WTO Day One: Additional Thoughts

First, a bit more on what happened TUESDAY 11/30:

Seattle City police were TOTALLY unprepared for the volumes of people that came to protest the WTO. This despite two months of prior negotiating with the Direct Action Network (DAN), and various union leaders who had all been quite open about what it was they hoped to achieve: Peacefully shutting down the WTO.

Thousands of protestors were already on the streets by 7:00 AM. The police, in contrast, had only a couple hundred officers holding a perimeter around the convention center itself. Somehow, the Seattle Police Department forgot to secure a path from the hotels to the center so that delegates could get to the WTO meetings. Every inch of space on sidewalks... streets... alleys... was occupied by peaceful demonstrators for blocks around the convention center. These protestors refused to allow delegates past them -- all part of the plan that everybody, including the police, knew in advance. By 10am, the police realized that, if the WTO meeting was going to happen, they'd have to clear some corridors. The crowd had no intention of going anywhere, despite police loudspeaker warnings that they would be tear-gassed.

You know the rest: Tear gas, rubber bullets and concussion bombs were used to push the crowd back block by block. Those of the anarchist and hooligan variety (who the peaceful demonstrators had managed to keep in check up until this point) decided peace was no longer an option. This is when the vandalism and graffitti-ing of downtown Seattle began. These violent acts were NOT random. They were a direct reaction to the pain and humiliation of being gassed by the police for merely sitting peacefully.

Had the police shown up in sufficient numbers to begin with, there is a very strong likelihood that the first day of protesting would have gone peacefully all day, even when joined by the 30,000+ labor rights marchers who arrived around 1pm. Instead, by the time the unionists and their supporters got to Seattle, several blocks of the city had been trashed.

Tuesday night Mayor Schell declared Seattle a Police State, instituted a curfew and suspended the Constitution of the United States. No Protesting, peaceful or otherwise, would be allowed in the downtown area for a 15 block radius around the convention center. The national guard was called in as was every available police officer from every city and county across the state of Washington. Tear gassing standoffs continued across the downtown area well into the night.