5 Days In Seattle that Shook The World

MIKE MOORE

Director-General, WTO

Broadcast on Radio New Zealand ’s Sunday Morning with Chris Laidlaw, August 9, 2009.

It looked like that bar scene from Star Wars. People were dressed as turtles. Then all hell broke loose…. [UN Secretary—General] Kofi Annan couldn’t get across town to the meeting, nor [U.S. Secretary of State] Madeleine Albright. There was talk about smuggling them across town in an ambulance or a tank, but that never happened.

The South African minister, who was imprisoned by the apartheid regime—an ex-Marxist—was sort of roughed up by the demonstrators because he wanted to get in to represent his country’s interests. In fact the deal would have given and will give Africa five times more money than all the aid and the overseas debt that’s been written off.

GIRMA STEPHANOS

Bus Driver, King County Metro

They told us to park on Fifth Avenue by the Westin so they could block the area so the protesters wouldn’t come, because that’s where the president was staying. We parked and started walking around. On Sixth and Olive there was a Starbucks, and people were demonstrating in front. There was this lady inside a store, and a guy came and broke the window. I told her, Get away, get away, but she just froze and people were going into the stores and snatching things. Police started coming from Pike Place and throwing tear gas and pushing them up with horses, and there were people throwing stones at police, and the police were getting violent to the point that they really weren’t discriminating; they were beating anybody who was out there. I talked to one of the police officers and I said, They’re breaking the Starbucks, aren’t you going to do something? And he said, I’m scared, I want to go away, I’m from Olympia, I want to go home. And that’s what got me scared—the guy with the gun was scared.

FOUR WATERS

Earth First!

It had never occurred to me before how scared law enforcement was of us. You think you’re the protester, you’re wearing a T-shirt and cutoffs, you have no weapons. You’re facing people with shields, weapons up the wazoo, big black padded clothing and helmets, they’re there in force, and they can lock you up for some indefinite period. How could you be intimidating?

From your perspective they’re holding all the cards. But from their perspective I can see how we looked intimidating to them, because we were a crowd.

JIM PUGEL

Seattle Police

We’d read a book from about 1900 called The Crowd, by a guy named Le Bon, about how otherwise good people obey all the rules, but when they get together, sometimes under the cover of darkness, sometimes when flame or fire is there, they become different persons. We witnessed that clearly. One woman was shown breaking a store window on the cover of Newsweek. We tracked her down afterward. She lived on Bainbridge Island, she had a respectable job, she didn’t even know what WTO was. Another lady, I believe the first one arrested, initially won a claim against us. She actually said in her testimony, I was having some drinks on Broadway, I saw it on TV, it sounded interesting so I came down. Asked if she was intoxicated, she said, Well, I think I was. But I didn’t believe anything would happen because I wasn’t involved. There was this weird psychology of people who weren’t police and weren’t protesters who thought they were immune.

JOE SZWAJA

Nova High School

When we performed our play, so many people stopped and watched and applauded, it was really a magical moment. Right afterward, we marched with these Korean farmers who were playing flutes. They couldn’t speak English and we couldn’t speak Korean, but we communicated with gestures and signs. They talked about rice—about how their growers were threatened by the WTO bringing in cheaper rice from abroad. The students and I felt part of this big, whole movement.

After the play I was walking past Town Hall, carrying one of these huge puppets, and a policeman came up and said I couldn’t be in the “no-protest zone.” I said, Forgive me, sir, but I teach government, I’m pretty familiar with the constitution, and I don’t think there’s any such thing as a no-protest zone. He was nice—there were many police like that who were just trying to do their job. But I thought it was interesting that just because I had a puppet he was going to arrest me.

KATHY SCHWARTZ

Convention and Visitors Bureau

All our plans for receptions and tours seemed beside the point. We floated in an unreal world inside the Sheraton and convention center, busying ourselves with small stuff while the world collapsed around us. On Tuesday, November 30, when things finally blew up and the tear gas flew and the police were literally squished against the lobby doors, we alternated between fear and anger—anger at these barbarian hordes trashing our city and our meeting. Ugly faces pressed against the Sheraton windows will forever stay in my memory.

I finally headed home about 9pm Tuesday. I saw a turtle demonstrator run into a local pizza shop and give the guys behind the counter a high-five. My rage overcame me—I tore in there screaming, grabbed their trash bin, and threw it out into the street.

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Published: November 2009