Letter to the Seattle Times
RE: Sorry, 'Jellybean' and 'Terminator': There is no right to riot -12/12/99
US citizens have the federally mandated right to peacefully assemble on public property. The streets, sidewalks and alleyways around the Convention Center are public property. The US constitution trumps city and state regulations for permits, etc. We can bicker forever over whether locking arms is "violent". Personally I don't believe it is. And a case CAN be made that the delegates, being from other nations, do NOT have the same rights to free speech as US citizens do. Blockading them was not an unconstitutional act.
Secondly, "riots"? I know the media is married to the term, but isn't what happened downtown on November 30 more like what the Brits call "hooliganism"? I think of a riot as a sustained period of destructive chaos that takes months to recover from. Seattle's "riot" was over in a matter of hours. No one was killed, not even seriously injured. No buildings were torched; all affected businesses had cash registers ringing again within days. If you must use the word "riot," for what happened here, categorize it as "riot lite" or "diet riot". How about a Seattle-style "polite riot"? In any case, once the "rioting" of the demonstrators was quelled, the police kept right on rioting for 24 more hours, tear-gassing and arresting people on Capitol Hill who were OUTSIDE the unconstitutional "no protest" zone.
Mr. Chapman, you're conveniently forgetting cause and effect. The "rioting" downtown didn't begin until AFTER police used tear-gas to extend their lines out from the Convention Center around 10am. Police used their last resort FIRST in order to establish a corridor delegates could use to gain access to the WTO meetings. The police never tried negotiating with the crowd for a peaceful resolution to the situation (as both sides would negotiate on 12/2 and 12/3). They never tried drenching the crowd in ice cold water so protestors would have to go home and change. The police reached straight for the gas and rubber bullets... making people VERY angry in the process (suddenly you can't see or breath and your face feels like it is on fire... YOU try to be polite after that). Each person reacts to their inner rage differently. For some, swearing at the police is enough, rude gestures, etc. Other people throw stuff. Still others break windows and steal. All of this activity came AFTER the violence by the police. In other words, THE POLICE STARTED IT. Prior to that, organizers of the demonstrations HAD been policing themselves, keeping the unruly elements in line.
I have an issue with the estimates of crowd size being bandied about in the press. Anyone from the Nov 30th crowd who has also been downtown when a sold-out Kingdome event ends will testify the streets of Seattle were vastly more crowded during that opening day of the WTO. The Kingdome holds about 64,000 people. Demonstrators easily exceeded that number. Estimates of 35,000 demonstrators are an obvious low-balling tactic.
And finally, a question: If Assistant Chief Ed Joiner's statements to the press about the "Capitol Hill mob" with its "molotov cocktails" are to be believed... don't you think, by now, we would have ALL seen images of people throwing these flaming devices? They're a little hard to miss. Reporters and cameras were EVERYWHERE during these demonstrations and they were looking for this type of sensational violence. Yet the Seattle Police Dept. continues to justify their 24 hour rampage by pointing to this invisible event.
