, and so that the society that they were "defending" had to deal with it collectively. His fairly harmless, last-minute reaction--just before being attacked--didn't change the awesome spectacle of the other 99 people remaining calm, under attack. I'm just using it as an example of how hard it is to control "fight" impulses, and what a miracle of human faith it is--what a transformative act--when so many people can control their fear, and remain compassionate toward their attackers.

I can't tell you how important it was to me, as a youngster, to see film of the Selma march in Alabama, when the marchers were fire-hosed by the police, and did nothing to retaliate. It moved me deeply. And soon, I joined that movement, and traveled to the South to help. Non-violent civil disobedience has a moral force like no other. What I saw in Seattle was ten thousand people (minus one or two) who had the remarkable ability to sit in an intersection, while they were fire-hosed with pepper spray, and not react (other than to turn away, and try to protect their bodies). Such moral force is profoundly moving and can affect anyone who sees it, and people far, far away--in distance, and mind. There has been quite a lot of this kind of resistance--non-violent resistance--in Latin America, which I am sure has affected many people unrelated to the protests, including many of those who worked for clean elections who are not poor, who are not oppressed, who live lives of relative luxury, but who were moved to help others achieve a better democracy.

Another major factor in Latin America has been the moral influence of "Liberation Theology" priests, like Fernando Lugo--the beloved "bishop of the poor"--who was just last year elected president of Paraguay--the first leftist president of Paraguay, ever. This religious moral force must not be ignored when discussing Latin America. The Church, as an institution, has too often been on the side of the oligarchs. But individual priests and nuns (and some bishops) have had a profound impact on many communities, in their close association with the poor and the indigenous. It is not sufficient to say that the revolution in Latin America was created by a new broad, informal coalition of "native peoples and anarcho-leftist leaning anti-capitalists." The coalition includes election reform bureaucrats and religious clerics, often playing pivotal roles.

[G_j]

49. Seattle National Lawyers Guild: Report on WTO Ministerial

http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/nlg070700.html

Seattle National Lawyers Guild
Releases Draft Report on WTO Ministerial


PRESS RELEASE
National Lawyers Guild
CONTACT: Paul Richmond, [e-mail]

The Seattle Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild has just released its report on the World Trade Organization Ministerial. The report examines what took place in Seattle as an example of larger trends brought about by destructive economic policies. The report pays particular attention to the thinning lines between law enforcement and the military and the adverse effects this loss of delineation is having on civil liberties. The report begins with an overview of the WTO. It provides the historical framework of the WTO as an institution born of the think tanks which were themselves created by the illicit fortunes of the robber barons. It provides concrete examples of the way the WTO has subverted democratic institutions, and had detrimental effects on human rights, the environment, safety and labor laws.

Following this, the report traces the way the WTO was brought to Seattle. It examines the lack of process that took place - most members of the Seattle City Council seem not to have been consulted until after the event was a done deal. Moreover, Seattle and King County are areas with a history of resistance to WTO and GATT. King County was declared an MAI free zone months before the WTO's arrival had been announced. Seattle was declared an MAI free zone weeks after the WTO's selection of Seattle as it's Ministerial site was announced.

Next comes a report of what took place on the streets of Seattle in the weeks leading up to the Ministerial and during the Ministerial itself. The report utilizes information from its 200 legal observers, and hundreds of witness declarations. It also utilizes information gained from public disclosure and from email chatlines utilized by participating members of law enforcement, including commanders and line members of the Seattle Police Department. A picture is painted of confused, inexperienced law enforcement officers armed with frighteningly powerful, potentially lethal weaponry and little idea of what to do with it. Random forays seem to be launched against random groups of demonstrators. Thousands of people, including bystanders, are exposed to potentially lethal chemical agents hours before the first window is broken. Masked unmarked police invade the most densely populated area on the West Coast North of San Francisco, attacking residents and shoppers. Those arrested are often subjected to conditions resembling torture. Weapons are repeatedly deployed in ways that may be potentially lethal. Police themselves, are often injured by their own weapons.

The official reports that have been released by law enforcement consultants all paint pictures of a police force that should have used more force and should have utilized it earlier. The NLG draft report looks at the economic and political reasons these law enforcement administrators have adopted this perspective. It notes that the U.S. economy, is a wartime economy. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, much of those resources that were devoted to the military have been devoted to law enforcement, with major military contractors building prisons and designing "less lethal weapon systems." It looks at the moves to classify political dissent as a type of warfare, and to utilize recent demonstrations such as the WTO Ministerial as examples of why more force should be used. It notes the way the factors that have created a shrinking middle class, have further divided the "haves" and the "have-nots." The picture is one of a global village where the majority of the world's population lives in slums and prisons and a wealthy few ride around in armored limousines from fortified enclave to fortified enclave. This dynamic has created an enlarged and militarized law enforcement system.

