What I Learned At The WTO Protests In Seattle...
by Pete Tridish,

A Ruckus I Couldn't Miss
I first heard about the Seattle Protests at a Ruckus Society training camp about 6 months before the WTO was scheduled to come to town. Ruckus is a group famous for their dramatic and daring banners that they hang from cranes and buildings and towers; they focus on human rights and environmental issues. The speaker there who represented the anti-WTO organizers, after making an eloquent case for the connections between all the globalization issues and for a coalition of activists of all stripes, said "We will lie down on the airstrips and stop the delegates planes from landing. If they get past that, we will block the highways leading from the airport to the city. If they get past that, we will block the hotels they are staying in, we will block the streets, and we will block the doors of the convention center and we will not let them make another another free trade deal that week in Seattle." How could I not help with such a plan? I committed in that moment to myself that I would go.

The Prelude
I had three plans when I went to Seattle a few weeks before the protests. One was to assist with the communications teams. I had met some of the people responsible for the communications systems at Ruckus, and thought I might lend a hand there setting up communications for the event. I trained with the communications teams, and was one of the groups that checked out walkie talkies to help on the days of the events. Our training was strict. Contrary to popular myth, we did not use the communications systems to direct the protests, or call for blockades of particular intersections, and so on. The role of the communications team was to hang back, observe the events, and notify legal, medics, and independent media of situations needing their attention. Small affinity groups used smaller walkie talkies inside their groups to communicate from one end of a small action to another, but most of the co-ordination was done in the days leading up to the protests in big open meetings. The actual plans of each affinity group covering a "pie slice" were a secret known only to that affinity group, and they did not change much based on external information. Each group was responsible for somehow stopping ingress and egress from the convention center, by whatever means they chose which were keep secret from the overall organizers. This made us much more immune from rumors and bad information and contributed to the success of the actions. Even though the police could sneak a number of delegates in through a weak link in our pie slice blockades, the event was so big that momentary breaches of our lines would still not allow enough of the delegates to get in for the conference to go on with business as usual. And there were plenty of people not committed to any particular blockade, who could step in and defend an intersection if the original blockade was broken.

My second plan was to help out with setting up the independent media center. Since I have never been much of a content producer, I focused on helping to set up the space. I worked for a few days helping to install phone jacks and wiring so that we could fit many dozens of journalists in the space during the events. I also attended lots of meetings where the mission of the space and logistics around its use were established. The IMC was right downtown, very centrally located and so we retreated into there when the street battles got to be too much.

My third plan was to work with Stephen Dunifer, Studio X and various other pirate radio organizations to set up a large number of radio transmitters through out the city that would provide an alternative news source during the protests. An empty store front was rented near the King Dome where a number of workshops were conducted on soldering together transmitters, building antennas, and training people in radio skills. While it was a bit haphazard, the goal was to fill a number of available frequencies with pirate broadcasts of content produced for the WTO protests. We built an awesome antenna out of an umbrella and a mixer board made out of a suitcase and chilldrens electronic music toys.

It Starts:
Tuesday: My friend Joan and I started out with a crew of about ten people with the umbrella and suitcase transmitter, and several people carrying boomboxes. We started to walk around the perimeter, visiting different blockades with our goofy radio setup. Our programming left a bit to be desired, limited to running commentary as we walked long, interviews with random passersby, and a bit of music. It probably broadcasted for 3 or 4 blocks, though if we got to a high point we probably could have gone further, if anyone knew to listen. The first few hours were pretty fun, but by noon or so it became clear that the day was going to be more than we bargained for. Other stations, set up in trees and around the periphery of the city, successfully continued broadcasting throughout the week. For somewhat hilarious footage of our walking radio station, you can check out the movie Pirate Radio USA, a movie about the pirate radio movement with a lot of focus in Seattle. http://www.pirateradiousa.com/

The police had started tear gassing in several places, and using beatings and direct applications of pepper spray to the seated blockaders. They were also starting to charge our lines. We put away the transmitter because no one was going to hear it in this chaos. We continued to make a circuit around the convention center. Joan and I joined blockades that were just forming up, and then we would leave to help seed the next promising intersection ten or fifteen minutes later, once our forces seemed to have the intersection under our control.

