WTO Day Two: The Empire Strikes Back
WEDNESDAY (12/1):
Early Tuesday the world watched as Seattle police under-reacted to massive peaceful crowds. Wednesday we saw the same police department (with help from other police departments and the National Guard) over-react to the property damage of the day before.
Peaceful demonstrators were arrested en masse for failure to disperse or for the heinous crime of attempting to enter the unconstitutional "no protest" zone established by Mayor Paul Schell. Those not arrested were pushed back into the neighborhood of Capitol Hill, downtown Seattle's closest residential area. There the tear-gas/rubber bullet bombardments continued for hours. Some protestors present during these skirmishes maintain that the gas used Wednesday actually hurt WORSE than the gas they were hit with downtown on Tuesday, as if a different gas was being used (empty tear gas cannisters retrieved from the gutters of Broadway actually contain this warning: "Not for use on civilians"). The windows of some shops and homes were chipped or shattered by the rubber shrapnel from the concussion grenades police were firing. I heard one account of a fully spewing tear gas grenade landing in someone's living room. I heard several accounts of people who weren't involved in WTO protests at all coming out of their Capitol Hill homes to beg the police to stop their mad bombing campaign.
Two local politicians that I know of, King County Councilmember Brian Derdowski and Seattle City Council person Tina Podlodowski, journeyed to Capitol Hill in an attempt to calm things down, but ended up sucking tear gas along with the other peaceful demonstrators. Councilman Brian Derdowski later stated publicly that he saw no evidence of vandalism or looting while he was on the hill, yet watched as the police bombardment continued into the wee hours of the morning. The worst thing he saw done by the protestors was tossing bottles at the well-armored police or throwing their tear gas bombs back the direction they were fired from.
To add to the day's surreal derision, Mayor Paul Schell earlier declared it illegal for anyone other than a police officer to possess a gas mask in the Seattle downtown core! This is so unconstitutional I don't know where to begin... What next, an order making it illegal to cover your face when being beaten by a cop's truncheon? Or how about outlawing pissing your undershorts when a group of unidentifiable Borg-like men in black are swarming you for peacefully demonstrating in the streets? I can't WAIT to witness Paul Schell's resignation speech. What a complete tool this man is. Hope he regains his soul some day.
TUESDAY / WEDNESDAY SIDEBAR:
Even if you agree that certain "protestors" deserved to be tear-gassed and sprayed with rubber bullets for breaking windows and spray-painting, such a perspective illogically places the safety of property above the safety of people. None of the hooligans or anarchists physically harmed another person, not even while "rioting". They vented their rage on property belonging to large wealthy corporations. BUT... they did this AFTER the initial tear gassing by police. In turn, the police used the actions of the hooligans as an excuse to continue bombarding the ENTIRE (overwhelmingly peaceful) crowd with extremely painful, panic inducing chemicals and flesh puncturing rubber shrapnel. The police DID physically harm the people. Repeatedly... for 36 straight hours.
Personally, I believe peaceful citizens have a right to occupy public streets if they so choose. This is a constitutionally protected right regardless of whether or not local businesses are having a bad Christmas season as a result of occupied streets. Had the protests been allowed to remain peaceful, eventually these protestors would have spent money downtown! Hell, business owners had a captive consumer base. But the police never gave this commerce a chance to occur... they started tear-gassing at 10am. Talk about a barrier to free trade!
And as for the police's need to disperse the crowd, their objectives could have been met by drenching the crowd with icy cold water. As cold as the day already was, this would've turned the noisy masses into shivering masses sending them home to change into dry clothes and come back later (allowing new police corridors to be established). Pipe dream, you say? Possibly. But the police should've at least TRIED something this humane before resorting to chemical weapons and violence.
-Mattro
