WTO protest 10-year anniversary special.

Tear gas, butterflies, and the WTO.

Remembering the day Seattle was shut down by protesters and martial law.

Photos and text by Scott Sands

On November 30, 1999, long before having become a journalist, I packed several rolls of 35 mm film and my Minolta SRT, and went downtown, early in the morning to see the protest of the World Trade Organization.

On December 3, I wrote a letter to a friend describing the entire day and some of the aftermath. For some reason, I never sent the letter. Ten years later, while looking for material to refresh my memory of the day, I found it in a box of old writings.

I'm reprinting the letter here for the ten-year anniversary of the WTO protest.

Although detailed, it's not meant to be journalism. There are no interviews and no indepedent research was conducucted except for what I experienced on that day.

I spoke with some of the protesters, which is more than our local news did at the time, but it was only out of my own curiosity, not to craft a comprehensive story.

There may be factual errors and bias. There are no corrections except for some minimal editing.

This is simply a letter from the thick of it.

December 3, 1999

Dear B-----

Tonight I write to you from a police state. We are occupied by storm troopers, swarmed with police helicopters and witness to rubber bullets shot at pedestrians’ nuts. I assume this is making national news. Don’t believe their version of the story. I have seen, first hand, the gross distortions of the lazy, incompetent, and sensationalistic media.

It all starts with the WTO, the World Trade Organization, something that until now, I, as well as most of America have been completely ignorant of. What I’ve learned so far is that this is a secret society of unelected delegates (delegated by whom, I don’t know) who make all the rules regarding international trade. Their hobbies

Protesters block a downtown intersection. They are tied together in a circle with chains and pipes that can only be removed by cutting through them.

include: consolidating wealth, promoting business practices which exploit the environment and the working poor, meeting behind closed doors, and, most recently, attempting to break their way through human chains of protesters who have astonishingly shut down the core of this city and prevented the WTO from meeting on U.S. soil.

I had heard about the planned protests, so I grabbed my camera and rode a bus downtown until it was stopped by a group of protesters who had chained themselves together and were laying in the street, in an intersection, with the intention of blocking all traffic and shutting down several city streets.

They told me there were several groups like this, stationed at strategic points, each with a person on a large tripod in the middle, and surrounded by girls in butterfly costumes who handed out fliers which described the evils of the WTO.

According to these fliers, the WTO will not allow the European Union to ban hormone treated beef despite the E.U.’s concerns about the questionable safety of such meat. The WTO also seeks to lessen restrictions of genetically modified foods which have yet to be proven safe. In fact, they appear to be causing some damage. Genetically altered crops are designed to be resistant to powerful pesticides which are linked to reduced fertility and stunted growth among insects and animals. The pollen from the altered corn contains an insecticidal toxin which is killing the monarch butterflies. There was a study on rats that were fed genetically modified potatoes. The rats subsequently suffered from stunted internal organ growth and weakened immune systems. It is estimated that seventy percent of foods on supermarket shelves contain GMOs and nont of these are labeled so, and we don’t know the long-term health effects of any of them.

Any country that wants to participate in global trade has to play by the rules of the WTO, which is an unelected governing body that we have no voice in, even though their decisions affect us all. The reaction to this was a demonstration unlike any we have seen in our lifetimes, staged by some creative, and motivated citizens.
They turned downtown into one, big protest party. A van in the center of it blared music as the crowd was entertained by dancers and jugglers. There were people dressed up in costumes designed as satires of money-hungry fat-cats eating cash and caressing the planet as their own precious commodity.

A human chain was formed around the hotel where the meeting was to take place. Delegates pushed their way through the crowd while protesters chanted slogans and threw fake money at them. The human chain stood their ground and wouldn’t let any of the delegates through.

I thought things were going to turn violent when one delegate tried to shove a large drag queen out of the way and the drag queen shoved him back. The cries of “peaceful protest,” however, prevailed.

Meanwhile, faceless storm troopers, dressed in riot gear and brandishing batons were set to toe the line, hold the perimeter, and keep the mob contained. As word of the cops’ various locations came in to the party around the white van, which operated as the protest’s central nervous system, a woman with a megaphone directed the crowd to meet them head on and sit down in front of them to keep them at bay. The police were perceived as a threat to the movement. At any moment they could march in, brutalize their way through the crowd, break the human chain, and escort the delegates to their meeting.