Everything I saw on the part of the blockades on Tuesday morning was entirely non-violent, and this held up under a brutal police assault. We saw a lot more of it than many people, because over the course of the day we walked all the way around the perimeter, stopping wherever it seemed we could lend a hand. Our lines often held for quite a while, or would be broken and quickly form back up as soon as the police moved on. Starting in the afternoon, I saw more people begin to fight back. As the tear gas canisters came down, people began to throw them back. A few hours later, police car tires started to get slashed to immobilize them, and I started seeing windows getting smashed.

Self-Defense: An Obvious Ethical Choice
I had never been tear gassed before, and it was surprising. Your first instinct is to run away. But once you have stood your ground for a minute or two, the effect wears off and future canisters are not nearly so scary. I had a thick pair of leather workgloves on, and I put on a bandana to protect against the gas. I (like a number of others) started running towards the canisters when they came down in our midst and tossing them back towards the police lines. They were hot and smokey but not really so bad if you could be quick about it. There were also these things we called flashbangs that made a really loud bang and a really bright flash, that would go off about a few feet away and could really shake you u - I don't know what would happen if one hit you. The flashbangs were similarly scary at first, but it is surprising how quickly you can get used to such things. Your whole body shakes for half a second, and instinct tells you to cover your face and hunch towards the fetal, and then it is over as fast as it happened and you're back. Apparently the police used much more dangerous forms of nerve gas on the following days.

They generally fired the tear gas from powerful rifles from pretty far away. The riot police, with their armor and weapons and masks and equipment, were heartless cowardly bullies. Straight up. My main goal was getting the tear gas away from us, but I can't say that in that moment I would have minded clunking one of them with the bombs they had just shot at us. I doubt the ones I chucked back at them even reached them, the cops shot them from further away than I could throw back.

The undertold story of Seattle (lost in the window smashing anarchist controversy) is the immensity and effectiveness of the blockades. Many people focus on the glass smashing and the battles, but the simple fact was that many delegates could not get through the people's blockades. Often they were three people deep and probably a hundred people across, running from one side of the street to the other, anchored to the buildings on each side. They were simply unpassable without resort to violence. And they were at every intersection for a circumference of perhaps 30 blocks. Some were bigger than others. In smaller areas, they might just be 7 or 8 people blocking a narrow back staircase past a parking garage, and running up and blocking anyone who tried to pass. But a large number of the blockades involved hundreds of people linking arms, and since the police were not arresting much on Tuesday, just trying to disperse people - even if they blew past our lines people would join another blockade blocks away, or retake the intersection as the police re-deployed.

Many of the organizers and blockaders were angry at "The Anarchists" over political differences over violence and property destruction, but the feeling I saw on the street was that many people were appreciative of how well prepared the anarcho-primitivist groups were for the tear gas and how they were doing a pretty good job of getting it away from the crowds. As people were more and more angry about the unprovoked police riots against the blockaders, I sensed a lot more people who were sympathetic to striking back against the police and against property.

The Infernal Noise Brigade was absolutely magnificent. They were excellent drummers, and had obviously practiced a lot together and created a beautiful counterpoint -- something that blurred the lines between martial organization and a parody of martial organization. They were dressed in black and grey with gasmasks and giant fuzzy hats, and looked like they were really not to be fucked with. They would go to an empty, unprotected intersection, start drumming and within ten minutes there would be a thriving dance party and enough people for a blockade, and then they would march off to bolster or start another blockade.

Night Falls
Throughout the day, police action was random, sporadic and violent. But often, the police seemed to be just holding their lines and awaiting orders. By around 6 pm, they changed strategy and started constantly moving their lines and storming protesters anywhere they saw them. After being chased several blocks from the area of the smashed up Gap to the Independent Media Center, I took refuge inside the pizza shop next to the Independent Media Center. I watched Amy Goodman and Errol Maitland out the window who stayed outside after everyone else ran in and barricaded the doors as the police swept past -- they were covered with tear gas but with their oversized professional looking equipment, the police just went around them.

I went back out later and half joined, half watched the cat and mouse game between the roving packs of protesters and police. It was not always entirely clear who was the cat and who was the mouse. Word came down that martial law had been declared, and a curfew was in effect until 7 the next morning inside a zone of downtown.

