Battle of Seattle
WTO protests target U.S. monopolies
By Key
Martin
Seattle
Police marched through downtown Seattle the night of Nov. 30
firing teargas, rubber and plastic bullets, and "flash and
bang" concussion grenades to clear thousands of youth from the
streets, after protesters closed down a World Trade
Organization meeting with peaceful protests.
President Bill Clinton was expected to arrive shortly after
midnight to address the WTO the next day.
A dusk-to-dawn curfew in downtown was invoked as Seattle
Mayor Paul Schell declared a "state of emergency" and
Washington Gov. Gary Locke called out the National Guard.
Helicopters with searchlights and cameras circled as police
continued to fire teargas up into the residential Capitol Hill
area. Overlooking downtown, this district was supposed to be
outside the curfew.
Cops began arresting people as residents from the Capitol
Hill community--angered over the teargassing of their
neighborhood--joined the protests.
Beginning early in the day thousands of youths had linked
arms just outside the police perimeter around the WTO meeting
at the Seattle convention center. They blocked every street,
alley and doorway, preventing delegates from entering the area.
Police attempts to dislodge them with pepper gas failed as they
stood their ground.
"Whose world? Our world. Whose streets? Our streets,''
chanted the protesters.
Many youths had come prepared with gas masks or bottles of
water and bandanas. Some were part of Direct Action Network.
They were joined by feeder marches from the University of
Washington. The Peoples Assembly, with a large participation
from the Filipino, Korean and other Asian communities, joined
later. It ended its march by singing the International in three
languages.
40,000 march for labor
A few hours later a labor contingent that included John
Sweeney, Linda Chavez-Thompson and other leaders of the AFL-CIO
marched with what organizers said was 30,000 to 50,000 union
members and youths from Memorial Stadium to the Convention
Center area, stretching as far as the eye could see.
The march included large delegations from the Steelworkers,
Machinists, Service Employees and AFSCME. In addition to
raising labor issues, many signs read "Free Mumia Abu-Jamal."
Organizers found a widespread awareness of Mumia's case among
the rank-and-file unionists.
Taxi drivers struck for the day over the city's tightening
of restrictions.
Longshore workers shut down docks
The most militant labor contingents were from the
International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which shut down
the docks in Seattle and elsewhere on the West Coast in
solidarity with the WTO protests.
ILWU President Brian McWilliams addressed a pre-march rally
in the packed stadium telling the crowd, "There will be no
business as usual today ... demonstrating to the corporate CEOs
that the global economy will not run without the consent of the
workers everywhere. ... The interests of working people
transcend international boundaries."
McWilliams said labor was there "to tell the agents of
global capital that we will not sit quietly by while they meet
behind closed doors to carve up our world."
The rally was also addressed by the new general secretary of
the Congress of South African Trade Unions, Velinzima Vavi. "I
come from that country that has enjoyed its freedom only for a
few years after many decades of slavery. I want to tell you
that freedom is under a new threat today, the threat of
corporate greed, corporate tyr anny, a new form of terrorism
led by the WTO itself, a new form of colonialism led by
globalization. ... Those greedy corporations are involved in a
desperate attempt to throw a new wedge between workers of the
developed and workers of the developing countries. Today we
want to tell them that their endeavors are not going to
succeed."
Labor delegations from 120 countries marched, including a
large participation from Canada.
Cops step up repression
As soon as the labor march left the downtown area, the
police began to take a harder line, firing more pepper gas and
then plastic bullets. Police denied the use of the plastic
bullets, but this writer was struck with one. Protesters
gathered them up off the ground to show the media.
Many live media reports ended abruptly as reporters suddenly
began gagging and coughing from the pepper spray and
teargas.
The pretext for the "state of emergency" was a series of
minor incidents much earlier in the day. Windows in McDonalds
and several stores, including a number of overpriced Starbucks
cafes, were broken and a recycling dumpster set on fire. The
incidents were replayed over and over on television, as if to
justify police attacks that began pushing peaceful protesters
out of downtown block by block. Without warning, police
assaulted large groups with teargas, plastic bullets and
concussion grenades.
Protesters were jubilant, however, over the reported closing
of the WTO. As of Dec. 1, some were still occupying a number of
key intersections around the Convention Center area, many on
streets already closed by the police.
Protesters kicked or threw the canisters back as they played
a dissonant version of the national anthem over a sound system
through the teargas clouds. Police rode around standing on
running boards attached to the sides and back of armored cars.
But the protesters retreated only as far as they had to as
police advanced through the downtown office buildings and
across the interstate highway. At midnight police were still
assaulting people and making arrests in the neighborhoods above
downtown.
Protests are expected to continue as thousands of youth have
become radicalized by the police violence.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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