<nettime> Seattle digest (x6)

["nettime's_WTO_reporter" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>]

Mike Weisman <popeye@speakeasy.org>
        Forward: Message from Artis the Spoonman
Russell Mathews <russellm@maths.uq.edu.au>
        Collateral Damage in Seattle
"Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>
        Seattle2
Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>
        The Real Story from Seattle - 12/1/99 (fwd)
brian carroll <human@architexturez.com>
         WTO imagery
"B Trinen" <trinen@seanet.com>
         chaos in Seattle right now as we read!

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Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 08:19:54 -0800
From: Mike Weisman <popeye@speakeasy.org>
Subject: Forward: Message from Artis the Spoonman

The following message was broadcast locally by Artis the Spoonman. Artis
is an internationally known artist, poet, and street performer. He lives
in Seattle.  I have not included the attachment, which was a small jpeg
picture of police gassing residents. Contact information for Artis is in
the message.

X-Sender: artis@mail.olympus.net
>Mime-Version: 1.0
>Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 20:05:57 -0800
>To: Recipient List Suppressed:;
>From: artis <artis@olympus.net>
>Subject: Skid Addle From Seattle, rewritten for easier access to some
> press - Distribute as you will------->
>
>Violence and destruction are closely related but in journalism and
>reporting civil dramas interpretations need to be explicit.
>The raucous in Seattle this week has not been a violent activity
>perpetrated by demonstrating citizens.  Notice I didn't use the
>isolating terms "demonstrators" or "protesters".  The violence was 
>assigned from the top.  The police force was ordered to use chemical 
>weapons to promote the image of "violence" for assimilation by the 
vast majority of citizenry sucked into the vacuum tube feed of information.  
>Television is, in fact, tunnel vision [as Jim Page so aptly puts it].   
>The framing and the buck-stop agenda of broadcast management create 
>as much or more of the story as does the drama itself.
>I saw 200 armored and armed SWAT team cops tear/pepper/CS gas 1500 -
>2000 citizens, myself among them, calmly if "actively" sitting, standing,
>gathering at an intersection.  There was NO provocation from the masses.  A
>few minutes earlier [10 -15] a small group of agitators [10 - 12], one
>wielding a sledge hammer, came sauntering through the area and broke a
>window in a MENS WEARHOUSE store front but they were conspicuous and
>could have been dealt with easily by the force who presumably have that
>responsibility.  From my perch, 10' above the street, I would have
>willingly fingered the culprit, if called upon to do so.
>Destruction of personal/corporate property is a class statement.  The
>perpetrators believe they draw dynamic attention to the fact that such
>damage is nothing to the privileged people who invade and destroy through
>legislative and capitalistic "purchase" of that which is otherwise inherent
>to all.
>I personally think somehow the knowledge can be conveyed to the masses
>some other way but I am often wrong.  US citizenry has proven to be so
>positively effected by misconstrued information in the past that I am
>inclined to understand the frustration some destructive activists and
>activist groups feel.
>So what?  So bloody what?
>An unapproachably armored cop aimed his carbine at me from 100 feet way
>there in my home town.  That creep had the gall to threaten my life in
>my home.  I've been here 50 years.  How dare some young idiot accept the
>order to shoot me?  I'm a citizen.  A socially accepted character of
>measurable value in community.  That is, I have a trade.  I've served in 
>the military and I pay my taxes, if late.
>Who the hell do the Mayor and President think they are accusing me,
>trying me and ordering my execution or life threatening punishment as I 
>stand vulnerably in public to witness the democratic process of speech,
>assembly and address?
>If I were to say, "f*** you, [as I heard another cop say to a citizen
>asking civil questions] I'm not taking any more," and strike out, as
>the cops did, I would not only be jailed and injured but publicly
>chastised.
>A Russian friend of mine told me of how they [the Russian government]
>would've run the people down with tanks.  An activist friend of mine
>was in Chicago during the 1968 riots.  They each say this week's abuse was
>tolerable comparatively.  I am not trying to compare global dramas.
>Brutal suppression of kindly gatherings is intolerable at any level.
>The police in Seattle were ordered to disrupt and disallow a
>peaceful/non-violent congregation of its citizens this week because, if
>the 70,000 people who gathered Tuesday had been seen the world over as who
>they were, fine upstanding citizens, the WTO would've indeed had to skid
>addle from Seattle.
>
>Artis
>artis@olympus.net
>http://www.olympus.net/personal/artis/
>
>ATS Management:
>Mary L. Hilts
>maryh@sanpedro.com
>phone/fax (310) 518.5224  (to fax, please call ahead)
>
*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*
>There is no such thing as race - only racism.  I suspect in a hundred years
>racism will be much like the flatworld view after the 16th century -
>conspicuously sophomoric and very unpopular.
>

