MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"
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MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents" |
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EDITOR'S NOTE: Following the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests, G21 received a number of e-mails from people who had taken part in or witnessed the events. Our tradition is to print the impressions of people "on the ground." In this SPECIAL REPORT we reprint their experiences and insights with their permission.
So we went to protest the World Trade Organization in Seattle.
We flew to Seattle because I was supposed to have a big roll-out extravaganza for my book.
When we planned this, it seemed a reasonably good bet to have a book reading
and media appearance thing timed with the meeting of the World Trade Organization. But we, along with everyone else, grossly underestimated the events that were to take place there.
The wave was historic, but it pushed my own personal little boat around mightily, so that's how I felt it, and that's how I'll first report it.
First, the article I'd co-written with my friend Alex Steffen got bumped out
of the Sunday paper to Tuesday, and ultimately to Wednesday. (The Mayor and
County Executive co-wrote a piece that pushed us down the pecking order.) Then my appearance on the local public radio talk show got bumped by the appearance of the head of the AFL-CIO and (by phone, I guess) Fidel Castro. It all crescendoed with my reading on Tuesday night, which was the night after the big wave of protests and ancillary violence caused the city to be placed under a curfew and state of emergency. The reading went on -- Elliott
Bay Books is two blocks outside what became the curfew zone -- and fifteen people braved the chaos to come hear me.
Since most of the global environmental and social problems in the world trace their origin to wasteful economic growth and suspect trade practices, it has fallen -- unfairly, I would say -- on the WTO to receive the projected angst and anger of a whole variety of anxious groups, from labor to child welfare to environmental activists.
Hence the protests in Seattle, which attracted dissident voices from all over
the planet, looking for someplace to air their worries, somebody to be angry
at. Neither Melita nor I is especially negative on the topic of "globalization," the catch-all word for increasing global economic integration and the hobgoblin of most of the protesters ("No globalization without representation," "Globalization kills," etc.). After all, our relationship was the product of jet planes, the internet, the spread of English. Hard to get mad at a phenomenon that has brought you together with the love of your life.
But both of us are concerned with global trade terms that ignore environmental and social protections, so there we were at the big labor rally, with 20,000 people, listening to speech after speech calling for reform of the trade rules to protect nature and people better. The airline pilots were there. The longshoremen were there (and they'd shut down the ports on the West Coast for the day). The Sierra Club was there. Etc. etc.
We marched -- "strolled" is the better word, it was a lovely day, full of color
and light -- down Fifth Avenue toward the convention center, where the meeting was supposed to be happening (but was disrupted by more determined protesters than we, who blocked entrances by lying down in front of doorways
and such).
We met up with lots of friends, had lovely conversations. My friend Richard Conlin, a city council member, was somewhere up near the front of the parade, and one of his staffers walked with us.
What I'm saying is, this was a very peaceful, mainstream kind of thing.
When we reached downtown, things turned surreal.
Picture this:
Suddenly you hear a muffled explosion.
You look up ahead of you. Standing straight up in the air, some 30-feet tall
and 12-feet in diameter, is a giant green condom.
This is the Greenpeace "Practice Safe Trade" condom.
Just beyond the condom is a cloud of tear gas, completely filling the intersection two blocks ahead, making a subtle gray and billowing backdrop against which the green of the condom stands out eerily. Every few seconds,
another cannister of tear gas (or pepper gas) is exploded, making a loud "WHUMP" and flashing a bit, like muted fireworks.
In front of the condom, a person on very tall stilts struts about solemnly, dressed like Death. Death has impossibly long black fingers, and is in full
Death character, and the exploding tear gas cannisters don't seem to phase him at all. Nor does it phase the condom, which continues to stand tall and
proud for some minutes.
Then fear overtakes the crowd. Many start running toward us. Death disappears. The condom begins to fall over, impotent at last. The gas seems to be heading this way.
This breaks the voyeuristic spell we are watching in, a combination of shock
and irony and spiritual weariness. Melita and I decide to walk down to the Pike Place Market for lunch. (A few, however, start running *toward* the tear gas. Go figure. Such people are less likely to pass genes on to the next generation.)
At the Athenian, a seafood cafe overlooking the water, everything is strangely normal. A big crowd, clams and squid and haddock, the light breaking through clouds on Puget Sound. Who would know that a few blocks away, a couple of hundred anarchists in ski masks are breaking windows, a few opportunistic hoodlums are looting a Starbucks?
After our late (4 pm) lunch we start strolling toward the bookstore where I'm
supposed to give my reading that night. Melita sees a T-shirt in a souvenir
shop window that says, "Stop the WTO."
"I just have to see if that shirt was made in China," she says, darting inside.
The shopkeeper smiles. The shirt in the window is made in USA. "But most people buy the cheaper anti-WTO ones off the rack, and those are made in Honduras," he informs us. "They're all a bunch of hypocrites."
He's also the one who informs us that the city has been declared in a "State of Emergency," and a 7:00 pm curfew is in effect downtown....
ALAN ATKISSON is a reknowned ecological writer and author of the recent book Believing Cassandra, A Optimist Looks at a Pessimist's World. Herewith his dispatch from Seattle:
Enough about me; let's talk about the WTO. It's the agency that administers and adjudicates the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT. It is secretive, tightly controlled, and shockingly non-participatory *even to its own member-delegates.* (According to recent reports, delegates in Seattle have been surprised to discover certain documents and agreements had been secretly drafted in advance).