In the evening, I decided to to rejoin the communcations team to help move information for the protests. I would simply carry a walkie talkie and radio in reports if I saw situations that needed medical, media, or legal attention.

Wendesday I picked up a walkie talkie at the convergence space at around 6 am and walked down towards the first gathering of the morning, in the park, which was supposed to start at 7:30 but i needed to get there beforehand to observe anything that happened before hand. My job was to be slick and discreet and stay out of the way and not get arrested.

Wherein I Learn That I Am Not Nearly So Slick As I Might Hope...
So, i started going towards the park gathering, at around 6:45 am, just a few blocks from the park where people were planning to gather. I was walking along the big street that was the edge of the no-protest zone -- Denny Way, i think it was.  I was walking along and i saw the police harassing some young people carrying a big puppet. As we watched, the police started ripping apart the puppet. I stopped at the corner about 50 feet away and observed, as did others walking to the protest-- seeing no way to get around the fracas without going to the other side of the street where we believed that the no-protest zone probably began. When police saw that perhaps ten of us had accumulated on the corner and were watching them, a number of officers ran towards us with guns drawn and rounded us up, though we had walked away from the main street to a side street that was clearly out of the curfew zone. They didn't arrest all of us-- they searched all of us, found that i had a radio in my bag, and I was take away with 2 others. So I was one of the first three arrests of Wednesday -- so much for slick and in the background! They took us inside the martial law zone and handcuffed us to a street sign and held us there for about a half hour while looking for more people to arrest.

When i asked what charge i was being arrested on, they said "disobeying the mayor." They took us to the jail, and when i got there at first there were just a handful of us in a big room. But within an hour or two there were hundreds of us in there. Sitting and waiting to be processed, someone told me about the big jail solidarity plan. Since i hadn't planned to get arrested, i had not attended those meetings. It was simple. No one give your name, and to the extent that you are comfortable, do not cooperate. There was no way they could legally hold us all for long. After being fingerprinted and photographed some of the protesters were mixed in with general population who were being held for other random crimes. The most talkative of these guys was very happy that he happened to be caught trying to steal a car at this time -- he figured that the way we had gummed up the system, there was no way that he could be processed in time for a legal arraignment and they would have to let him go. Because I refused to sign my name, they took away my glasses, which i am pretty much helplessly nearsighted without.

Solidarity, Whatever!
I ended up in a jail cell with about twenty other WTO protesters. It was an awesome group of people. We had a steel worker, an opera singer, and people from all walks of life. Some of us went on hunger strike. I couldn't quite decide whether it was a good idea so i ate sometimes.

The second day in jail is when my will started to be really tested. I started to get very, very nervous. I was thinking a lot about what had happened on the streets the day before. When I had grabbed those tear gas canisters and thrown them back, it seemed like the most reasonable thing in the world to me. The police, decked out in riot gear and gas masks, were shooting thousands of these things into crowds of unarmed civilians. I was throwing them back in the only direction where they wouldn't harm anyone -- back where they came from. Ethically, I was entirely convinced that my actions were appropriate and what I had done was self-defense and defense of other unarmed civilians who were being mercillessly attacked for bearing moral witness and effectively exercising their rights to assemble and speak. But I started thinking about all the videos that were being taken, and the immense resources and manpower of the state, and the ways that protesters would be demonized in the media. I realized that if I was stuck in jail for a long time, they might have time to go over footage and look for evidence of me doing more on Tuesday than what i was caught for on Wednesday, which was just walking along the edge of the martial law zone. If that happened, my charge could change from "disobeying the mayor" to some form of felony assault on an officer. My mind raced as I calculated the risks and benefits -- if I got charged with a felony, that would be a ridiculously bogus charge and probably eventually thrown out, but would take our movements time and resources to defend me against. And it could sabotage my much more practical time sensitive campaign work that I was personally responsible for in low power radio. I started to waiver and rationalize and hem and haw ... every few hours the jail wardens started to come in and offer us a quicker release if we broke solidarity and gave our names. I started to consider it -- thinking the sooner i personally got out -- the less chance of trouble for everyone. It didn't help that I wasn't eating and that everything more than 2 feet away was a formless blur.

