Politics: Inside the Seattle Demonstrations

In many ways, the demonstrations in Seattle to shut down the World Trade Organization conference were like something out of the sixties, with one big difference. In those days there was no Internet and we rarely heard news from inside the demonstrations, only the official police version. This time, though, there was plenty of online information from the demonstrators, offering us a view of what it was like to be in the center of the demonstration. Whether or not you support the actions of the demonstrators, the look is fascinating.

Jonathan Oppenheimer, an activist from Vancouver, British Columbia, arrived in Seattle several weeks before the WTO event to help plan the demonstration. He worked with the Direct Action Network, composed of groups from around the world, which had rented a warehouse to provide food and meeting areas for the protests.

They developed a plan that divided the area around the Conference Center and Paramount Theater, where the WTO delegates were to meet, into twelve “pie slices.” Groups were organized into clusters and given the responsibility for shutting down each of the slices. Another “flying squad” of about one hundred people was formed to weave through the crowd and supply support for any area that needed more people.

The march and blockade began at about 7 a.m. on the first day of the conference. The demonstrators, 35 to 50 thousand strong, were able to communicate via hand-held radios and cell phones. Oppenheimer’s group, the “flying squad,” was directed to the back side of the conference center where the blockade was in need of people.

“It was this weak back area that the Seattle police tried to clear first,” he said in a report he filed on http://www.indymedia.org. “At around 8:30, the riot squad, decked out in gas masks, started firing canisters of tear gas at the passive crowd. The crowd, many wearing goggles and bandannas, amazingly held their ground for some time, until the police moved in with pepper spray and more tear gas to push everyone back.”

It seems that the mood was fairly festive at that time. Oppenheimer said, “After clearing the area, about ten delegates were ushered between two walls of riot police. The delegates smiled, waved at us and even snapped pictures of the crowds on either side of them.”

At about the same time as the first tear gas canisters were fired, the police began jamming the demonstrator’s radio communications, forcing the organizers to rely on their cell phones. Later in the day, the police were able to discover some of the cell phone numbers and used that knowledge to feed false information to the demonstrators. After that, “most of the coordination ended-up being spontaneous, with people just running back and forth to try to even-out the blockades,” Oppenheimer explained. “There were also some people monitoring police scanners, and we were sometimes able to figure out which entrances the police would try to clear.”

At 9:30, the police made their second assault on the crowd. “This time, people were a bit angrier after the last gassing, and a few people had moved dumpsters and newspapers boxes into the middle of the street to form a barricade,” he said. Again, the police fired canisters of tear gas, but this time some demonstrators began throwing them back at the police. “It was like watching a tennis match, with canister after canister getting returned.”

During this assault, the police began to fire plastic bullets into the crowd. Oppenheimer watched as a protester, after being hit by a plastic bullet, threw a water bottle at an armored personal carrier. “For a second I thought it was a Molotov, but it was just Evian water.”

He spent the rest of the day moving through the crowds with his group, attempting to confuse the police as to which areas were weak and which were strong. Often they would use police vehicles to blockade traffic by waiting until a police car got into a strategic location and then lying down in front of it. “I saw one woman puncture a bus’ tire to form a blockade,” he added.

Their tactics certainly worked. The opening ceremonies were delayed, and then canceled. Less than 500 out of 3,000 delegates were able to get into the WTO event and those that did get in were often several hours late. The mayor declared a 7 p.m. curfew and the police began to push the crowds out of the downtown area, away from the Union Street corridor they had created to accommodate the protesters. Some in the crowd became angry and a few smashed store windows and ripped out newspaper boxes. The GAP, McDonalds, Nike Town, and Nordstroms suffered damage.

“The property damage created a fairly large rift in the group,” said Oppenheimer. “Most wanted to continue with the shut down for the following day, but some were so upset over the property damage that they wanted to cancel the shut down and instead clean up the streets. Some people were upset that the news outlets had concentrated their coverage on the broken windows, ignoring the physical police violence or the issues that people were protesting.”

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