Letters to the Editor
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yeah, I was there
Along with thousands of other people. I was with the medical team, which was centrally dispatched from protestor headquarters. Which meant that I ran from place to place, treating protestors who had been tear gassed, who were becoming hypothemic from being poorly dressed in the cold Seattle morning weather, who had been hit by rubber bullets and so forth.
The tear gas started very early in the morning, long before any property destruction. The protestor/anarchist property destruction also happened relatively early- it had been preplanned, against a few specific franchises: Starbucks, McDonalds, etc.
And then a funny thing happened. Around 4 or 5 o'clock, the composition of the protestors changed. There is no kind way to put this- the native Seattleans showed up. Maybe they saw the event on the news and decided to take advantage of the protection provided by the protestors, maybe the local high schools let out, I don't know.
That's when the protest degenerated into chaos. People (not protestors) started breaking windows indiscriminantly. I watched cell phone stores and other small businesses being looted. The police responded by storming the crowds and teargassing the streets. Thousands of people literally ran to get away. The streets emptied within an hour or two. At that point, most of the legitimate protestors went home or to other locations (e.g. the jail). We didn't want to be associated with the looters any more than the police wanted them to loot.
The next day, marching peacefully with the labor unions, I was at the head of a large crowd when the police moved in and arrested everybody behind me. The police were incredibly aggressive- maybe their nerves were frayed from the day before. Anyway, my friend got a cash settlement years later for that arrest- it had been a peaceful march, even as the protestors were being tear-gasses and loaded off to jail.
It's too bad about 9/11. The Seattle protest started something big, but it got derailed by the terrorist attacks.