Seattle: The WTO Week
© 1999 Photos and Text Doug Plummer
2 December 1999
It’s a sad, angry moment in Seattle. I’ve been glued to the TV the last 3 days, outraged at what has been unfolding. Not at the WTO, not even in solidarity with the anti-WTO protestors (I feel solidly in the Clintonesque middle on this issue, that the WTO needs reform, not rejection), but in defense of my core identity as an American. For the siege of Seattle is no longer about the WTO, it’s about defending the right to gather and protest.
Until the tear gas canisters flew, I was proud of the restraint showed by our police. In the face of a demonstration far bigger than anyone had planned for, plus a well organized direct action campaign to disrupt the WTO, the police held their lines and did not react to sometimes severe provocation. They were there to keep the order at a disorderly, but peaceful action.
But since then we’ve seen countless pepper-sprayings of bystanders and promiscuous use of rubber bullets and tear gas. The vandalism by the Eugene-based anarchist group seems to have been the trigger. The police couldn’t stop that, they had lost control of the streets, and these guys had been on their feet for hours and hours, bottling up a ton of frustration. Some of them, I think, cracked. Or, more ominously, these were their orders. The evidence have been all over our airwaves.
Last night we thought it would be calm enough to take in a movie on Capitol Hill. On exiting, the usher warned us that a riot was happening 8 blocks away. Our eyes watered in the open air, from the drifting tear gas. Concussion grenades made it sound like a war was on.
There is a war on. On our civil liberties. The Mayor has declared a civil emergency, which means that the police invade a neighborhood and gas the residents who come out of their apartments and houses to protest their presence. It has been tense, it’s been ugly, and the city is mad.
Our freedom is tenuous. We take the Bill of Rights for granted, but one declaration by the authorities and I can be arrested in my neighborhood for standing on the sidewalk. I am not free in my own city right now.
In a way the anarchists won. Their spree of destruction provoked a violent reaction that just confirmed their world view of a state bent on violent suppression in order to protect property. The victim has been the trust and pride of our city process. What remains is a polarized, bitter wreckage.