--
Please respond to:
Mike Weisman
popeye@speakeasy.org

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Date: Fri, 3 Dec 1999 18:16:12 +1000 (EST)
From: Russell Mathews <russellm@maths.uq.edu.au>
Subject: Collateral Damage in Seattle

Details from another perspective, forwarded to me by prijatelju Ziggy.

Russell M.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 1999 14:00:44 +1100
From: Zivko Petru <qtest@powerup.com.au>
To: Russell Mathews <russellm@maths.uq.edu.au>



Collateral Damage in Seattle
Report from Portland student Jim Desyllas (posted 12-2-99)

Called in at a pay phone outside Seattle.Wed., 7:30 pm Pacific time.

I just spent 4 days in Seattle. The "information" people are getting from
the mass media is false. This was not, as Pres. Clinton claims, a peaceful
protest marred by the actions of violent protesters. This was a massive,
strong but peaceful demonstration which was attacked repeatedly by the
police with the express purpose of provoking a violent response to provide
photo opportunities for the Western media. I know because I watched it
happening. I'll tell you how they did it.

As Michel Chossudovsky says in his "Disarming the New World Order" (See Note
# 1 at end for link to that article) - the government put a lot of effort
into making sure the protesters in Seattle were a "loyal opposition" who
wanted to reform the WTO, not get rid of it. But the people in Seattle -
American steel workers, Canadian postal workers, college kids from all over,
environmentalists from Australia - you name it - were not for reforming the
WTO. They were for getting rid of it.

And this wasn't just true of the protesters. I interviewed delegates. None
of them had anything favorable to say about the WTO. Two delegates from the
Caribbean were angry about job loss. One delegate from Peru took a bullhorn
and got up on a car and spoke to the protestors against the World Trade
Organization. He said it hurts the workers and farmers. I interviewed a
Norwegian guy from Greenpeace. Totally against it. Even a delegate from
Holland said it had hurt the farmers there. He said though it is supposedly
democratic, that's actually a lie: the US, England and Canada and a few
others get together and decide what they want to do. Then they ask the rest
of the countries to vote and if they vote wrong they threaten,"You won't get
loans," or whatever. They get them to do what they want by blackmailing
them. The Italians we interviewed were upset too. I couldn't find any
delegates who were in favor.

So the government instigated a "riot" to discredit the movement against the
WTO because they couldn't dilute it. I am not guessing about this. I was
there. I saw it happening. And I will tell you I am frankly shocked to see,
close up, just how little our leaders care what happens to ordinary people.
Clinton can pose and speak a lot of flowery stuff but the truth is - we are
nothing to them. I saw this with my own eyes.

Sunday and Monday, there was no violence. None. The people were aggressively
non-violent; they were self-policing. Up until Tuesday at 4pm there was one
window broken in the whole city - a McDonalds window. This compares
favorably to the typical rock concert, let alone a demonstration of people
who were non-violently barring entry to the World Trade Center!

At this point, a new group of police - tactical police - moved in and
started gassing people and shooting rubber bullets. Is it any surprise that
people got mad? Of course, the young kids hit back by breaking some windows
in retaliation for being gassed, sprayed with very painful pepper gas, and
shot with dangerous "rubber" bullets. The police instigated these kids,
plain and simple.

