Re: RAT Hello Seattle

["William Houts" <houts.w@ghc.org>]

>Anybody up there have first hand info on the WTO protests?  I'm finding some 
>difference in reports when I check the online international press against the 
>U.S. news.  The number of protestors reported in the Zurich paper is about 
>double what I saw in the L.A. Times.  One of the online Vancouver papers 
>reports that it was the police who got out of hand first, provoking 
>previously peaceful demonstators.  The news I'm getting down here on TV 
>implies that it was "bad elements" among the demonstrators who began the 
>violence.  What does it look like from up close?


Well, I managed to get a face full of tear gas, so I guess I'm close enough to have some perspective....

For many hours on Tuesday, both cops and demonstrators were pretty calm.  Some were even chatting, amicably.  I heard second hand reports of cops --maybe just one-- telling protesters that they didn't like the WTO either, and that if the protesters could shut the thing down without breaking any laws, the cops would be there for them.

But things got ugly.  I think it would be most accurate to say that the police were the first to escalate the situation.  From what I could tell, the demonstrators weren't doing anything more destructive than taunting the police when the latter started firing the tear gas cannisters.  Once that frontier had been crossed, the feelings involved and the actions which resulted from them degenerated pretty quickly, although it was still only a tiny tiny fraction of protesters who did anything but the most benign sort of civil disobedience.

There was, frankly, a kind of festival attitude among the demonstrators that I came upon — and I'm talking about a few thousand people that I'm gestalting here. I have to say that the cops were pretty restrained --for cops, that is.  But as soon as people found themselves choking and gagging, things went sour: and I think that the result was opportunists and idiots smashing windows and looting shops. This sort of thing didn't start until hours after most of the demonstrators had gone home to plan for the next day-- but  that little tidbit of information rarely made the 10:00 news, which always has a 10 inch hardon  for hysteria...   



    --Bill