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Subject: N30: 2nd anniv. of Battle in Seattle Posted by: James K Polk - [64333018] Thu, Nov 29, 2001, 23:12 Just wondering if any of our Western Washington gurupies were planning on joining the festivities tomorrow. I hear the "stain of Seattle" will rise again in front of Westlake Mall! :) | |||||||
| 1 | biliruben Sustainer ID: 231045110 Thu, Nov 29, 2001, 23:21 |
Actually, last I heard, they couldn't get a permit because the merry-go-round has already staked it out, and who knows what violent acts those freaked-out protesters could perform on the poor defenseless wooden horsies. ;) I am sure there will still be something protest-wise, just not sactioned, and I am not sure I will be risking arrest - though I will probably pop down and see if there is any action at lunch (I work kitty-corner to WLC). | ||||||
| 2 | James K Polk ID: 64333018 Thu, Nov 29, 2001, 23:31 | City was trying to keep the protest away from Westlake, but it lost the case tonight. A federal judge just ruled that up to 200 people could demonstrate there. Organizers expect as many as 1,000 to show up :) | ||||||
| 3 | Seattle Zen ID: 37241120 Thu, Nov 29, 2001, 23:56 | I'll be there, of course. | ||||||
| 4 | biliruben Sustainer ID: 231045110 Thu, Nov 29, 2001, 23:58 | Get some lunch, SZ? | ||||||
| 5 | James K Polk ID: 64333018 Thu, Nov 29, 2001, 23:59 | Knew I could count on you Zen! Hope to see a firsthand account tomorrow. :) | ||||||
| 6 | nerveclinic Donor ID: 461029191 Sat, Dec 01, 2001, 16:17 |
here's a link about the protest from seattle times. While my office is directly across the street, I was in Spokane on a business trip and didn't witness/attend although I was at the original. seattle times link | ||||||
| 7 | James K Polk ID: 114581215 Sat, Dec 01, 2001, 16:23 | nerve -- next time you're on the East Side, let me know. Would be cool to have lunch or something :) | ||||||
| 8 | biliruben Sustainer ID: 231045110 Sat, Dec 01, 2001, 18:22 |
Zen's dead, baby. Zen's dead. Or at least his cable modem is, so your gonna have to wait for his version of events. Personally, I don't understand why the police cordonned off the streets, then arrested people for walking in the street. Bizarre. Other than that, seemed pretty mild and uneventful, though I wasn't at the march or the festivities at the town hall. | ||||||
| 9 | Baldwin ID: 4261155 Sat, Dec 01, 2001, 19:03 |
My cable service was dead most of the day as well...part of the excite@home group. Weirdest thing was it was intermitant all day. When I first read Zen was dead I was thinking that too much water is supposed to be poisonous. I often think of that when I look at all the liberals that region pumps out. | ||||||
| 10 | Tosh Donor ID: 24902223 Sat, Dec 01, 2001, 19:12 |
bili - I looked for you and Zen while I was there. I caught only the last 45 minutes or so, and left as the march started. Haven't seen so many cops since the last WTO - I wasn't sure whether to feel safe or worried. | ||||||
| 11 | nerveclinic Donor ID: 14112623 Sun, Dec 02, 2001, 03:55 |
James You live in Spokane? pretty busy three days, lunch lasts about 20 minutes in the food court of a mall. retail in November. | ||||||
| 12 | nerveclinic Donor ID: 14112623 Sun, Dec 02, 2001, 03:59 |
biliruben where do you work? | ||||||
| 13 | biliruben Sustainer ID: 231045110 Sun, Dec 02, 2001, 11:25 |
Sorry to have missed you, Tosh. Had to work, then had lakers tix in the evening. Nerve - across from the Westin. 6th and Stewart - the building with the starbucks (seems like all the buildings have a starbucks, I know). | ||||||
| 14 | James K Polk ID: 288131219 Wed, Dec 05, 2001, 01:28 | nerveclinic -- yep, I work downtown, for the Spokesman-Review. Stop by anytime. :) | ||||||
| 15 | Seattle Zen ID: 37241120 Wed, Dec 05, 2001, 15:46 |