Sunday and Monday they had young cops, using them to block the streets.
These were trainees. But Tuesday they had the real cops; none of them were
young. They were trained to attack people. A small group, maybe 100 people
total, struck back. Then these cops herded that group around the city,
making sure there were plenty of photo ops of "violent protesters."

A number of times they had these 100 or so protesters caught between
buildings and walls of police. They could easily have arrested and detained
this small number of people and gotten it over with. Instead they would gas
them and let them go. Then trap them again, gas them again, and again let
them go. The cops made no arrests that I know of until late Tuesday night
though the skirmishing was going on from three till 9:30. The cops would
blockade three or five blocks of an area, give the angry kids room to
operate, keep gassing them - when you gas a person, let me tell you, it gets
them fighting mad.

Tuesday night the police gassed all of downtown. This was going on from 3
PM, till 6 PM.. Gas everywhere. The kids broke a few windows - McD's,
Starbucks - small stuff - burned a few garbage cans. The police were using
these people as extras. It was staged. I believe also the police had their
own people in there, encouraging people to break stuff - if people think I
may be exaggerating, I saw supposed protesters - they were screaming and so
on - and then later, when everything was over, the same people tackled other
protestors and put handcuffs on them.

At 6pm they issued a State of Emergency. At that point they had pushed the
100 people outside the city limits, so the police went outside the limits
too, and they started gassing that area too, gassing the neighborhoods where
the regular people live. I am not exaggerating. The police were relentless.

This was in an area from the city limits for about 10 blocks to the Seattle
Central Community College. If you were alive, the police gassed you. People
coming back from work, kids, women, everyone. People would go out of their
houses to see what was happening because these tear gas guns sound like a
cannon - and they would get gassed. A block away there was a Texaco gas
station - they threw tear gas at gas pumps, believe it or not - they were
like vandals. They gassed a bus. I saw it with my own eyes. A bus. The
driver, the riders, the people just abandoned it .

I was sitting in a little coffee shop called Rauhaus, [Jim did not spell
this - the spelling may be wrong.] They were shooting "rubber" bullets at
the glass. I picked up a dozen of the things in a few square feet. They were
also shooting this paint that you can only see with a florescent light. They
would paint anyone and everyone and then go hunting them.

Anyway, because they were gassing everybody, the local people got mad too
and they joined the 100 who had been herded out of the city. So soon there
were 500 including the neighborhood people and all very angry. Naturally.
Because they had been gassed and hit with pepper spray, that stuff does a
number on you. And shot with these damn bullets. Then people set up
barricades at Seattle Central Community College. The cops organized
themselves for about an hour and then moved in and gassed that area.

Today they started mass arrests. That was because Clinton - the Greeks call
him the Planitarchis, Ruler of the World - was coming. Weeping crocodile
tears about how he just LOVES peaceful protest, which of course you'd have
to be two years old to believe he had nothing to do with the police action.
This whole thing, this police attack, this was US foreign policy, not some
action decided by some bureaucrat in Seattle. This was the State Department.
They wanted to discredit the people.

Sunday there was a protest of solidarity involving people from different
walks of life. Monday it got even bigger. Tuesday there was a big sort of
carnival where people were doing different things, a band was playing music
and people were blocking the World Trade Center. And about 3 PM the cops
started throwing tear gas.

The thing that drove Clinton crazy was that on Tuesday the protesters had
succeeded in making nonviolent human chains and had therefore stopped
everyone from going into the World Trade Center. Only maybe 27 delegates got
through, mostly US and British. There were what seemed like tens of
thousands of protesters involved. So the police did their gassing number
against these nonviolent people to break up the human chains and make the
protesters look violent.

Today (Wednesday) I followed the union protest put together by the
Longshoremen's Union. They went down to the docks and had a rally then
marched to Third Avenue. As soon as they got there the cops started gassing
them. There was an old lady there. She had gone downtown by bus to buy
something. This lady was in her 70's and I saw her trying to run, but she
couldn't breathe. She was in shock. I carried her to a building entryway.
She was gasping, terrified. She had been in Germany, and it was like she was
having flashbacks. The tear gas sounds like gunfire and there were
helicopters overhead, sirens, cops on horses, everything.

