Various bits from the approximately local protest scene:
No arrests, 0, none in the freeway blockade in Bellingham. Everyone left the freeway after about an hour when threatened with arrests.
Some guy in Olympia, the state capital, chained himself by the neck TO THE WRONG BUILDING. He was aiming for something that had federal function and missed.
Anti-war folks have been having demos on bridges and overpasses all over the area for weeks; paper this morning also talked about various flavors of pro-war or support our troops events doing the same thing.
Only arrests so far in Seattle: 10 people arrested for refusing to leave the Westlake Center mall the other day. This one bears watching just for the free speech public / private space issue.
As I wrote earlier, there has been a small but steady vigil in front of the federal building pretty much since the bombing started. Yesterday there were two long marches that combined to go downtown. They made it downtown about 4:00 filtered through the Westlake Park and then marched to the federal building. Second Avenue was closed for quite awhile and on the march some commuters were grousing that they just wanted to go home. Permit status of all these events was unclear but SPD did escort and handle rolling street closures.
Nice rally at the federal building for a long time. Okay, nice was not only the speeches but the sheer number of hugs I got from friends. I was peacekeeping which at that point meant fielding a lot of questions I mostly couldn't answer, trying to maintain one open walkway that seemed important just in case, and dealing with a couple charmingly amusing folks with interesting mental health issues. It was hard not to laugh when one woman was yelling about me and Courtney Love having a thing going on.
As rally consolidated, closures on Second Avenue were limted to the block in front of the federal building. Crowd was huge, easily 2000 people and wisely, I think given the space layout, not inclined to crowd onto the federal building plaza instead of the street.. The other point: LOTS of coming and going so probably 3000-3500 total participated. Somewhere betweeh 6:30 and 7 people massed and marched BACK to Westlake park and in a loop back to the Federal Building.
March back to the federal building was interesting. On the earlier march, there were NO cops in front of an SF Federal Reserve Bank building north of the Federal Building on Second Ave. Cynically, I really doubt it occurred to anyone on the march to make that building a target! But going back, the federal reserve building had cops in riot gear lined up more densely than the federal building.
At the first rally, cops in riot gear set up fencing barricades at end of the block on Second Avenue and then lined up between protestors and buildings on both sides of the street, federal buidling on the west and a bank on the east. At the second raly, they blocked off Second Ave AND everything up the street. When I wanted to leave back North where we had just come to get my bus, they made me walk down to 1st ave and several blocks out of my way. Whine.
When I left people were still firmly planted in the middle of Second Ave. When I got home, local news crawl reported cops trying to get people moved off Second Ave for quite awhile, but 11:00 news reported street clear and NO ARRESTS.
There are plans for seven days of events with different religious and political groups helping coordinate different day.
Another interesting point relevant to riot wear: after WTO there were HUGE police accountability discussions. The cops at WTO were VERY anonymous, many, many in plain black riot gear with no identification of rank or even which jurisdiction they were from, let alone anything individual like a name or a badge or helmet number.
Results this time were MUCH more mixed, sadly with much room for improvement. SPD bike cops did not seems to have much identifying stuff, but we could see their faces okay. SPD folk in riot gear at least had Seattle Police stenciled on their chests. King County Sheriffs also had Sheriff and in many cases had their last names in big letters on their chests. There were some federal folks there but they mostly stood inside the county lines at the federal buidling. I know identifiable cops ain't world revolution, but I think it means bitching works!
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