The report then examines the thinning lines between the military, who are trained to kill, and law enforcement who are trained to preserve lives. It examines the way military tactics, training and weaponry have come to dominate law enforcement. Citing testimony of law enforcement professionals, the report then traces the disastrous effect this blending of the two has had on the fabric of democracy and members of law enforcement themselves. It examines the disastrous way this dynamic has played out in the past and the disastrous way this dynamic played out during the WTO Ministerial. Citing past work in the field, the report shows how such trends can endanger both the fabric of democratic society and the law enforcement officers themselves.

Particular attention is paid to the use of "less lethal" weaponry. The origins of rubber bullets, flying truncheons, CS and CN are examined. All began as weapons designed to put down rebellions and fight wars. All were gradually exported into the areas of law enforcement. Looking at the training materials provided by the manufacturers themselves, the lethality of these substances is examined in detail. If the projectiles strike from too close a distance or strike something other than the buttocks or thighs, it's usually a potentially trauma inducing or lethal use of force. If CS, or CN is used there are to be adequate ways for those present to escape, or it's potentially lethal especially, for the young, the elderly and those with diseases like AIDs. Anytime these substances are used, reports are to be administered on each person on whom the weapon was used, making it far less efficient to use these weapons than to simply arrest offenders.

Yet, repeatedly, all of these weapons were used in ways that could have easily been lethal. Part of the reason for this is that given the specific parameters of these weapons use, it is impossible to use them in situations where there a dozen people moving around, let alone hundreds or thousands.

The report concludes by looking at the melt down that occurred inside the ministerial itself. There are quotes by NGO's and delegates who found the process undemocratic, and heavilly slanted in favor of a few multinational corporations.

The report then looks at the aftermath that is taking place now in Seattle and issues recommendations. Among these recommendations are: Limiting the use of "less lethal" weapons to only those situations where lethal force is being threatened. In line with this, we recommend following the example of the European parliament and declaring all such weapons inappropriate for dealing with political protest. Examining the long terms effects of all those exposed to chemical agents, including members of law enforcement.

Examining the effect that the militarization, including SWAT training, waves of inexperienced new hires, and more lethal weaponry is having on the function of the police.

Investigating the role of all federal agencies, especially military, in the decision making processes.


http://www.nlg.org/

http://www.mindfully.org/WTO/Police-Violated-Rights-ACLU.htm


Seattle police violated rights, report says

An ACLU assessment of last fall's WTO meeting faults the city's preparations

AP 6jul00

SEATTLE -- City police should have known enough to keep an open passage for World Trade Organization delegates during protests last fall, an American Civil Liberties Union report concludes.

Instead, according to "Out of Control," a 71-page report prepared for formal release Wednesday, bungling resulted in violation of the First Amendment rights of delegates and protesters.

Despite months of warnings from the Seattle Fire Department, law enforcement agencies and protest organizers, demonstrations and disorders overwhelmed police at the outset of the meetings at the end of November.

"Realizing it had lost control of the situation, the city then overreacted," the report said.

The report, based largely on anonymous accounts from more than 500 people who completed a form on the ACLU's Web site, is one of a number of studies of the disorders that marred the international gathering held Nov. 30-Dec. 3.

Last week, the first of three City Council citizen panels examining various aspects of the issue criticized Mayor Paul Schell and council members for failing to ask more questions before bidding to host the gathering.

This week Schell is expected to release the second half of a report by a law enforcement consultant he hired to assess the city's response, and the National Lawyers Guild also is expected to issue a report on civil rights complaints.

Police and Schell administration officials would not comment on the ACLU report Tuesday. Ed Joiner, former assistant police chief, has admitted he underestimated the number of protesters willing to block the streets and thus left the area without enough officers to establish clear-passage corridors.

The study accused police of violating the free-speech rights of protesters by using tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets to try to clear the streets and by establishing a 25-block no-protest zone in the downtown area.

"The no-protest zone was clearly unrelated to any real security problem," asserted Kathleen Taylor, executive director of the ACLU's state chapter. "That's obvious because all you had to do was dress up nice to get through it."

At the same time, by failing to create "corridors or security perimeters" for passage to the opening meeting, "city officials did not protect conference delegates' right to assemble," the report said.