They had clearly made a decision to destroy this movement.

So anyway there I was with her in this building and she wanted to go to the
hospital but there was tear gas everywhere and I was afraid if I tried to
move her she'd be gassed again. I went to this line of cops and begged - I
mean begged - these riot police to help her. They ignored me. A girl told me
later that a one year old had been gassed. And I myself saw a girl no more
than 18 - a cop had busted her lip wide open - she was bleeding - and then
they gassed everyone including her. After that she was kneeling on the
ground crying like a baby and praying for 15 minutes, Hail Mary, Hail Mary.
Over and over. She was in a state of shock. They just gassed these people
who were sitting down non-violently and doing nothing. Nothing.

At one point the Seattle Mayor said his boys were not using rubber bullets.
Miraculously, by then I had ten in my pocket. I could open a little market,
sell the things. They are everywhere. I and other people started giving them
to delegates and stuff. "See what they're doing? They're shooting "rubber"
bullets and lying about it." We showed them to the media. I guess enough
people and the media got the information because the Mayor made a new
statement then that they were using them. As if he hadn't known.

They shot rubber bullets from four feet away into the face of a guy next to
me, broke all his front teeth. When that happened I lost it. I forgot I was
supposed to be getting the news for all of you and I started yelling at the
cops, "What the hell is wrong with you? Are you sick, man?" So this cop
aimed his gun right at me. That was his answer. So I first put my hands in
front of my face because I didn't want to lose my teeth. And then I thought,
to hell with it. I was wearing my target shirt that said "Collateral
Damage", you know? With a bullseye target, like they wore during the bombing
in Yugoslavia. And I told this guy, "Go ahead, shoot! Here! Here's the
target!" He didn't shoot me.

I want to emphasize, these protesters were NOT violent people. They were the
most non-violent people I have ever seen. Even when I was screaming at the
cop, this girl came up to me and said, "Do not scream. This is non-violent."
These people were too much to believe. They must meditate all the time, I
don't know.

Clinton said he supports nonviolent protest. That is baloney. Today (Wed.)
the protesters were causing absolutely no "trouble". In downtown the cops
had people running who weren't even protesters - like that old lady or just
people going to work or shopping - everyone was getting gassed. The busses
weren't running because of the gas. I was lucky to catch one with a driver
who could still see.. I begged him to drive the old lady home - the driver
changed his route especially for her. If you want to find human decency,
stay away from the Planitarchis. Go to the to regular people. They have
some. The Planitarchis lost all his years ago. Now he wouldn't know human
decency if it came up and bit him.

So now I have made personal acquaintance with the people who run this
country, and they are quite simply scum. There were people at work, people
with babies, they were all getting gassed because the government would not
allow an assembly of people speaking their minds. It is the same as what
happened in Athens. Clinton's requirements on the Greek government created
the riot and he did the same thing here. And then he says he supports
nonviolent protest? How? By shooting rubber bullets? And today they outlawed
gas masks. They want to make sure everyone gets his money's worth.

Today, just like yesterday night, the police were in the residential
neighborhoods. People in cafs were getting gassed and shot at, you could
hear it on the windows, bang, bang, bang. A guy trying to cross the street
to go to his house got gassed. First a drunk guy outside a bar yelled at the
cops "Get out of here!" so they gassed him. And then this other guys was
just crossing the street to go home so the cops figured, might as well gas
him too. People got gassed for coming out of restaruants and bars and
coffeee shops. I'm amazed that nobody died who had asthma or something.

Or maybe somebody did die and they didn't talk about it. I mean after all,
it's just collateral damage..

***

Note # 1 - For a critical look at the World Trade Organization, click on
SEATTLE AND BEYOND: DISARMING THE NEW WORLD ORDER or go to
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/chuss/seattle.htm

If you would like to browse articles from Emperors-Clothes.com, click here
Or go to: http://www.emperors-clothes.com

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From: "Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 23:59:23 -0500
Subject: Seattle2

Policing after the fact - isn't the reaction of police in Seattle similar 
to the reaction of "international community" to the events in post-Yugoslav 
societies: not intervening when the violence actually happens but 
imposing the total control over the non-law breaking citizens after the 
violence already passed and perpetrators left to their shelters?