You are one of a throng of people, feeling lighthearted and democratically empowered.
HENRY is a member of California's chapter of the environmental activist group EarthFirst! Herewith his report:
Namste,
This is Henry from Earth First! California. This is a quick recap of some of the events from Seattle on the week of Nov. 28th to Dec. 4th. Please send this to your friends.
On Tuesday, November 30th thousands of non-violent protesters started marching towards the convention center in downtown Seattle. At the same time hundreds of non-violent protesters decided to hold arms, set up tri-pods, or lock down at all the intersections leading to the convention center. We totally stopped the WTO from happening, because no one could get in.
At 10:00 A.M. the police told people at one intersection to move. They then shot pepper spray canisters into the middle of the intersection, even though there where non-violent people, children, labor, sitting down peacefully. They also shot concussion canisters (they just make a large noise when they explode), and they also started shooting 3 different sizes of rubber bullets at us. They used these same tacticts at different intersections over the next hour. They got some intersections back, but, the people where seeing the police for who they really were. Protecting the corporations and not the people.
At about 10:30 A. M. about 20 people dressed in black from Eugene who call themselves anarchists started throwing rocks at businesses like nike, the gap, mcdonalds, etc... . This is what has been mostly shown on the news.
Out of 50,000 protesters 20 people where getting most of the attention.
For the rest of the day, the people tried to hold their ground will the police tried to use torture to stop them. Pepper spray, tear gas, concussion grenades, horses, tanks, people in storm trooper outfits taking billy clubs and swinging and connecting on protesters heads. At one point I saw 5 police offices on horses brake through a line and three non-violent protesters sat on the ground in front of them. One people officer when out of his way to run over the woman laying on the ground. It was so crazy. I felt at that moment such a close connection to the people of the world who do not ever have the right to protest. I had been carrying a sign around the whole day with the face of the leader of Burma on it. She won the elections in 1990 with 80 percent of the vote and has been in jail since. The poster has a quote from her asking us to speak for her and her people.
By 5:00 P.M. the police started moving everyone out of the downtown area because there was martial law declared for 7:00 P.M. As the police finally shot enough tear gas, etc... to get us out of the downtown the followed us up to Capital Hill. This is a middle class/freak neiborhood just East of the downtown. Their curfew zone stopped at the border, yet, the chased up up and down Capital hill all night. The national guard and the police where hitting and pepper spraying anyone on the streets. If you where unluckily caught in the crossfire it did not matter. City councilmen and judges where gassed. It was out of control. The television was showing pictures of police offers kicking the shit out of people on the ground. It was so surreal.
On the 1st. We gathered at 8:00 A.M. at a park about two 1 1/2 miles from the convention center. As we started to march towards the convention center, the police started arresting people. No one was aloud to speak out, gather, or enjoy any of the rights we have in the constition. It was crazy.
It was not America.
Most of the people in Seattle did not seem to care. Some came to witness, but, most thought that the people had the right to suspend the constitution. I felt like we needed to be there in order to protect America and the constitution from whoever was in charge. At 9:30 A.M. 300 of us at sat down in the downtown area. (For those of us who sneaked in.) 200 of us where then arrested for unlawful assembly and other crazy laws which are unconstitutional. I witnessed all of these things, but, somehow the police chose not to arrest me. People told me that anyone who was in the downtown area, educating the public was arrested and that they where sneaking out the leaders. At one point at the 8:00 A. M. arrest, 8 police officers broke through their police line at tackled one of our organizers to the ground. He was cut up badly, but, was not arrested. Another sign of their power.
At 1:00 we met with labor at the docks. The teamsters, steelworks, dockworkers joined the students and the environmentalists in denouncing the WTO. This non-violent crowd. (The 20 anarchists in black had not been seen since the morning of the 30th) started marching towards the convention center. I was up front. There was about 5,000 of us.
When we got within 1 mile the police in riot gear shot tear gas canisters into the middle of the crowd (for the first time with no warning). There was many old people, people in wheel chairs, children, and just regular people on the street. Businesses where open and work was going on, so, everyone was affected. We got split with the first 600 people divided from the make. The police shot off about 20 more tear gas cans, concussion grenades, and really started to shoot the rubber bullets. I saw one person try to pick up an old man who was knocked out by the tear gas on the ground and two police officers charged him and shot up in the stomach with rubber bullets. It was so out of control. These police where trying to hurt and mame non-violent protesters.
I was hiding behind a post, watching the rubber bullets wiz by. I had a gas mask, but, was told by the protesters that it was now a felony to have one. That night police and national guard again went into the streets and attacked anyone (99.9%) being non-violent people. It was a war against its own people. By the morning of the 2nd, there was such a backlash (I assume) that the tear gas stopped. Most of our people where in Jail, so, we only where marching around with a couple thousand people. There was no violence at that point. We marched to the jail and tried to help get the release of our people. Two others and I worked with the people trying to get our people out. By Friday night more were getting released, there had been many reports of police brutality against our people. I had to drive back to Santa Cruz at that point and catch a flight out of the country.
Please send this out to all of your friends, so, that there are witnesses to the battle in Seattle against the WTO.
© 1999, GENERATOR 21.
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