At these standoffs, there were a few troublemakers, filled with the thrill of the power of the people, who disregarded the peaceful nature of the sit-downs, and verbally antagonized the police. The police did not respond to the insults and threats, not that I had seen.

As WTO delegates push their way through the crowd, there were shouts of, "it's a delegate!" Most of them left when they realized they couldn't get through the protesters linked arm in arm around the Paramount.

Then came the reports of tear gas being used at another standoff. By the time I found the scene of the melee, it was over. There were people streaming tears, and pouring bottled water into their eyes. The police did not advance, and many protesters still held their ground. Then there was a cloud of tear gas rising from another intersection. I ran towards it to see what was happening until my eyes burned and I backed off. Another plume of tear gas rose in the distance. Protesters were still refusing to be pushed back.

Then I saw the broken windows. A group of anarchists wearing black bandannas to cover their faces had smashed the windows of Nike Town, Starbucks and the Warner Brothers store. I had seen groups of these vandals-to-be throughout the day. Now I knew why they hid their faces.

People were stunned by the damage. “How could it come to this,” they seemed to ask as they surveyed the graffiti and broken glass. Even though this was initially shocking and contradictory to the general spirit of the movement, it was a relatively small tragedy in light of the event.

The local news, however, would soon choose to portray this as though it was the general attitude of the protest. You would have thought the whole city was overrun with anarchists who were demolishing the city. They took a few pieces of footage, focused on them, and played them over and over, deliberately misleading their viewers for the sake of sensationalism.

There were no interviews with the organizers of the protest, and no attempt to understand why they would want to shut down the WTO. No attention has been given to the representatives of the sea turtles endangered by fishing nets; to the women dressed as butterflies, who are trying to save the monarchs; to the practitioners of Falun Gong, who seek to end their persecution in China; or to those who would argue that the WTO undermines democracy in the nations whose trade rights it regulates.

They chose instead to repeatedly air the looting of one Starbucks, making it seem as if every Starbucks in Seattle had been plundered. The AFL-CIO, a procession of thousands demonstrating for worker’s rights and against the exportation of American jobs, received some coverage, but not as much as the chaos that would come as night fell.

I give Mayor Paul Schell much credit for allowing the WTO protests to take place. This town traditionally has had a relatively liberal attitude towards such expression. Unfortunately, as confrontations between police and protesters grew more heated; as more and more tear gas was being utilized to control the situation; as people were going down town to join in the action, the once peaceful protest was being overcome by intoxication and mob mentality.

The Mayor decided it had to end before it became a full scale riot. A curfew was set. The streets were to be cleared by dark. But by this time the mob had been established. They were not taking kindly to the rubber bullets and were throwing canisters of tear gas back at the police.

The meeting of the WTO had already been announced to have been a failure but an us-against-them mentality had taken over the streets. The curfew and the police advancement only caused more resistance. This was a chance to fight back, but I wonder if anyone knew what they were actually fighting for.

Exhausted, and not knowing how chaotic things were going to become, I had gone home before the escalation. My only news since then has come from the untrustworthy television networks.

Downtown has been declared a no-protest zone. It’s justified, I think, since the streets need to be made safe for President Clinton. But it makes for an ugly and absurd scene.

The police have reinforced their numbers with cops from nearby districts and the National Guard. Metro buses have been commandeered to detain anyone who dares to participate in a sit-down or wave signs with anything written on them. There’s tear gas everywhere and protesters are being pushed back with bean bag rounds, rubber bullets, and batons into the surrounding neighborhoods.

Television reporters, on the scene, are running around trying to get tear gas in their eyes like it’s a red badge of courage. Meanwhile, they’re encouraging holiday shoppers come on down and visit the malls.

President Clinton is here and he gave a speech in which he insisted he would never allow any food to leave this country if there was any proof that the food was unsafe. Has it been tested? What about Monsanto’s crops? What about the exportation of jobs and the exploitation of workers in third-world countries?

So that’s were we are now. I feel as though I’ve had a front row seat to something meaningful. We have to wait to see what affect all this will have. Will the voices of protest echo into the future and inspire some positive change? I wonder if the butterflies and sea turtles will receive any relief as a result of this.

Will this help the working poor or those being persecuted in China for their political beliefs? I have my doubts. The public’s still ignorant and too few people know how to fight the system. Besides, money usually wins. But let’s hope that someone’s plea for a better world has been heard and that somehow it will make a difference.

Your friend from the police state,

Scott