Ivo

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From: Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>
Subject: The Real Story from Seattle - 12/1/99 (fwd)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 20:21:50 +0100 (CET)

----- Forwarded message from Roger Keil -----

Date:   Thu, 2 Dec 1999 14:14:46 -0500
Sender: International Network of Urban Research and Action <INURA@YORKU.CA>
From:   Roger Keil <rkeil@YORKU.CA>
Subject: The Real Story from Seattle - 12/1/99 (fwd)


Below I have forwarded a different perspective on the battle of Seattle
than the one we get force-fed by the media here in North America. How has
the reporting been in Europe?

I received this message from another list. It originated from the Free
Student Press Project.

Roger Keil

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

I got on a Greyhound bus in Pittsburgh at 3:00am, the morning after
Thanksgiving, and traveled 2 and a half days to Seattle to join the protests
against the World Trade Organization.  I arrived to see tens of thousands of
activists from the widest range of causes I've ever  seen in one place,
united around a common concern -- their desire to have a say in the
decisions that affect their lives, otherwise known as democracy. I won't go
into the WTO in great  detail.  The information is out there.  You can find
for yourself that in the last 4 years the WTO has been in existence it has
ruled against every evironmental and human health and saftey regulation that
has come before it and, through economic leverage, has compelled countries
to repeal these "barriers to free trade."  Such barriers in this country
have been the sections of the Clean Air Act and the Endagered Species Act.
But I won't go into that further, instead I want to share with you what
happened here, to me and thousands of others, yesterday.

My friends and I woke up late Tuesday morning.  One of the largest portests
of the century, and we sleep in.  We joined the protests at about 9:00am,
and joined a human chain of people blocking one entrance to the convention
center where the first day of the WTO summit was to take place.  This was
the scene at every street that led to the convention center.  The plan was
to not let delegates enter and to shut down the meeting.  This may sound
drastic, but the purpose was to send a message that many have phrased as "No
globalization without representation."  The WTO meetings are closed to the
public and the WTO is not subordinant to any national government or, more
importantly, and democratic body.  Yet it has shown itself to have more of a
say in things as basic as the quality of the air we breath than we ourselves
do.  To me and nearly 50,000 others, this warranted the serious direct
action. However, as serious as these demonstrations were, they were to be
ALL non-violent.

After being part of our own barrier to free trade and turning back WTO
delegates forabout an hour, we heard that protesters needed help at another
intersection a few blocks away. Since there were more than enough people to
keep up the barrier where we were, we left the blockade and headed for the
corner of 8th and Seneca.  When we arrived, we saw lots of demonstrators but
no major media cameras.  There was a smaller group of  people sitting downon
the street (which had already been closed) with police in riot gear standing
behind them. Instead of the ordinary billy clubs, all of Seattle's police
were holding 3 foot oak clubs that look more like basball bats than batons.
When they began putting on their gas masks it became evident that they were
planning to use pepper spray on the people sitting down.  The rest of the
crowd was pleading with the police not to use this cruel tactic.  It was
possible that if more people sat down, they police wouldn't spray them, so I
joined that group.  When it became apparent that they were going to use the
spray anyway, we all locked legs and arms together and I pulled a bandana my
freind had given me over my face, covering my mouth and eyes.  Onlookers
bgan yelling, "Get ready!  They going to do it!  Get ready!"  I heard the
spray and people began screaming in pain.  I was just expecting spray, so I
was pretty surprised when I felt one of those big clubs land on the top of
my head.  The guy behind me took most of the force from the blow, so I
wasn't hurt badly.  I covered my head with my arm and covered my eyes with
my hand, as the screams continued and it became obvious -even though I
couldn't see anything from underneath my bandana- that the cops were not
only spraying but beating the people as well.  A police officer then grabbed
my hand and pulled it away from my face and spayed me in the eyes with a
cannister of pepper spray.  I held my eyes closed tight and my bandana
absorbed the spray, protecting my eyes and face.  I breathed a little bit of
it in and began coughing.  the crowd started to break up as the police
continued beating people.  I pulled away and stood up, pulling the bandana
away from my eyes to see the police beating the few people that remained
sitting.

