This is a follow up post to my other about Hoover and the mass arrests he had planned for 1950
In 1999 (November 30th) during the WTO "riots" in Seattle, I worked in downtown Seattle at 2nd Avenue and Pine street (the Newmark Building) and my office was on second floor on the north side of the building looking down onto Pike between 1st Avenue and 2nd Avenue. The Pike Place Market was visible to the west and you could see up Pike a block or two to the east.
The WTO meeting was long known to be coming to town and it was widely known that labor groups, etc would be protesting. The first day into the meeting there were loud protests on the street but nothing felt unsafe. I went out for lunch and walked among the thousands of people choking off traffic from the downtown streets. As it turns out I witnessed some of the activity that kicked off all the property destruction and chaos. The anarchists (black block ) who were busy pushing a dumpster into the intersection of Pike and 3rd Avenue to light it on fire and then watched them slink away down a side street. It wasn't really scary to be in the crowds, but it was getting there.
As I walked around more I found more and more police perimeters, SPD in full riot gear in a shoulder to shoulder line with shields and batons blocking off streets. Actually, I have to give credit where it's due. The Seattle Police department riot gear was masterfully designed to be intimidating. Great gladiatorial stuff with pads to look like huge muscles and wide shoulders, knee high boots with massive black leg guards.
By then 3pm the situation on the ground was enough that the office closed and people left in groups to get to their buses and transportation, but it really wasn't overly unsafe unless you were in one of the regions where the police or the protesters were moving in. The estimates I've seen put 40,000 people on the streets of Seattle. When I tried to go home the buses going to the north weren't actually stopping in downtown, you had to walk several blocks north to Denny. I got home all right.
That evening a "no protest" zone was declared in downtown Seattle containing, more or less, everything from Denny to Columbia and from Elliot Bay to I-5. The next morning (December 1st) when I went to work the buses weren't going into downtown, which had been thrashed by the protesters the day before. I got off the bus at Denny and was going to walk to the office. I carried a backpack with my book and a magazine that I read on the bus and in order to get into the "no protest" zone I had to let police officers peek inside my bag to see that I wasn't carrying I-don't-know-what. That really rubbed me the wrong way, but I acquiesced because I didn't really see the value of getting denied access to work, or worse, arrested for standing up for my rights (unreasonable search and seizure for those of you who don't remember civics).
That afternoon the moonscape of downtown Seattle was punctuated by maneuvers by the police and the protesters. It was all very 17th century warfare - armies lined up across a field. Apparently at some point late in the day the police pushed the protester into Pike Place and the market bearing the same name. This meant they were within sight of my office window. By this time it seems to me that the protester were more or less beaten down by pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets. So when a skirmish appeared below the (sealed) window of my office we were able to watch as the police engaged the protesters. The two images below were not taken by me, but they are pretty dead on with what I saw:
Well for the sake of finishing the story and getting back to something resembling a point, That evening when I left work, downtown Seattle was on lock-down. Downtown was not nearly as crowded, it was more deserted with small pockets of protesters and lines of police in their great but scary looking riot gear. I walked up to Capital Hill and had a snack at B&O Espresso, and then walked up to Broadway to catch the No7 bus to the U-District where I could catch the 35 up to Wedgwood. Apparently because all of the disruption the 7 wasn't running on Capital Hill so I walked toward the north end of Broadway. I made it all the way to a pub near East 10th and Roanake (you know if you keep walking North on Broadway). I had yet to find the No 7 bus, whose route I was walking, and needed a break. I stopped in, got a pint and looked up at the television to see live footage of protesters moving up onto Capitol Hill being clubbed by police. It wasn't quite bedlam, but it definitely wasn't comforting to see that the exact area I had just walked out of was the scene of all that. I called a one my roomates to come pick me up from the pub, according to the local news the action was moving North on Broadway.
It was all very surreal. I remember at the end of it all feeling like the people who came to town for the protest had a lot of nerve showing up and smashing up my city. But that's not really compelling. At the end of it all - some 600 arrests later - I am disappointed in myself that I didn't put up more of a fuss when that darn police man asked to see my bag. And thereby I guess I hold myself complicit to what the courts ended up deciding was a violation of the 4th Amendment.
On January 16, 2004, the city settled with 157 individuals arrested outside of the no-protest zone during the WTO events, agreeing to pay them a total of $250,000.
On January 30, 2007, a federal jury found that the City of Seattle had violated protesters' Fourth Amendment constitutional rights by arresting them without probable cause or hard evidence.
from wikipedia "WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 Protest Activity"
Over the years I've given it some thought, and while I was ticked that a bunch of people had messed up my city, a peek inside my backpack pisses me off more. So, I guess that's why the whole Hoover wanting to go after 12,000 people in 1950 post has that "echo... echo... echo..." portion on the end. This makes me think we're in some sort of civil rights echo chamber. I'm pretty sickened by extraordinary rendition, by gitmo and by wiretapping. I guess instead of Echo echo echo it should read... Manzanar, Hoover's Plan, domestic wire tapping. Haven't we learned yet?
To knee cap a counter argument - Sure sure sure, post 9/11 world... My answer is post Pearl Harbor world... Post China enters Korean War world. Don't worry, I'm not going to rail against the random searches by police of bags and packages entering the subway - they just won't be checking my bag. And apparently I've started blogging about civil liberties