I got there early and when I realized it would be a couple of hours before it all started, I didn't stick around for the festivities. It was easy to predict what would happen, and reading the Times story Nerve linked in post 6, I am not surprised. Here's a little snippet from that story: Sylvia McDaniel, director of marketing for the Downtown Seattle Association, a fascist organization created to cleanse the downtown from any vermin whom might frighten their affluent, white constituency, said police did a fine job. "They were there to do what they needed to do when they needed to do it," she said, explaining that Tom Ridge and the local Office of Homeland Security promised to videotape the marchers and have them "disappear" so as to discourage a 3rd anniversary march next year. "This is holiday time. Rich people want to get on with their lives. They want to shop. They want to have a good time, obliterate any creaping feelings of guilt and dupicity with alcohol, and downtown is the place to have a wonderful time, not a place to be reminded of third world labor attrocities or environmental disasters".  Look at that waste of tax payer money! Overkill to say the least. However, the most aggregious waste of money did not occur during the march or protest. To understand what happened at night on Nov. 30th, you have to understand the way the Seattle PD opperates. A cop who is assigned to work the protest is probably working overtime, making good $. He/she wants to work as many hours as possible (I'm speculating that the pay goes up to double time or more after 8 hours on shift). It is up to the police officer himself how long he/she works, so if they can claim there is reason to keep working, they can make a killing. Though I went home for the actual "protest", that didn't stop me from attending the party that night. I was at Town Hall (which the city charged a pretty penny to rent) to check out the entertainment. I learned latter via e-mail that the police showed up in massive force to notify the organizer that there had been a "noise violation". Town Hall is a beautiful, old building just East of downtown. It is literally a few yards from I-5, a very loud interstate freeway. There is no way anyone could have heard anything eminating from this building unless they were standing on the front stairs. Luckily, someone glanced around the corner, and counted 24 (24!) police cars, as well as paddywagons and vans staging around the corner. Reportledly, some officers were in riot gear, and most were out of their cars, awaiting orders (presumably). At this point - we recognized that the police were simply itching for an excuse to shut the show down. As demonstrated at other N30 events throughout the day - the police were looking for any excuse to arrest more people, make sure that everyone knows who is in charge, and have a reactionary, confrontational presence that only serves to instigate conflict rather than resolve/avoid problems. Every cop in those paddy wagons and in riot gear packed into vans were making somewhere between $40-50/hour to threaten a group of middle-aged white people and a few high schoolers who had rented this building from their employers! Just one more antecdote added to my infinitely long lists of reasons why I HATE COPS WITH EVERY FIBER IN MY BODY! | ||||||
| 16 | Baldwin ID: 4261155 Wed, Dec 05, 2001, 16:47 |
Police extreme over-reaction to anti-globalism demonstrations is puzzling particularly in Europe where the police really go off the deep end. Not sure I hate police just because they show up when offered overtime tho. Don't all large demonstrations end up with extra police called in neccessitating overtime? Any more police here than say a St.Pat parade? | ||||||
| 17 | Seattle Zen ID: 37241120 Wed, Dec 05, 2001, 17:05 |
Baldwin Has there ever been a St. Patty's parade where there were more cops than the parade marchers and crowd combined? | ||||||
| 18 | Baldwin ID: 4261155 Wed, Dec 05, 2001, 17:16 | You mean you couldn't get the same turnout for this as a for lousy St. Patty's Day parade? And here I thot Seattle was a hotbed of activism. 8] | ||||||
| 19 | nerveclinic Donor ID: 14112623 Wed, Dec 05, 2001, 23:41 |
So much for living in a progressive city Eh Zen. This type of police behavior makes my blood boil because I really want to believe we live in a fairly free society...news flash, we don't. When the only way you can protest is if you do it when they give you permission, where they tell you you can stand, how long you can do it for...real free. When I was in college I protested the US involvement in Central America when George SR. came to speak on campus. We were told, you will stand, over there across the street, on the side of the building that doesn't face the front of the building. If you protest anywhere else you will be arrested. Is that freedom? Is that freedom of assembly? Big brother's told us we are free so long some of us actually start to believe it. | ||||||
| 20 | Seattle Zen ID: 411302615 Fri, Mar 01, 2002, 16:14 |
