Date: Thu, 02 Dec 1999 10:44:13 -0500 From: Chuck0 <chuck-AT-tao.ca> Subject: New York Times: Anarchists were more organized than the cops Clenched Fists in Seattle Lead to Pointed Fingers http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/120299wto-protest.html By TIMOTHY EGAN SEATTLE -- It took only a few minutes for the people in the monarch butterfly costumes and union jackets to realize that what was planned as the biggest American demonstration yet against global trade here had turned into a burst of window-breaking and looting late Tuesday afternoon. A surge of violence that ended in a civil emergency began when a knot of people dressed in black broke away from the main demonstration and started overturning trash containers, stoking fires and smashing windows of stores and restaurants. It died out with the image of a grinning young man in a Gap sweatshirt trying to cart off a satellite dish from a Radio Shack store. How the thin line was crossed from nonviolent protest to urban disorder was being dissected here Wednesday as the World Trade Organization got down to business. The conclusion: the anarchists were organized. One person in black, who refused to identify himself, said anarchists had planned all along to incite the crowd. Some blamed the police for mounting a show of force with rubber pellets and tear gas against largely nonviolent protesters, and then backing off to leave a lawless zone within the city's most gilded retail corridors. At first, the protesters tried to police themselves -- something they said they were incapable of doing once the more militant elements took hold. Veteran demonstrators, who have logged years of protest against corporate retail chains like Nike and Starbucks, suddenly found themselves trying to defend them. "We turned at one point to protect Niketown, of all places, from these people who were trying to smash the storefront glass with metal newspaper boxes," said Ken Butigan, a professor of theology from Berkeley, Calif. "They turned on us and called us counterrevolutionaries." Butigan teaches protest tactics at Berkeley, he said. He and other demonstrators had expected -- and prepared for -- the police to make about 1,000 arrests. But they made only a handful of arrests, relying on the stinging vapor of tear gas to disperse people who refused to allow delegates into the trade group's opening session. Young people in black masks, some of them speaking by two-way radios, used the police reaction as a cue to go on a rampage. They sprayed a symbol for anarchy -- a circled A -- on store walls, then quickly expanded to window breaking and some looting. Some identified themselves as members of Black Clad Messengers, a self-proclaimed anarchist group. For merchants in a downtown known as one of the nation's most prosperous and vibrant -- as the eyes of the world were looking this way and holiday shoppers were expected to crowd the aisles -- it was a pure terror. "We called 911 from inside our store, asking for help, telling them that people were rampaging in the streets, but they said they were too busy," said Maryann Swissa, who runs a jewelry store with her husband, Monty. "We ended up getting an ex-National Football League player to stand guard at the door." At the peak of the disorder, even protesters who had planned to be arrested were calling for help. "Here we are protecting Nike, McDonald's, the Gap and all the while I'm thinking, 'Where are the police? These anarchists should have been arrested,' " said Medea Benjamin, a leader with Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based protest group. Ms. Benjamin was arrested later inside the trade meeting on trespassing charges. The Seattle police said Wednesday that their primary goal was to protect trade delegates and allow them to enter the meeting. When violence began, they did not have enough force to go into the unruly crowds, Police Chief Norm Stamper said. Wednesday, the police made about 400 arrests of mostly nonviolent protesters. "What we did today was utterly impossible yesterday," Stamper said. "We would have had to have double and triple the number of officers on hand. And the mayor did not want to send a message that Seattle is a police state." The major demonstrations -- one organized by labor unions, the other by environmentalists -- attracted up to 30,000 people, Mayor Paul Schell said. They passed through the city in a festive mood, their banners referring to efforts by Europeans to protect cheese and Americans to protect jobs. One banner read: 'Hormone beef -- no. Roquefort Cheese -- yes." But minutes after the union and environmental groups passed through downtown, the mood changed. Shouts of "Anarchy!" "Property is theft!" and "Close it down!" went up, as up to 50 people unveiled hammers, spray paint and large firecrackers known as M-80's from backpacks. They smashed windows of branches of virtually every major retail chain, including F. A. O. Schwarz, Old Navy, Planet Hollywood and McDonald's. A security officer who tried to defend a city bus was attacked. The authorities later said that several bus drivers were assaulted and that two police officers suffered minor injuries. They said there were no major injuries to demonstrators, although hundreds of people complained about stinging tear gas. The violence's peak lasted about an hour, in late afternoon, with virtually no police response. Some demonstrators shouted at the vandals to stop the violence. At Niketown, three men climbed atop of the store's outside entrance and began twisting away the metal letters spelling out the store name. As this went on, others shouted "Shame, shame, shame" at the vandals. Prompted by desperate complaints from merchants and television images of a near riot, the Seattle police changed tactics early in the evening, after Mayor Schell asked for the National Guard troops and declared a 7 p.m. curfew and civil emergency. From then until about 10 p.m., the police gradually moved the thinning crowds out of downtown. The police said Wednesday that they had arrested several people who they said were part of the Tuesday violence, though they offered few details on where they were from or the extent of their plan. Stamper defended the police tactics, though he was criticized for refusing an earlier offer of National Guard help. Wednesday, about 300 National Guard troops helped to patrol the city. By Wednesday morning, the groups that had planned to be arrested all along sent out a call for a "massive cleanup" of the damage done by people they labeled as vandals. Dozens of the protesters took brooms to the fresh scars of the city's retail core. -- Chuck0 Mid-Atlantic Infoshop http://www.infoshop.org/ Leonard Peltier Freedom Month Executive Clemency For Peltier! http://www.freepeltier.org/lpfreedommonth.html Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now! http://www.infoshop.org/gulag/mumia_idx.html "A society is a healthy society only to the degree that it exhibits anarchistic traits." - Jens Bjørneboe
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