Oversender to øyenvitneskildringer fra «WTO-slaget» i Seattle.
Trond Andresen
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From: Joanne Olson <Joanneo@uwlm.ca
To: CLC_LO@listbot.com <CLC_LO@listbot.com
Date: December 7, 1999 12:33 PM
Subject: Battle In Seattle
CLC Left Opposition - http://CLC_LO.listbot.com
Sisters & Brothers:
Of all the emails I have received, and media accounts outlining what
happened in Seattle, this article (below) is the closest one I have read to
what I actually witnessed happening.
After my partner and I broke off from the main labour march and headed
towards downtown Seattle we saw about six men with clubs heading away from
the crowd smashing windows, shimming up buildings and kicking down signage.
Dressed all in black (boots, jeans, turtlenecks and balaclavas) they
reminded us of Navy Seals in a Steven Segal movie. They were extremely
agile and focused in their efforts. It was obvious that they did not belong
with the rest of the protestors, they were professionals sent in by someone
to incite violence.
The article talks about the police/establishment not only causing the
violence through their overt actions of pepper spray, tear gas and rubber
bullets, but also their covert actions, one of which I believe were these
men in black. Is quite long, but well worth the read.
In Solidarity
Joanne Olson
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Subject: WTO- Police Brutality in Seattle
Date: Saturday, December 04, 1999 10:02 AM
COLLATERAL DAMAGE IN SEATTLE
by Portland student/reporter Jim Desyllas
Called-in from 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 dismiss
the movement and to provide photo opportunities for the Western media. I
know because I watched it happening. I'll tell you how they did it.
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 3PM,
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.
When things started on Sunday, there was a protest rally 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 cafes 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 restaurants and bars and
coffee
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..
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