C. Lipow,
It's important to remember that the property damage to Seattle was not all that significant. For example, I don't know of a private car that was so much as damaged by anyone but the police. What kind of riot is it when nobody smashes car windows? The answer: It wasn't a riot at all.
The point is that a very little damage got a very large over-reaction. That was the key to Seattle's media success. What good does confronting police do unless the police over-react and engender sympathy and outrage? Police are just as happy to put a bunch of hippies in jail and collect a bunch of overtime. I think demonstrations either have to show the weakness of the current order or the twisted logic behind its strength. Seattle showed there was no support for the WTO except among the elite and that Seattle is policed by violent, cowardly incompetents.
(who, by the way, yesterday shot a mentally disturbed man to death, on video, as he skipped - I kid you not, he skipped - down the street waving a steak knife around. Somehow the most famously riot-geared police force in the nation couldn't find so much as a blanket to throw over this guy. Somehow 8 or 10 Seattle cops couldn't overpower a loony bird with a steak knife without shooting him)