One woman was trying to get up and they kept jabbing her in the side with
their clubs.  The rest of the crowd pulled those people to safety and began
washing their eyes with a solution of baking soda and water to counter the
effects of the blinding pepper spray.  This was my first experience with the
spray.  I got a tiny bit of the spray on my forehead and it burnt very
badly, was very painful.  I can't even begin to imagine the pain the people
felt who got it sprayed directly into their eyes.  I think I was luckier
than anyone else I was sitting with, having escaped the spary and only
having been clubbed once. I screamed at the cops for a while, called them
facist pigs between plenty of other expletives.  But when things calmed down
a bit, myself and others began speaking to the police. It suddenly became
evident that some of them were visibly disturbed by what they had just done.
One female officer's hands were shaking as she held her club up to her chest
like the rest did in the line they had formed.  She kept blinking her eyes
to avoid crying.  We talked to other officers who wouldn't look us in the
eyes, but their faces showed no signs of pleasure.  After I calmed down a
bit and got my emotions under contol enough to speak, I said to them, "You
probably think we're just fanatics with nothing better to do, or maybe
vagrants who are too lazy to be working right now, or maybe spoiled college
kids who don't have to work.  You can think that we're idiots who came
across a few statistics on environmental degredation or sweatshops, that
we're out here today to be self-righteous and think that we're better than
everybody else, but we're people just like you.  And everybody standing here
with me knows exactly why they're here today.  We're trying to make the
world better.  And I don't think a single one of you even knows why you're
here.  How many of you support the WTO?  How many of you even know what it
does?  We know why we're here.  Why the hell are you here?  I don't think
any of you became police officers to beat people who aren't a threat to
anyone's safety.  Just who do you think you're protecting?  We're unarmed.
None of us have tried to attack you or anyone else today.  You attacked us.
You aren't protecting yourselves; there's no one behind you that you're
protecting -- Who do you think you're protecting!?  If you have a good
reason for beating us today, if you felt it was right, that's one thing.
But if you didn't have any reason and you still beat these people anyway, I
want you to ask yourself why you did it.  Why you were willing to inflict
violence on other people for no reason other than you were told to."   I
asked them to go home and think about that; what they did to make things
better today by beating non-violent protesters; if that's what they became
cops to do.

They were all silent, turning they heads constantly to avoid eye contact
with any of the protesters speaking.  Th commanding officer walked down a
line in between the police and us,pushing protesters back.  He ordered the
crowd to disperse, saying that if we didn't leave they would remove us by
force.  We didn't leave.  We just kept talking to the police more.  I asked
the commanding officer to explain to us why we ought to leave.  He didn't
acknowledge the question.  I asked them all if that's what those clubs
meant, that they didn't have to explain their actions to anyone, even
themselves.  Other protesters reminded them that even though they were
trained to be robots, they were still people who were responsible for their
own actions -- orders or no orders.  I told them my name, where I was from,
that I go to college, that I have family and friends.  I asked them their
names.  None answered.

We stayed there and the police didn't charge.  Not because I think we
convinced them not to, but because there were too many of us.  Soon a group
of people with their arms chained together inside tubes wrapped in duct
tape.  4 of these people were from Athens; 3 OU students and friends of
mine.  The police were still threatening to charge the crowd.

 I quickly realized that these people had no way to protect their heads from
the police clubs.  Being obviously violent had already proven to be no
defense against police violence.  Another OU student and I walked up to the
police line to ask them about this.  The line was now made up of different
police officers.  We approached one and asked him about this.  He looked at
us and said, "Well, if they're worried about getting hurt, they should have
thought about that before they came out today."  I asked him to show me his
badge number.  He refused.  "Aren't you required to show your identification
to the public?"  He didn't answer.  The officer to his left sneered at me
and said, "Well you have all the answers, why don't you tell me?"  Before I
could, he raised his club and yelled at me to back up.  I did and continued
talking to him, but he looked away and ignored me.  The first officer had no
identifying number anywhere on him.  No visible badge, no number on his
helmet.  I took his picture and got others to.  Telling everybody that we
needed to watch him.

