Tuesday, May 2, 2000, 12:00 a.m. Pacific
May Day revelers snarl Olympia streets
by David Postman and Ralph Thomas Seattle Times Olympia bureau
OLYMPIA - May Day celebrants disrupted traffic and shopping here yesterday with a street party that took over a busy intersection with live music, dancing, jump-roping, naked coed mud wrestling and a wild smashing of old television sets.
Like other demonstrations around the world, the event was organized to protest corporate domination and the globalization of commerce, issues that were also central to rallies in Seattle and Washington, D.C., recently.
But the May Day march in Olympia was mostly absent serious political discussion or atmosphere; the dogma here ran more toward spring break. Organizers called it a street party, not a protest.
"It's like we're messing up the way the city works," said Wayne Garrett, a 22-year old student at The Evergreen State College. "It's just, like, to show your discontent. Create some havoc. There's no specific message anymore than we're not happy with the way things are going."
The May Day demonstration was one of several - ranging from large anti-capitalist marches in London and Berlin to pro-immigrant, pro-worker rallies in Chicago and New York - all, in their own way, marking the workers' movement that was born 114 years ago in pursuit of the eight-hour workday.
In Portland, police arrested more than a dozen demonstrators and used clubs and beanbag rounds from shotguns to control the downtown crowds.
The most serious disruption in Olympia occurred all afternoon and into the evening when police shut down some onramps and offramps to Highway 101 to keep traffic away from demonstrators.
Police made no arrests in the state capital, and city officials said they had no reports of property damage or violence. One person was taken away in an ambulance reportedly for a diabetes-related problem.
About 500 people set off during lunchtime from a strip mall in West Olympia for a free-flowing march through the business district, past Toys R Us to "the secret party location," the city's busiest intersection at Cooper Point and Black Lake boulevards.
It was mostly a young crowd, heavy on dreadlocks and body piercings, with wild costumes and bicycles, skateboards, in-line skates and anarchist cheerleaders. There was bubble blowing, and some people wore turtle costumes similar to those seen during Seattle's World Trade Organization protests last fall.
Olympia police kept their distance throughout the day. During the six-hour occupation of the intersection and surrounding streets, police made no attempt to clear people out or announce that partygoers were breaking the law.
"We've always accommodated them down here," said Olympia police Lt. Tor Bjornstad. "We're just going with the flow."
Many marchers were Evergreen students. For some it was a field trip.
"There is no ultimate goal," said Matt Loxterman, 22, as he followed the parade. "Just to invade all areas possible."
Protesters walked through traffic, handing out literature and urging drivers to give up their cars and join them for the day.
Some were a bit vague on the point.
"It's important to support people," said Carol Marier, 20, a junior at St. Martin's College in nearby Lacey. "I think that freedom is important."
A flier handed out by marchers said May 1 was selected because it has historically been a workers' holiday. The march and party came after a week of workshops films and other events "focused on dismantling the current social disorder and building a new one," according to the organizers' flier.
Most of the activity was good-natured, though there were a few angry faces when, at one point, demonstrators smashed televisions and ripped up a U.S. flag.
As the parade approached the Cooper Point-Black Lake intersection, marchers ran into nearby bushes and to vans parked nearby. Out came old TV sets, couches, a church pew, a refrigerator and a washing machine.
Young people in black, cheered on by others, then smashed the televisions, violently thrashing them with boards, kicking in the screens and throwing them, with the occasional tube exploding. Inexplicably, a huge cheer went up when a coffee table was smashed to splinters.
One group tried to burn the U.S. flag, and after they couldn't get it lighted, they tore it into thin strips and threw it on the pile of junk.
Police on motorcycles watched the scene from a few feet away - so close that they backed off when the glass inadvertently flew their way. Behind the Top Foods store, officers in riot gear stood watch all day, out of view of demonstrators and reporters.
Some demonstrators peacefully danced and spun in their tie-dyes while others picnicked on a red-checked table cloth.
A tripod at least 20 feet tall was erected in the center of the intersection. A young man swung from a sling suspended from the center of the contraption.
But May Day wasn't so fun for those people who had to work in nearby businesses.
Precision Tune manager Dan Cramer was fuming.
"This is totally out of control," he said. "There are other ways of getting your point across other than shutting people's businesses down."
Construction was stopped most of the day at a new Walgreens store as huge trucks were turned away and forced to make U-turns to avoid the growing street party.
"They need to grow up and get a ... life," said construction worker Jerry Baker, 32, of Olympia. "If they had a reason for what they're doing, fine. But they are just disrupting everything."
The signs told the story: "Don't play by the rules." "Do as you wish," said another adorned with the anarchists symbol of the letter A in a circle. "Continue to misbehave." "Abolish boredom." "Learn to be invisible."
A small group of marchers with musical instruments broke off and strolled through the Top Foods store, tailed by the store manager, the butcher and a plain-clothes police-evidence technician who videotaped the procession.
As the afternoon wore on, the crowd thinned a bit, but the party got wilder. Women doffed their tops, had friends paint their breasts and danced.
Then, men and women stripped naked and jumped in a drainage ditch that had been temporarily converted into a mud-wrestling pit.
By nightfall, the crowd had whittled down to about 200 people, with some forming cleanup crews. Police tried getting others to leave voluntarily.
A dressed-down Assistant City Manager Steve Hall was walking through the crowd asking people to move their party to a nearby city park.
Instead, marchers set their sights on an empty lot near Target Place on Harrison Street, about mile away in West Olympia.
To get there, they filled four lanes of Cooper Point Boulevard, with at least a dozen police cruisers leading the way and in tow.
At the garden, demonstrators had cleared paths through the brush and erected a maypole with streamers. But most of the marchers blocked another intersection nearby, again stopping traffic.
By 7:30 p.m., they finally cleared the last intersection, allowing May Day commerce to resume.