ChuckO writes that I am "completely off base when it comes to the root reason why the cops were understaffed. Seattle demonstrated that police departments across America didn't take activists seriously and as a result were undertrained and unprepared when real direct action was thrown at them."
Comrade Chuck, for some reason you are buying the official line on why the riot happened but you are just dead wrong on the numbers. There were, unquestionably, PLENTY of police on the streets of Seattle and if you had been living here before the protest, as I was, you would know that their preparations were extensive, if misguided. Not only did they take the protesters seriously, they took them far too seriously as a threat. People closed their businesses downtown that day because the cops created such a feeling on panic in town in the days before the protest.
I explain that:
> Seattle was, overwhelmingly, exactly that kind of [peaceful,
predictable] protest. The planned
> acts of non-cooperation (draping huge banners on buildings, stopping
traffic
> on I-5) had practically been rehearsed, for Pete's sake.
ChuckO responds:
"Bullshit. Seattle was mostly a combination of civil disobedience, attacks on corporate property, and a general riot. This was something that fell outside the usual protest-as-usual that had dominated American activism for decades. The no-business-as-usual dissent was what put Seattle on the map, not the banner drops and the union march."
Chuck, were you even out here? Seattle was not a "general riot" and the protest was absolutely typical stuff. The labor march had already finished when the violence broke out. The remaining marchers were very typical leftists. Yes, they had the model of the recent European protests in their minds but the anarchists only broke a few windows and threw some things. The trouble started when the cops went nuts.
I explain that:
The cops had been
> running around doing drills for days. Of course, in the actual event the
> cops ran around like mad trying to stop that stuff but what the cops were
> really afraid of - and what they over-reacted to - was what they had seen
in
> Oregon when young, local anarchists acted up and ended up encouraging a
> bunch of kids to riot.
To which Chuck replies:
"The cops may have gone around doing drills, but that doesn't change the fact that they didn't employ enough officers in the streets. This was because they didn't take activists seriously. The J18 riot in Eugene was on the minds of the Seattle police, but apparently not enough for them to plan accordingly."
Once again, you are just wrong and the numbers bear me out. There were more than enough police to do the job. While people put the total protest at 35 to 50 thousand total marchers, that was always a stretch. Given the fact that the labor march finished well before the WTO protest proper got under way, there were PLENTY OF COPS. Again, many departments handle bigger, rowdier crowds with many fewer officers. Moreover, there was more than one encounter with the Oregon anarchists on the minds of the police and they absolutely did react accordingly - if misguidedly.
I write:
> The young anarchists on their own break a few
> windows at most.
Chuck responds:
"We're not just talking about a group of young anarchists. The anarchists that made up that black bloc were older than some leftists want to admit. That black bloc had also been planned very carefully--I've seen some of the planning maps for the Seattle black bloc."
Chuck, the "black bloc" was camped out in a squat right by my girlfriend's office. They were no great menace and they were young. Everybody knew the plots and plans of the marchers in advance. They were all over the news.
I write that:
> The cops' over-reaction and inability to effectively deal
> with rock-throwers and the like not only failed to stop the spread of
> violent behavior, but inflamed it.
Chuck responds: "Again, you are completely wrong about this. The Seattle police got out of control when they were trying to deal with *nonviolent blockades*. The police were pepper-spraying and beating up the folks who were doing civil disobedience in the streets. The cops were too preoccupied with spraying pepper spray at people that they didn't have the manpower to go deal with the black bloc. Their overreaction against the protesters ended up pissing many of protesters off enough to the point where they ended up participating in the riots that night."
Chuck, you just don't know what you're talking about. You really don't. The problem basically started when protestors were (peacefully) breaking through the malformed barricade of buses the police had put up on the route the delegates were to take. As the delegates and protesters came together, things got tense. But instead of withdrawing behind the buses and arresting people as they came under or between them (which would have been reasonable) a bunch of the cops on top of the buses and started firing pepper-spray pellets into the crowd as some anarchists and rowdy kids started throwing things from the back of the crowd and breaking windows. The more the cops fired the pellets, the more people threw things. Most importantly, the rock-throwers and window-breakers realized that the cops had nobody in the crowd or behind it to arrest them. This led to a large group of non-violent protesters being caught in an increasing crossfire and naturally they got more and more angry. That pattern of catching people between police riot lines and rock-throwers continued throughout the day.
To prove my point, the same thing happened at the Mardi Gras riots months later. The Seattle cops stupidly used the same military-style riot lines rather than well-established methods of crowd control. It ended up costing a kid his life as he was murdered while the cops stood by in their ridiculous formations.