When I first spoke to police after they had beaten us, I was very encouraged
that some had actually shown some signs of human compassion, but my
hopefullness dissappeared after I talked to the latter group of officers and
realized that many of them were quite happy to inflict harm on people.
Reinforcements came and as protesters cleared the way for them, one cop
pushed a protster, and said "Get the fuck out of my way," with a smile on
his face.

>From time to time ambulances would come through and the crowd would clear a
path immediately.  Some protesters said, "What if WTO delegates are sneeking
in on the ambulances?"  But people came to an immediate concensus that,
although that was a possiblity, it wasn't worth risking people's safety.
Suddenly, a WTO delegate made it unnoticed through our lines.  But when he
made it to police they refused to let him enter.  They turned back another
delegate later.  As it turned out, we were gaurding an exit not an entrance;
that they police's orders were to not let anyone in -- whoever they were.
Also, since police had shut down the street and no protesters had attempted
to cross police lines, none of us were even doing anything illegal. -- which
is probably why none of the people in the sit-down group were arrested.
Though none of us were arrested, all of us were beaten and sprayed.

Word soon made it to us that the situation was worse elsewhere.  We made our
way to the heart of downtown and found the streets full of teargas.  There
was a large group of people sitting down in front of police in full riot
gear with their gas masks on.  Behind them was an armored tank.  They police
attacked protesters again.  Against non-violent protesters, they used pepper
spray, clubs, tear gas, and later fired rubber bullets and marbles at the
people.  In every single instance I witnessed first hand, police violently
attacked non-violent protesters with no provocation whatsoever.  That was
the case when I was beaten and sprayed, that was the case when downtown was
flooded with gas, with helicopters flying overhead shining spotlights down
into the crowd.  Thousands of police forced protesters out of the dowtown
area firing cannister after cannister of tear gas into the crowd.  My
friends and I were split up in the crowd of people fleeing from the gas.
eventually, I made it back to the house to join them.

The whole way to their house, I was hoping that this story would get out.
Hoping that the level of violence inflicted on non-violent protesters,
peacefully assembled, would wake a lot of people up and show them the level
of democracy in this country.  Hoping that people would see what the level
of force aimed at people who peacefully oppose the interests that are
dominant in this country and the world.  I returned home to have this hope
crushed.  The local news stations were reporting on the broken windows of
businesses and not the broken bones of protesters. They reported on things
like "police fatigue."  Which I assume is when your arms get tired after you
beat people for hours.  They talked -and continue to talk about- the
extremely "restraint, openmindedness, and gentleness" displayed by police.

A state of civil emergency was declared and a curfew was set for 7pm.  If
anyone was downtown after that, they would be arrested.  Police cleared the
curfew zone of people, but we watched them on TV continued to pursue them up
Capitol Hill -- blocks past the curfew zone. The police chased them into a
business area and fired tear gas into crowds  that were now made up of
shoppers and people getting dinner as well as protesters.  Finally, after 12
hours of people being beaten and gased, a small riot broke out.  A Starbucks
coffee store was damaged and looted.  I'm amazed it took this long to
happen, and I say this in all honesty from being here first hand, that, by
repeatedly attacking and torturing non-violent protesters, the Seattle
police sought to incite a riot and finally succeeded to a small degree.  The
news kept running the scene of Starbucks being looted again, and again, and
again.  At least a dozen times in under an hour.
There were also quick clips of police beating demostrators shown once and
not again.

