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Web-Lines Talk Vol. I.2
The Seattle Riots
...What's going on here?
by Jason McManus
An Editorial Commentary from a Seattle Resident
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It started out as a peaceful, sanctioned march by the AFL-CIO labor
unions as 20,000 people were going to exercise their first amendment
rights, but it ended up being a nasty riot that spilled out onto a
main street in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. (How's that for
a run-on sentence?). Tuesday, November 30, 1999, according to a
reporter from the Seattle Times, saw the worst riot Seattle has ever
seen. The last one was in 1968 over american involvement in the Vietnam
war. This one, at least originally, was over a disagreement with policies
set by the World Trade Organization, whom Seattle was hosting, accusing
them of not operating in a democratic manner, and catering to the needs
of big business over human rights and the environment.
Initially, I took a neutral stance on the issue, with minor annoyance
that I wasn't going to be able to get to work on Tuesday, but overall glad
that people were standing up for their rights. However, this wasn't going
to be the case for long.
In a foolish but adventurous mood, I decided to go out and mill around and
watch the protestors in the streets. I figured, hey, public streets, I
pay taxes here, why not? The first thing I smelled as I was walking down
the streets toward the scenes that I had seen on television earlier that
day was massive amounts of pepper spray, which burned my eyes and nose,
and I heard loud explosions as the riot police set off noise bombs to
try and scare and scatter the protestors. Actually, quite a number of
the protestors were leaving back toward their cars on the edges of downtown,
and there was a larger number of vandals and other troublemakers left.
For the most part, the people actually protesting were civil and peaceful,
and all through the night, as mischievous and violent as most of the people
were, I didn't see one fight among the rioters; it was mostly aimed at
the police and buildings in the downtown area.
Mayor Paul Schell had set a 7:00pm curfew for the downtown area, to be
lifted at 7:30am the next morning. I arrived about 5pm, so I had a good
while to wander around. We went up Pine St., one of the streets with the
largest protestor concentration, walked up to see how far up it went, and
walked back down. Our return path was blocked at Westlake Center, where
we were very rudely told that "HEY!@# You can't GO this way! GO THE %#@!
around!" Thus, we went around the block and saw an open doughnut shop,
an oasis in all the chaos. We went in to get drinks to wash the taste of
tear gas and pepper spray out of our mouths, and take a breather for a few
minutes. While inside, a group of people shattered the front windows of
a Radio Shack across the street from us, and probably looted half the
store before 6 riot police came around the corner. I think everyone got
away clean with that one. It's interesting to note the stores that the
people actually did damage to were the same ones that were being protested
against: The Gap's windows were broken in, as were Starbucks, Nordstroms,
the Bon Marche, and several other stores accused of several indecent acts
of corporate indiscretion. Few of the smaller local businesses were
damaged, aside from superficial tagging and that sort of thing.
I soon grew bored and decided to get out of the area before the National
Guard was called in to enforce the curfew, which was supposed to happen
at 7pm, but I later found out they didn't arrive until Wednesday morning.
I watched the chaos on television at a friend's house until 8pm, when I
was simply going to go home, but I found an interesting scene on the way,
just 2 blocks down from his house. I watched that from my car for a little
while, and then drove up to Capitol Hill, where I had seen there was another
line of police blocking access to downtown on an overpass. I took a back
route, and arrived, too far down apparently, because there were thousands
of people running up the street, clouds of gas and loud explosions following
them.
I promptly turned my car around and parked toward the top of the
hill, one street off of Broadway, the main strip through that part of town.
I stepped out, and headed down the street, to another volley of tear gas
canisters, and people running at me. The police then backed down a block
and set up a line. The people running around took scaffolding off the side
of a building and tore it up in the middle of the street. This was
followed by several dumpsters and trash cans. It was interesting to note
that there were still a few people there who just wanted to watch, and were
trying to stop some of the more violent people from tearing up their
neighborhood. This standoff lasted for quite a while, and they moved it up
and blocked off the intersection of Pine and Broadway, one of the bigger
intersections in that part of town.
