5 Days In Seattle that Shook The World

JOHN SELLERS

Ruckus Society

Pugel and I had each other’s cellphone numbers; we called each other a couple times as it was going down. I remember calling him as I was following the black bloc and leaving messages: I know where they are, I’m right fucking behind them, dude, it’s not hard to find these guys, why don’t you come arrest them? Why aren’t you arresting these guys who are destroying everything we worked so hard for and endangering everyone we invited to be out here with us? How can you guys not catch these 25 assholes?

I don’t think he wanted to catch them.

ED JOINER

Seattle Police

A lot of those hit-and-run people were not readily identifiable. They hid among the crowds. They would throw the rock, and the crowds would join in, whether they intended to or it was simply the mob mentality taking effect. I recall one situation where our horse patrol actually saw some of the people engaged in real violent behavior and tried to get at them. And the nonviolent protest groups basically sat down in front of the horses. The horse patrol made the right choice, not to pursue them, because other people would have gotten hurt.

JOHN SELLERS

Ruckus Society

The black bloc weren’t in the middle of the crowd. There was plenty of time they were out there on their own, marching down the street black bloc–fashion. I think a decision was made to let those guys do their thing to discredit everything everybody else had worked for. But if you read The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, anybody who was actually out there on the street doing fair and objective reporting, you’ll find that the riot was started by the cops. That they started brutalizing nonviolent protesters who were exercising their constitutional rights to strongly protest, with their voices and their bodies, what was going on in this country, and who got the shit kicked out of them. And that the only group bent on the destruction of property was like 50 people at most, and it was not rocket science to spot those guys and surgically take them out.

At 7 or 8 on the night of November 30, as we were leaving the convention center to go up to Capitol Hill, the Seattle police were marching around like Star Wars, throwing grenades. It was a very apocalyptic scene. I remember one of these black-clad kids in masks marching up the street. He hollered out, “How do you like your nonviolent direct action now, asshole?!”

FOUR WATERS

Earth First!

That night, up near the warehouse [an empty warehouse protesters had occupied at Ninth and Boren on Capitol Hill], I heard that some law enforcement went in and pepper—sprayed and teargassed. I don’t believe any of us were in the neighborhood, but the locals flipped out. Residents got sprayed, and it just seemed random.

Though it was an awful reaction, and people very much were injured and traumatized, it also flipped everything around, because the media could no longer ignore it. They had to say, Hey, what’s going on here? First the media’s preoccupation with the extreme played up the black bloc stuff. As soon as there were incidents on the other side, that got all the attention. Everything changed. It changed immediately.

LAURIE BROWN

Mayor’s Office

Paul actually allowed me to pull a meeting together in the mayor’s conference room—Joiner, Pugel, maybe [SPD Captain Clark] Kimerer, Han Shan, Mike Dolan, Ron Judd from the King County Labor Council, and a representative of the Rainforest Action Network. Stamper was not in on it. I didn’t see much of him during this whole thing. I’m not a certified mediator, but it was as close to mediation as I could pull off. We began putting on the table the notion of, Let’s set the anarchists aside, everyone agrees they’re being violent. Police department, you’re saying the demonstrators are being violent and that’s what’s triggering this reaction. They don’t think they’re being violent. Let’s talk about that.

“Of course they’re being violent—using that tubing to lock their arms together, that’s violent.” And the demonstrators would say, “That’s not violent, that’s civil disobedience.” The police department would say, “That’s not civil disobedience. We know what civil disobedience is. We’ve been dealing with civil disobedience since the 1960s, and there was never anything like that.”

“Well, that’s how civil disobedience has evolved. It’s a particularly effective way to engage in civil disobedience.”

“Okay, again, please, why do you think it’s violent?”

“Because ambulances and police cars can’t get through that kind of blockade without running people over. That’s violent.”

It was that level of discussion—what kinds of promises do you think were made, what kinds were broken, what ideas do you have to get this thing back on track so we don’t end up with somebody dead?

We were in that room for over two hours, and, while I don’t think they trusted each other, they trusted the process that we set up.

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Published: November 2009