There is a new video game where YOU can be the radical progressive anti-WTO protester and "stick it to the Man" by torching business, breaking windows, and, of course, reigning tremendous violence upon the henchmen of the "Corporation", the riot-geared cops. It's called "State of Emergency". The fascist, capitalist oppressors have finally locked down the whole town, so now we've got no choice but to take the fight to them, and so we's spreading through the streets like kerosene, two hundred n' fifty strong. But their Nazi rent-a-pigs are already out there to meet us, and they's got their thug sticks out, and they's wading in and going all Rodney King on the peeps. But that's the match that lights us, and when we pass, whole city blocks go up in flame. And the corporate stores with their sweatshop wares are getting thrashed and licked by fire, and its me and Ricky Trang, and a rainbow coalition of kickass who gots our backs -- cholos, niggaz, kung fu kids from Chinatown, all going hella wild on the racist, consumerist, globalist system, looting it clean, and it is friggin beautiful. LMAO! One of the "strategies" that the website gives is "You may want to drop your weapon (like your rocketlauncher) before you pass by the patrolling corporate enforcers" Here's a complaint mentioned in a Salon.com article: "Not only does this particular game trivialize the whole global struggle against these undemocratic structures such as the WTO," an activist who goes by the name M-Dog posted to Indymedia, the progressive-left media Web site, "but it trivializes the repression that goes along with it." Someone else suggests that someone should pirate copies of the game and spread them far and wide, "to limit corporate profits made from the game". Is State of Emergency a new high in cynical corporate exploitation -- or consciousness-raising in a box? That article is an excellent read. It finishes with this quote: "If there's one message you can take away from SoE," says Wolpaw of Old Man Murray, "I think it's that capitalism has finally, irrevocably won. Using advanced technology developed in Japan and financed by a publishing company in the U.S., a group of smart people in Scotland has created what's possibly the most useless consumer product of all time ... Playing State of Emergency is like spiking the ball in the end zone of competing ideologies. Feel the burn, Marxism!" Here is a Seattle newspaper story on the release. 'State of Emergency' resembles WTO protests | ||||||
| 21 | Sludge Sustainer ID: 54131712 Fri, Mar 01, 2002, 16:25 | Heh... This reminds me of Rage Against the Machine contributing a song to the Godzilla soundtrack. Even though the song was a diatribe about the evils of the corporate world and how The Man uses eye candy to distract people from The Cause, and even though it contained a direct reference to the Godzilla movie ("Godzilla: pure mutha****in filler, get your eyes off the real killer."), it was still there helping the Godzilla franchise make money. | ||||||
| 22 | James K Polk ID: 4455731 Fri, Mar 01, 2002, 17:55 | Sludge?! A closet Rage fan!? I never knew ... | ||||||
| 23 | Sludge Sustainer ID: 54131712 Fri, Mar 01, 2002, 18:21 | Closet Rage fan? Au contraire mon ami. I'm quite the opposite, in fact. I'm more than happy to admit that I have all of their CDs and listen to them frequently. | ||||||
| 24 | James K Polk ID: 4455731 Fri, Mar 01, 2002, 19:45 | LOL! Excellent, although I'm somewhat disappointed to hear that you didn't rip the mp3's off some p2p file-sharing system. :) | ||||||
| 25 | Sludge Sustainer ID: 113368 Fri, Mar 01, 2002, 23:07 | I would never admit, on a public forum no less, to doing such an illegal thing, JKP. What do you take me for? A common criminal? | ||||||
| 26 | James K Polk ID: 114581215 Sat, Mar 02, 2002, 11:01 | No, I know for a fact that you're much smarter than that, because you don't swear. Or, at least, you use ***'s to edit out swear words ... :) | ||||||
| 27 | Sludge Sustainer ID: 113368 Sat, Mar 02, 2002, 11:09 |
Yeah, I use 'em even when I'm singing along. It seems we've hijacked a thread on a subject near and dear to SZ's heart. You'd better be careful, or he might feel the need to dub you an official member of the Thread-killing Wonder Twin Club. :) | ||||||
| 28 | Perm Dude Leader ID: 391321922 Sat, Mar 02, 2002, 11:12 | We'll have no copyright violations on my watch! | ||||||