Once they blocked off that intersection, some of the more conscientious people actually went back down and
cleaned up the mess made by the other less concerned people, down to picking
up every last bottle dumped out of a glass recycle bin. It was nice to see
the community spirit in this area. Aside from the dumpsters, there was
really very little property damage to this part of town. This inter-
section remained blocked for probably an hour, until the riot police came
up from behind the area and blocked it off. They didn't do anything at
first, and people were throwing bottles and pointing firecrackers at them.
Then they launched a volley of about 10 tear gas canisters, and sent the
masses scattering, most of the people went up Broadway closer to the retail
area on Capitol Hill. After scattering, most of the people converged again
at the intersection of Denny (I think) and Broadway, and set up yet another
dumpster fire blockade. This one was blocked off rather soon by the riot
police, and the fire trucks came and put it out. Most of the rest of the
night was just miscellaneous work putting out fires and cleanup work.
However, the following day, apparently the Mayor decided that things had
gotten out of hand the previous night, and decided that he would have his
police force arrest ANY PROTESTOR. This only took place for the morning
hours, when they arrested even peaceful protestors and sent them out of
town to an old naval base. I read that the ACLU had sent Schell a letter
around 10am, to which he never responded, but soon thereafter, there were
groups of protestors allowed to pass, somewhat. I think around 1pm I saw
an organized march, but I don't believe all the riot squads got the message,
because overall just under 300 people were arrested today for peacibly
exercising their rights. Quite the outrage. It should be noted that
even though the media is focusing on the chaos present in Seattle, most of
the protestors were actually very peaceful, and a small band of them came
out at 7am this morning to help in the cleanup effort. People were sweep-
ing up glass, washing graffiti off the walls, and trying to restore the
downtown area to the normally beautiful image of COMMERCE it usually has.
I've been really annoyed at a lot of the supposedly "impartial" coverage of
the story by a lot of the local media in this area. KOMO TV put a
wonderful line in one of their articles about McDonald's getting its
window smashed in, which has since been removed, after I sent them a
scathing letter about their opinionated drivel. It was something to the
effect of "although noone was hurt, the noise frightened children and
families trying to eat lunch inside." Way to play the emotional angle,
KOMO. They also made a statement earlier about some of the protestors
buying Pepsi and Starbucks Coffee before their march, that sounded more
like slander, due to the way they phrased it, than impartial reporting.
Oh well, I guess you can't trust anyone who makes their money through
sensationalism anyway.
All in all, the protestors themselves were done somewhat of an injustice
by the people simply out to cause mischief, but on the following day,
the Mayor and the police completely overstepped their bounds, trampling
the first amendment rights of the people to peacibly gather, by creating
this so-called "No-Protest Zone" in downtown. At my last glance, there
were 292 arrests made today. None of these people, to my knowledge, were
attempting to break windows, loot stores, or do anything but speak their
mind regarding the WTO's policies.
It's indeed a sad day for civil liberties, and I think Mayor Schell will
soon find out from the ACLU just how badly he overstepped his bounds.
On a side note, if it's gotten this bad this week, I'm highly interested
in seeing what the New Year will bring, just 30 days away. I'll watch it
from the woods somewhere and let you know.
My Take on the Seattle Riots..
...What's going on here?
Part 2 - Wednesday, December 1, 1999
by Jason McManus
An Editorial Commentary from a Seattle Resident Continued
Well, tonight was a different story, with the protestors on the right side.
I stayed out of the daytime skirmishes, as I noticed from the news that the
mayor was "cracking down" due to the violence the previous night,
which I was thinking was justified after the looting and broken windows of the
previous day. My friend and I joined a peaceful march on Broadway,
in the Capitol Hill district. It was about 500 strong, marching back and
forth between Pine St, back and forth.
The protestors ended up at the intersection of Broadway and Pine, when the night took a turn for the worst.
The march was completely peaceful. When people were getting out of line,
they were being asked to leave, and were leaving with no problems. There
was no looting, no windows breaking, and nothing that was occuring that went
anywhere out of the lines of normal citizens exercising their rights to free
speech and public demonstration of dissatisfaction. However, the police
seemed to be taking their "cracking down" standpoint a little too
seriously.
