Letters to the Editor
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shaped a new century?
They torched a Starbucks and achieved nothing else. I guess if wearing a black t-shirt and quoting Rage Against the Machine is shaping a new century, you're right. But mostly it's self involved angry bullshit.
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BAB, I second that emotion
When you look at this century so far, one thing is painfully obvious -- street protests are the ultimate acts of futility, If anything, they've been more effective in mobilizing opinion AGAINST the protesters.
Remember how successful the massive worldwide protests of 2003 (the biggest ever, IIRC) were in preventing the Iraq war?
And daily, I thank the brave franchise-trashing street fighters of Seattle -- because they certainly stopped globalization dead in its tracks, didn't they?
The very fact that O'Hehir makes such a ludicrous assertion just goes to show how divorced from reality the left has become -- which, of course, is the key to its utter impotence in this day and age.
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Not "the next day"
The police brutality began hours before the broken windows. Almost every study of the events makes that clear; Jonathan Oppenheim's account, and the Seattle Police Department's own records, both put the first tear gas attacks at 8:30-8:40 AM on Tuesday morning.
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"divorced from reality"
Of course the center and the right aren't "divorced from reality" when they support the invasion and occupation of Iraq (which has killed a million Iraqi civilians), when they pretend global warming isn't happening, when they pretend macroevolution hasn't happened, etc.
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I was there in 1999
It was a surreal experience, living through that chaos. The city literally shut down for days. The National Guard and/or police, dressed like black Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, were shooting plastic bullets at people -- much like the British in Northern Ireland. Tear gas was released in many neighborhoods. You had to keep the windows closed so it wouldn't float into your apartment. (If you enjoyed the feeling of hot lemon juice in your eyes, then you left the windows open!) The saddest thing is this: The WTO protestors were peaceful. The trouble started when those freakazoid "anarchists from Oregon" showed up just to trash the city. The irony didn't escape me when these losers smashed in the windows of Starbucks, and then went inside the store to steal the coffee, mugs, CDs, etc. If I learned anything from Seattle being shut down, it is this: Our cities can turn into a military zone in a snap. Democracy is an illusion, folks.
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It started after the police started shooting
You can check hundreds of on-the-spot accounts from the protesters and the radio logs from the police. Moreover, most of the people in the black bloc had been involved in the earlier protests and many of them had been gassed in the earlier protests. Many of the organizers of the Direct Action Network street blockades were anarchists; the affinity groups structure, consensus decision making, lock-down techniques, etc. were all derived from anarchist experience.
Blaming anarchists for bringing property destruction to N30 is like blaming classical liberals for bringing property destruction to the Boston Tea Party.
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"Democracy is an illusion"
Because the police step in to protect property? Property rights are the cornerstone of Democracy. Like it or not it is the petit bourgeoise that bring democracy.
Like it or not, the rule of law and property rights are a cornerstone of any democratic society. So peaceful protests are ok, but vandalism is not.
On another point, the WTO round has collapsed due to disagreements between the US and Europe and each other and the US and Europe versus Brazil, China, and India. Not really so much due to Seattle protesters.
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What about the people of Seattle?????
I was working downtown during some of the riots. I got to stay home and avoid much of it but I still remember our building turning off the air conditioning so as not to start inhaling tear gas and I remember having to show ID to pass from street to street.
Now, I haven't seen the movie but what strikes me from this review is how it mentions the protesters, the police, the mayor, but not the actual people who live in Seattle. Oh, and don't even think the majority of the protesters were native (though many were). Isn't it incredibly hypocritical to make a movie about a movement that's supporting average people around the world in the face of an uncaring corporate interests and not put average people into the movie who are facing protesters who don't really care about the lives of the people who live in Seattle?!
I know lots of Seattleites who were in favor of the protests, many who were against them, and most who think they were good but things went horribly wrong. What I personally can't stand is someone making a movie about these events and not showing how it affected the average people who live through them, not just the protesters who travelled there for them.
Of course if the movie does display the events of "people like me" then I apologize, but from what I've read it doesn't.
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Labor Movement
A good fictional book that includes the Seattle protests is "Fountain at the Center of the World."
This film doesn't seem to include the massive presence of the labor movement against the WTO in the streets in those days. Many unions were invovled. If your view of Seattle is some broken windows at Starbucks, I suppose we can all miss the point by a mile if we try hard enough.
Anarchists were there, yes, and so were tens of thousands of workers. And the police, even in 'liberal' Seattle, reacted like fools, and attacked peaceful demonstrators. Now the police create a their own little police state in every city that has a political convention or meeting. I guess we get used to everything, don't we?
The protests actually had a huge impact on the WTO itself, creating international pressure that continued in country after country (see Genoa Italy, where Italians aren't afraid to come out on the streets...)
The "BLue Green" alliance that started in Seattle is actually now coming together again across the country to push for green jobs, a demand now taken up by Obama and even Clinton. So all you snarky know nothings can go sip your lattes at Starbucks in peace.