The server at the N.Y. Times is out, but, from Lou's Marxism list, here is a part of a story in this morning's Times.
A short comment- wouldn't underestimate the presence of numbers of agent provocateurs, but, as anyone on the list would now, every young radical esp. those in the anarcho/punk scenes, isn't likely to be all that willing to follow the lead of their left elders when the "peace police" call on the crowd to not trash Niketown or Starbucks.
Michael Pugliese
Michael Pugliese
----- Original Message ----- From: Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com> To: <marxism at lists.panix.com> Sent: Thursday, December 02, 1999 7:07 AM Subject: Anarchists or agents provocateurs?
> NY Times, December 2, 1999
>
> THE BLAME
>
> Clenched Fists in Seattle Lead to Pointed Fingers
>
> By TIMOTHY EGAN
>
> SEATTLE -- It took only a few minutes for the people in the monarch
> butterfly costumes and union jackets to realize that what was planned as
> the biggest American demonstration yet against global trade here had
turned
> into a burst of window-breaking and looting late Tuesday afternoon.
>
> A surge of violence that ended in a civil emergency began when a knot of
> people dressed in black broke away from the main demonstration and started
> overturning trash containers, stoking fires and smashing windows of stores
> and restaurants. It died out with the image of a grinning young man in a
> Gap sweatshirt trying to cart off a satellite dish from a Radio Shack
store.
>
> How the thin line was crossed from nonviolent protest to urban disorder
was
> being dissected here Wednesday as the World Trade Organization got down to
> business. The conclusion: the anarchists were organized.
>
> One person in black, who refused to identify himself, said anarchists had
> planned all along to incite the crowd.
>
> Some blamed the police for mounting a show of force with rubber pellets
and
> tear gas against largely nonviolent protesters, and then backing off to
> leave a lawless zone within the city's most gilded retail corridors. At
> first, the protesters tried to police themselves -- something they said
> they were incapable of doing once the more militant elements took hold.
>
> Veteran demonstrators, who have logged years of protest against corporate
> retail chains like Nike and Starbucks, suddenly found themselves trying to
> defend them.
>
> "We turned at one point to protect Niketown, of all places, from these
> people who were trying to smash the storefront glass with metal newspaper
> boxes," said Ken Butigan, a professor of theology from Berkeley, Calif.
> "They turned on us and called us counterrevolutionaries."
>
> Butigan teaches protest tactics at Berkeley, he said. He and other
> demonstrators had expected -- and prepared for -- the police to make about
> 1,000 arrests. But they made only a handful of arrests, relying on the
> stinging vapor of tear gas to disperse people who refused to allow
> delegates into the trade group's opening session.
>
> Young people in black masks, some of them speaking by two-way radios, used
> the police reaction as a cue to go on a rampage. They sprayed a symbol for
> anarchy -- a circled A -- on store walls, then quickly expanded to window
> breaking and some looting. Some identified themselves as members of Black
> Clad Messengers, a self-proclaimed anarchist group. [Black Clad
Messengers?
> Oh sure.]
>
> For merchants in a downtown known as one of the nation's most prosperous
> and vibrant -- as the eyes of the world were looking this way and holiday
> shoppers were expected to crowd the aisles -- it was a pure terror.
>
> "We called 911 from inside our store, asking for help, telling them that
> people were rampaging in the streets, but they said they were too busy,"
> said Maryann Swissa, who runs a jewelry store with her husband, Monty. "We
> ended up getting an ex-National Football League player to stand guard at
> the door."
>
> At the peak of the disorder, even protesters who had planned to be
arrested
> were calling for help.
>
> "Here we are protecting Nike, McDonald's, the Gap and all the while I'm
> thinking, 'Where are the police? These anarchists should have been
> arrested,' " said Medea Benjamin, a leader with Global Exchange, a San
> Francisco-based protest group. Ms. Benjamin was arrested later inside the
> trade meeting on trespassing charges.
>
>
> Complete article at:
> http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/120299wto-protest.html
>
>
> Louis Proyect
>
> (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
>