At around 8pm, a marked police suburban went charging through the middle of
the crowd, actually running over people. I was standing next to this police
car, and watched them with my own eyes speed through this crowd of people,
hitting someone on a bike. The protestors were angered by this and began
beating on the police car, trying to get them to stop. An officer jumped
out of the passenger side, and began shoving people aside. They were ANGRY.
Once the riot police who were waiting close behind saw the scene, they
charged the intersection and fired a volley of tear gas and pepper spray,
clearing out the entire intersection, and leaving people shocked and livid
that they incited this. People ran north on Broadway, followed closely
behind by a line of riot police that were simply marching up the road, and
firing continuous volleys of tear gas, pepper spray, and concussion bombs.
You have to understand that during any given night of the week, Capitol Hill
has a bustling nightlife, so a large portion of the people on the streets
had nothing whatsoever to do with the protest, and were simply innocent
victims getting caught in the middle of the siege. While running, I saw a
man angry with the entire scene, telling the protestors to leave and go
home. This man was soon shot by riot police with a wooden pellet, and fell in
pain. When we tried to call for medical attention for this man, the 911 operator
hung up on us. We yelled and told the charging riot police that the man was
injured and needed medical assistance. We were met with opposition, that
ended up being the riot police firing more volleys of pepper spray at the
people standing around trying to help the injured man.
The protestors regrouped at the intersection of Broadway and
John St. The police had set up a perimeter blocking access to the block to
the north, and the protestors were standing on the four corners surrounding
that intersection. This area is not in the "no-protest zone", has
no curfew, and is bustling with people anyway on any average night. The protestors
were yelling chants such as "Go Home!" and "Shame" and
"Leave our streets" and "This is OUR neighborhood" at the line of riot police. It
appeared they were getting angry, because they lined up in formation and charged at random
people with pepper spray canisters.
In the confusion earlier, I lost track of my friend, and ran into him again back at my car, which was parked behind the
block. We went back up to the front lines, and watched the police simply
line up in formation and charge at all of the protestors in all directions,
sending off a volley of at least 10 concussion bombs in the neighborhood.
I looked up across the street, right at the intersection at a 5 story apart-
ment building in which people were being kept up by the bombing outside
their windows.
We ran into a friendly bookstore on the corner, Twice Sold
Tales, who was kind enough to be appalled by the police action in their
streets, and allow people a safe haven from the random gassing that was
going on outside their store. We looked around the bookstore for a bit, and went back outside, down the
street, back to the intersection of Pine and Broadway, to a much larger
crowd of people than earlier. Presumably this is because the police gassed
and bombed random people and a residential district late at night, and
angered the innocent bystanders, so they grouped together to protest the
action. This scene remained at Pine St for around 2 hours, when a group
went down to the police line and started challenging the police, who
launched a good number of volleys of tear gas at them.
This melee kept up for quite a while, until they simply charged at everyone, and launched several volleys
into the normal crowd of innocent protestors. An interesting note, before
the police started charging, there was a man in a suit walking around
talking to protestors, trying to give advice on how to protest peacefully. I later
discovered on the news that he was a city councilman who was trying to
assist and thought the police were using excessive force. He was gassed along with
the rest of the people.
We ran up the street, eyes and nose running, mouths
burning, back to my car and called it a night at about midnight. The
protest went on until about 1:40am, when according to reports of the people who were
there until the last, were singing "Deck The Halls", when the
police launched a final volley of several canisters of teargas to "clear
out" the apparently unwanted protest. I believe most of the people simply went home
after that.
On the television, the scenes at that intersection looked more like a
warzone than a peaceful protest. However, this was not the fault this night of the
protestors. This was entirely incited by the police driving through the
middle of a crowd that they are supposed to be protecting, the people who
pay their salaries. According to the news, through all the mess, only 2
people were arrested during the whole scene on Capitol Hill.
Web-Lines Note: At latest count, Over 500 people were arrested during the Seattle Protests of the WTO.
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