A newscaster on KOMO, channel 4, said, "Look, earlier today we saw
protesters carrying signs with clear messages against the WTO, but what you
have going on now is an unruly mob just trying to cause problems.  In the
pictures we're seeing now, I don't see any signs at all. These people don't
have any message."  What the newscaster failed to notice was that
people,myself included, dropped their signs when they were fleeing for their
lives.   They were dropped because you need two hands to gaurd your eyes
from tears gas. Talk of the "police being too lenient" has continued into
todays news reports.  And the lack of signs continues to be portrayed as a
lack of any constuctive purpose among the protesters. One newscaster said,
"Come on, get a life.  We live in a prosperous country." In all honesty, the
news is scaring me more than the riot police, because what it has done is
justify further violence against the protesters.  They have said that
"police have been too lenient."  The police have used teargas, pepper spary,
clubs, rubber bullets, and marbles against peaceful civilians in downtown
Seattle.  The only thing they haven't done is used live amunition. And in
the event that greater violence occurs against protesters, the media will
have justified it.

Besides insulting protesters the local media has focused on the diruption
to traffic and holiday shopping.  The National Guard is now occupying the
city, a 50 block "no protest" zone has been established, about 120 people
have been arrested, and many have been hospitalized -- though that has
recieved no coverage as far as I've seen.

In other news, we succeeded in shutting down the first day of WTO meetings.
The situation is still developing, so I encourage everyone to watch the news
coverage and contrast it to what I've written here.  AND PLEASE, do your own
research on the WTO.

-Damon Krane

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Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 22:00:58 -0800 (PST)
From: brian carroll <human@architexturez.com>
Subject: WTO imagery


 photographs captured by Reuters photographers
 on the Yahoo - Daily News - Top Stories page:

 http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/g/ts/

 browse page upon page of photographs of
 WTO protesters and riot police.

 search PHOTOs for keyword "WTO" to get 89+ images,
 or go through the main interface to see all of
 the images for 11/30/99 throughout 42 pages.

 some images are haunting...

 http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/nm/19991130/ts/mdf28714.html

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/p/ap/19991130/us/world_trade_protest_apx.ht
ml

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/p/ap/19991130/us/world_trade_protest_7mu.ht
ml

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/p/ap/19991130/us/world_trade_protest_oau.ht
ml

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/p/ap/19991130/us/world_trade_protest_b9w.ht
ml

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/nm/19991130/ts/mdf28714.html

 some images are ironic...

 http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/nm/19991129/ts/mdf28326.html

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/p/ap/19991130/us/world_trade_protest_brc.ht
ml

 some images are evidence...

 http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/p/ap/19991130/us/world_trade_mb1.html

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/p/ap/19991130/us/world_trade_jfx.html


 it has me wondering about the shifting morality of the camera,
 a now digital electro-mechanical gun for shooting a time and space...

 in some images the press photographers have gas masks and can be
 seen running around beside police and protesters.


bc

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From: "B Trinen" <trinen@seanet.com>
Subject: chaos in Seattle right now as we read!
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 18:18:36 -0800

Help!,

I have been reading this newsgroup for almost a yeat noe with nothing of
value to contribute until now.  I live in Seattle WA USA.  I was downtown
with organized labor groupe today protesting against the WTO.  Today my
Police force turned on me and all the peacefull protestors.  A curfew has
now been imposed on my city.  The police are, as I write pepper spraying
and teargassing protesters.  Most of what is happening now is not visable
on Your TV set.  Please swamp my city's severs with email.  First, if this
is possible for you, call my city's police force at 206-625-5011 and
complain about the violence they are perpetrating at this moment.  Or email
them at mayors.office@ci.seattle.wa.us , tina.podlodowski@ci.seattle.wa.us
, margaret.pageler@ci.seattle.wa.us,   Tjhe mayor is the first address, and
the most important to email, as it was his oprders today that started the
attacks on the protestors.  This will of course, be the end of Paul
Schell's political carreer in this region as many ogffice workers getting
off work this evening were teargassed by his forces just for good measure.
Please find out as much as you can independantly about today's protests in
Seattle.  What I am now seeing on the TV is mostly false compared to what I
saw in person just minutes ago in my city.
    Many say they are shocked to see this here, but in truth, the city of
Seattle has a long history of protest.  In 1919 This city held the only
successfull general strike in the History of the US.  The entire city was
run for a week by the IWW.  Please call 206-386-1234 and leave a nasty
message on muy behalf, and for all free peoples in opposition to the Wrong
Trade Organization!


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