| 29 | Seattle Zen Donor ID: 55343019 Mon, Sep 15, 2003, 02:04 |
Ah, sweet victory. WTO Trade Talks Collapse in Mexico. Delegates from many poor countries celebrated what they called a victory against the West, and an increasingly powerful alliance of poor but populous farming nations said they had found a new voice to rival the developed world. "The developing countries have come into their own," said Malaysia's minister for international trade and investment, Rafidah Aziz. "This has made it clear that developing countries cannot be dictated to by anybody." What fabulous news! | ||||||
| 30 | Seattle Zen ID: 178161719 Tue, Nov 30, 2004, 18:55 | Happy 5th Anniversary WTO protesters everywhere! | ||||||
| 31 | Seattle Zen ID: 3100137 Thu, Dec 01, 2005, 23:40 |
Happy SIXTH anniversary. CAUTION: Name Dropping Ahead I was at the Exit Strategy for the War on Drugs: Toward a New Legal Framework reception last night, November 30th, and spoke with Norm Stamper, Seattle Police Chief during the WTO protests, who resigned a few days afterwards. He was at the reception because he is now a drug law reformer and author of great renown. I put my arm around Norm and said "Happy Anniversary" and he looks at me a little oddly and asks why. "It's November 30th, Norm," I reply and chuckle and he says, "Oh my, I had completely forgotten, thanks for reminding me," mock sarcasticly. "Actually, November 30th wasn't so bad, December 1st and 2nd were worse!" Here's an exerpt from his drug policy speeches: The demand for illicit drugs is as strong as the nation's thirst for bootleg booze during Prohibition. It's a demand that simply will not dwindle or dry up. Whether to find God, heighten sexual arousal, relieve physical pain, drown one's sorrows or simply feel good, for millennia people have turned to mood- and mind-altering substances. They're not about to stop, no matter what their government says or does. It's time to accept drug use as a right of adult Americans, treat drug abuse as a public health problem and end the madness of an unwinnable war. Norm is going to be our keynote speaker at Hempfest 2006. | ||||||
| 32 | Motley Crue Dude ID: 439372011 Fri, Dec 02, 2005, 09:16 | If you can't beat them join them, eh? | ||||||
| 33 | Seattle Zen Leader ID: 055343019 Mon, Nov 30, 2009, 10:46 |
It's been ten years, where has the time gone?! I will always remember 11/30/1999 fondly, easily the greatest protest I will ever be a part of. The WTO was hardly known by anyone in the USA, this protest brought the subject into discussion.  I learned that I have a natural defense to tear gas. Didn't take any pepper spray to the face, but the gas didn't bother me like the people falling down around me. Five days that shook Seattle The protesters were right. | ||||||
| 34 | Bauxman ID: 1710353012 Mon, Nov 30, 2009, 13:38 |
You should be so proud. So much for the days when liberals put daisies in gun barrels and yelled MAKE LOVE NOT WAR! Apparently this behavior is OK, but a "tea bagger" makes offensive signs at a protest and that guy is a menace to society? *sarcasm*I'm so glad Seattle Zen is a parent. He's such a role model.*/sarcasm* I learned that I have a natural defense to tear gas. Didn't take any pepper spray to the face, but the gas didn't bother me like the people falling down around me. Could've been all the drugs you had in your system? | ||||||
| 35 | boikin ID: 532592112 Mon, Nov 30, 2009, 13:56 |
Apparently this behavior is OK, but a "tea bagger" makes offensive signs at a protest and that guy is a menace to society? both groups are equally silly. | ||||||
| 36 | Astade ID: 38542218 Mon, Nov 30, 2009, 13:59 |
Bauxman, will you just admit that you are into the Teabag- thing? | ||||||
| 37 | walk ID: 291046510 Mon, Nov 30, 2009, 15:25 |
It seems like half the board lives in or around Seattle. That is very cool. I love the music from that state of mind (just got the Nirvana live at Reading cd/dvd), and while RATM is LA, I had to comment on the Rage commentary as that is near and dear, too. Last week was for the Pixies in NYC though. Great pix of that protest. Not sure why that is so bad to some. Seems pretty American to protest corporations taking over. | ||||||
| 38 | boikin ID: 532592112 Mon, Nov 30, 2009, 16:33 |
Seems pretty American to protest corporations taking over. not sure what the protests have to do with corporations taking over. | ||||||
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