"If the police had prepared properly before the demonstrators converged on Seattle, they could have found a middle ground between heavy-handedness and naively hoping for the best," the report concluded.

Photos: Seattle 1999,

http://www.globalarcade.org/wto/photo.html?p=1

[PatSeg]

65. Thanks

That was very informative and mirrored most of the impressions I got from the movie.

[G_j]

68. so far, the links I've found to the full NLG report are obsolete

I'm sure they can be found somewhere. They were there, and in DC later for the IMF/World Bank protests.
Something that the media reports never conveyed, was the sense of military-like power brought forth to deal with
protests. The NLG report speaks of the boundaries broken between military and police, especially in the weapons being used.
Darth Vader troopers and the constant sound of helicopters

..the closer to the heart of the beast,

[Hannah Bell]

69. "military-like power" not only "military-like". spd got military aid if my memory serves me.

the movie's take - "no bad guys, ill-prepared police" is just wrong, imo.

the police were *very* well prepared, in terms of intelligence, equipment, & sheer numbers.

[G_j]

70. I read the NLG report when it first came out, and I believe it went in depth

about the lines being crossed with the military. At the next globalization protest in DC at the WB/IMF meeting, it seemed like everyone was involved, I wouldn't be surprised if the CIA wasn't lurking somewhere, a whole lot of attention for non-violent civil disobedience.

[PatSeg]

74. From the report in the above post

"A picture is painted of confused, inexperienced law enforcement officers armed with frighteningly powerful, potentially lethal weaponry and little idea of what to do with it. Random forays seem to be launched against random groups of demonstrators."

I believe that says it better than I did as I was just paraphrasing.

[Echo In Light]

112. Which is exactly when Power makes the contrary claim

[Spike89]

60. A small group from Eugene

There is still debate down here about just how "effective" the tribe of "dirt" anarchists from Eugene were in Seattle. The truth is that I really haven't heard a credible description of what the group's goal was, and therefore can't say if they succeeded. However, they did certainly get a lot of publicity and were not likely to have joined with other groups as part of a coalition in the protests. I can't say how many windows they may or may not have broken in Seattle, but the group was unapologetically anti-civilization/anti-property and did break many windows and cause other property damage in the Eugene area prior to and after the Seattle events.

[Peace Patriot]

90. Just want to say something about "anarchism"--a very broad term.

The Catholic Workers in Los Angeles--a completely, totally, no-exceptions pacifist group with origins in the 1920s (Dorothy Day's movement)--consider themselves "anarchists." They feed thousands of homeless, daily, and accept no help from the government, not even tax exempt status.

The broad coalition of U.S. groups that organized the Seattle protests did so on "anarchist" principles. No chiefs. No dominant leaders. Everybody gets a say. (The meetings were very long.) Yet we "organized" the most effective and amazing and huge (10,000 people) entirely peaceful civil disobedience action that has ever occurred.

I remember jokes and cartoons about "anarchists," as I was growing up and becoming educated, that seemed to derive their image of anarchists as "bomb-throwers" from way back in history--more than a hundred years ago (possibly the post-Bonaparte 'Ancien Regime' counter-revolutionary period, when the monarchies and rightwing policy were restored in Europe).

I don't know much about the very few black-masked youngsters who, in a sense, leeched off the Seattle protests, except that they got all the publicity. They called themselves "anarchists" but scaring people and destroying property to no purpose, and serving the political establishment's purposes by bringing down the massive violence of the state on peaceful people, are not what I associate with "anarchism." The Catholic Workers are my models of "anarchists," and the ones who shattered my unconscious notion of "anarchists" as "bomb-throwers. They might well pour blood on missiles in a civil disobedience action, but then they stand there, as upright and honest citizens, and wait to be arrested and prosecuted, and willingly endure jail if they must, to make their point. (And when they are not objecting to the war machine, they are living in poverty, with the poor, and feeding thousands of homeless, and providing them with medical care and other services.)

If these young "black-masked" so-called "anarchists" had not done what they did in Seattle, perhaps the corpo/fascist 'news' monopolies would have been forced to report the Seattle protests as they truly were: an entirely peaceful, massive citizen objection to corporate rule. Maybe. I don't know. The 'news' monopolies are pretty bad, and fully capable of ignoring the protests of millions of people. The black-masked youth perhaps just gave them an excuse to slander the entire protest--gave them cover for doing so. But I'm still suspicious of these youth, as possibly paid provocateurs, in cahoots with the police and the corpos. I can certainly understand the anger of youth, and their lesser ability to control their anger and channel it into effective and peaceful political action. Our youth have reason for despair. I don't want to unfairly accuse them. And I've never heard of these black-masked kids ever deliberately hurting anyone (except in battles with the police, and indirectly, by bringing police violence down upon the peaceful). But their actions in Seattle (late in the day, and very limited in nature, actually) were certainly convenient for the powers-that-be, as to characterizing the Seattle protests as "violent."

