5 Days In Seattle that Shook The World

I tapped Norm [Stamper] on the shoulder and said, Can I talk to you a minute? We went into a little room. I said, We’ve got to make sure this happens, we’ve got to make sure the city is safe, we’ve got to make sure WTO moves forward, we can’t just cancel this. We’ve got to take control of this, we don’t want the mayor or the governor drawing police lines or making assignments.

I went back in and listened a bit. The state patrol chief and I and some others met, and the police finally took control of the situation and came up with a plan to relieve officers. The first thing we had to do was take control of the streets and put as many officers out there as we could.

Fortunately we put a lot of our deputies in the basement of the courthouse already outfitted in their riot gear. I did that on my own, just anticipating that they might need us.

JIM PUGEL

Seattle Police

One of our officers had a “No WTO” -T-shirt on in the locker room. I told him, You can’t wear that. He said, “Hey, I’ve got my vest and my uniform over it.” These guys have independent political thoughts.

JOHN SELLERS

Ruckus Society

Monday I got arrested after an iconic action: hanging a giant banner—showing the words “WTO” and “Democracy” on one-way street signs pointing in opposite directions—from a 160-foot crane with the Space Needle in the background. We left the banner on the crane—the cops didn’t want to climb up to get it. The steelworkers took it down and marched with it the next day.

I had a kind of revolving-door policy with a really cool bail bondswoman in Seattle. I’d given her the Ruckus credit card the week before and said, Whenever I call you just bail out whoever I say. I couldn’t believe I got out of jail the same night, just as it was about to go down. I hadn’t planned to be out November 30, so I didn’t have much responsibility, and I just wandered around.

Walking up from Pike Place to the convention center was one of the greatest street parties I’d ever been to, this glorious, happy scene, literally Teamsters and turtles together. The Teamsters rocked up with this kickass sound system, the most badass sound system I’d ever seen, playing great old soul standards.

It wasn’t till late Tuesday morning that it started getting crazy.

KATE JONCAS

Downtown Seattle Association

Tuesday morning people had already chained themselves and put their arms in tubes and blocked the intersection up by the Sheraton. I was on the phone with someone in Washington, DC. I said, Betsey, I have to hang up now, because they’re setting fire to the dumpsters.

CHIEF NORM STAMPER

Seattle Police

The intersection of Sixth and Union was completely taken over. This was a staged event, a photo op that had been negotiated to allow civil disobedience arrests. But we also had intelligence reports that five other contingents were moving in from outlying parts of the downtown area—Steinbrueck Park, Denny Park, and so on—wearing gas masks and carrying projectiles, clearly prepared for clashes with the police.

I watched several hundred demonstrators advance upon a line of King County sheriffs, one deep, stretched across the entrance to the parking garage at the Sheraton. The thin brown line—we had nobody behind them. At that moment I thought, things are really going to go south on us. We do not have enough people.

KATE JONCAS

Downtown Seattle Association

The whole time downtown was blocked off the drums were going. There was a drum circle at the corner of Pike and Fifth. Drumming still gives me a visceral reaction.

The Vegan Dykes marched topless for fair trade. The UPS guys were out there in their little brown outfits, hopping around the street, trying to get into buildings.

People dressed as turtles and trees were everywhere. I saw a turtle and a tree arguing about whether it was philosophically correct to do damage and throw things. One of them was going to throw this newspaper box, I don’t remember which one. In the end the newspaper box lost.

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Published: November 2009