C. Newman wrote:
>A new level of chutzpah...the window breakers trash Medea Benjamin and
>Global Exchange as police informants, then you want to give them credit
>for GX's hard organizing?
>
>It is the self-delusion of the window-breakers that they accomplish
>anything that has increased my dislike for the whole thing.
First, it's just a fact that without the handful of troublemakers and the vast police incompetence and over-reaction the WTO protest would have been an instantly forgotten media event. 35,000 protesters get a march on the news but it won't stay there. "Seattle" is now synonymous with the anti-globalization movement only because the march erupted in conflict. I was in the pro-choice rally in D.C. years ago that might have had ten times the number of protesters and it got less coverage than WTO. It was an important rally, I think, but the political reaction to it was commensurate with its size rather than outsized.
Starbucks thinks of itself as beloved by Seattle. All of a sudden it was their store downtown that protesters showed more contempt for than any other they attacked. With a Tully's and a Seattle's Best across the street from nearly every Starbucks, they can't afford to leave that impression of contempt unchallenged in the minds of their customers. Likewise, it's got to leave an impression on McDonald's corporate management that their franchises are a target whenever anti-capitalist protest flares up. Window-breaking is no substitute for real organizing but corporations pay a lot to establish their brand images and it gets their attention when those images are demonized. Ask Monsanto.
peace