The Seattle protests were the occasion for an unprovoked police riot, which started long before any property was damaged by anyone. That truth got smothered, quite deliberately, by using the actions of these young black-masked "anarchists" and any others who vandalized property to characterize the whole protest. The vandalism was blown way out of proportion. And the violence in the streets of Seattle that week was almost entirely caused by the police themselves, who ignored the vandals and went after the peaceful, and created a state of siege in Seattle--the streets filled with tear gas and armored vehicles and lines of armed cops, with free speech and other civil rights suspended (the Constitution suspended--people were banned from areas, or were arrested, merely for wearing a anti-WTO button) that was entirely unnecessary.

[PatSeg]

94. Very interesting

Yes, "anarchists" does conjure up very negative images usually dressed in black and often faceless. It is a convenient term to throw at anyone who opposes the powers that be.

The black-masked anarchists from Seattle just sound too suspicious to me. I wouldn't be surprised if some or most of them were plants.

[Spike89]

97. The black masked anarchists

Were from Eugene. They obviously aren't representative of all anarchists. They were real (not plants) and they were violent against property and proudly so. They organized some destructive events here in Eugene prior to Seattle. Check Wikipedia's entry on Eugene anarchists.

Sadly, there really isn't a need to plant people on either side anymore, extremists aren't exactly rare any more.

[PatSeg]

98. Did these Eugene anarchists

have any real objective?

Thanks, I will check Wikipedia.

[Spike89]

105. real? couldn't say

Basically they were advocating an end to civilization or more precisely, ownership and technology. Of course, in any group you have various motivations and levels of committment to the cause. I was not really paying attention to these guys that much, but it was difficult because they made a lot of noise in the local media, then Seattle came along and a lot of liberals in Eugene got put on the defensive. The anarchists were never a big group here, just very active.

[PatSeg]

109. I guess you don't have to be "big"

to make a lot of noise.

[tama]

122. 'end to civilization or more precisely, ownership and technology'

Clearly, they have good sense of the roots of our problems and our hubristic alianation from nature - in other words, the physical world. In ecology alianation from physical world means ecological dead end.

The effectiveness of some tactics can and should be debated, but I'm not the first one to throw the stone (pun intended :)).

[tama]

99. Word

"The broad coalition of U.S. groups that organized the Seattle protests did so on "anarchist" principles. No chiefs. No dominant leaders. Everybody gets a say. (The meetings were very long.) Yet we "organized" the most effective and amazing and huge (10,000 people) entirely peaceful civil disobedience action that has ever occurred."

The all-important point. That day and those preceding, they were all anarchists. Which is not so much an ideology but way to act and behave. And same goes for centralists, of all shades.

I make no secret that I prefer the anarchist non-hierarchical way of acting for shared interests the centralist way of formalizing power into corrupt hierarchies.

[lonestarnot]

81. The one in DC was not televised or recorded in 2005.

:)

[StreetKnowledge]

88. I was caught in the middle of it.

And I've never forgotten it, and probably never will.

[killbotfactory]

103. Here's a documentary from the notorious anarchists point of view

Breaking The Spell

Using amateur camera footage recorded by protesters at the scene of the 1999 Seattle WTO riots, it documents the riot from the perspective of the anarchists, their opinions of fellow protesters, local politicians, and includes footage which aired nationally on 60 Minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myu74VAN92Q

[PatSeg]

113. Thanks

So many different perspectives about the same event.

[Echo In Light]

119. Thanks for posting

[tama]

131. Precious quote

WOMAN: Vandalism is vandalism, destruction is destruction, whether it is people or property, it is not acceptable
REPORTER: What did you think about the Boston Tea Party?
WOMAN: I thought it was wonderfull (laughter)
REPORTER: Thank you.

[jillan]

118. I definitely will have to put that on my list - I haven't seen it either.

How did we miss it? Wasn't that about the time when it was Lewinsky 24/7?

[PatSeg]

123. It was really a good movie

I don't know, 1999 is such a blur now. I do remember the Lewinsky crap drowned out all other news back then.