During this time, one mans voice stood out for me. As we took turns telling our life stories to pass the time, he told us that he lived a fairly ordinary life with a straightforward job, with no family depending on him. He was an older man, i would guess in his late 40s or early fifties, and had a very quiet, modest manner. He had read about the issues at stake with the WTO, and when he heard about these protests he decided that he had to do something about it. He had wrapped up his affairs, and quit his job, came out a few weeks early, and prepared to commit civil disobedience. He had nonviolently blockaded exactly as he had planned, and was arrested. He had decided that he committed to do jail solidarity until the very end- he would refuse to leave the jail until the last felony charge was released. He said that he undestood if others made different choices, but he had tied up his loose ends and had made sure there was nothing in his life holding him back to tempt him to break solidarity-- he was ready to maintain his moral witness until the very end.

This man had utter confidence and total peace with himself. He had thought through his choices and had made preparations, and so he was completely fearless. I, meanwhile, was a bit of a mess. I had wrapped my mind around the expediency of breaking solidarity around 6 or 7 iterations of possible scenarios over which i had very little knowledge or control.

I was familiar with the age old debate in the left between the use of violence and non-violence. I'd read the work of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and also of Che Guevera and Malcolm X. I had seen good uses of non-violence for social change, but was also aware of the patronizing way some Americans encouraged its use in struggles around the world. I had seen both philosophies succeed and fail. And I was intrigued by the example of the Zapatistas, who were armed but who had barely fired a shot in their struggle -- and had managed to maintain autonomy in their territories they controlled for many years with the mere threat of violent resistance, and the resulting international attention that would focus on the ruling elites of Mexico.

I believe that people have a right to self defense. And I think there are certain political moments in history when violence really is the best option (if you think that makes me a freak radical, think of the American Revolution). However, never before this moment had I really understood the true power of non-violence. My unassuming and quiet jail cell friend was fearless and determined and confident in his actions, while I was trembling on the off chance that someone could twist my actions around to undermine the movement I believed in and the changes that I was trying to make. To my shame, in one moment I actually caved and after hesitating, offered to give my name towards the end of the second day when a guard came asking if anyone wanted to give up and go get processed and released.

Fortunately for me, I waited too long to answer and missed the deadline by a few minutes and the guard would not take me. And I firmed back up and decided that I was stupid and reaffirmed my jail solidarity before the next time the guards came around again. I did drop the hunger strike because I realized it was weakening my resolve ...

Regardless Of My Personal Strength Or Weakness, We All Somehow Add Up To More Than The Sum Of Our Parts, At Least This Time
In fact, a day later they started releasing people who had not given their names, just to clear up space in the jail. I was released at 3 in the morning on Saturday. As I walked out of the jail, I was apprehensive again. The police had given back my glasses, but not my backpack with my wallet and the radio, claiming it had been lost. So they swiped my ID and the $80 I had in there-- Jerks! I thought i would have to walk back through the streets of Seattle at 3 am in the light rain. But as I exited, some very nice young protesters were standing on the corner waiting for people to come out! They asked if i was ok, if i had been hurt or needed medical attention. They gave me some stale old bagels which was the best thing I ever tasted. And then the woman showed me the newspaper frontpage headline: WTO TALKS COLLAPSE. And I turned the corner and saw hundreds of people out at three in the morning camped on the steps of the jail, waiting for us to come out. A few were on playing drums not very well, people were even smoking pot out in the open, sleeping all over the place--- they had totally taken over the front of the jail!! It was amazing and hilarious! We had won! We had beaten the WTO, and even the steps of the jail belonged to us!

The next day, I joined the jail solidarity efforts. I stayed much of the day in front of the jail, and helped a bit with rigging up tarps to keep everyone dry in that days pouring rain as we waited to welcome more protesters being released. There were hundreds of us crowded under these tiny tarps, we were all getting wet. But one moment made it all worth while. There was a man standing next to me, wearing a suit, and he was telling a story. He worked for a Washington DC consumer organization, and was a delegate at the WTO. He was staying in the same hotel as the other delegates, and he walks into the bar and who does he see sitting by himself at the end of the bar but the President of the WTO. So he goes over and sits next to him. The President of the WTO looks up from sulking over his drink and says: "I am the President of the most hated organization in the whole world!" We all laughed and laughed in the rain and waited for the police to release our friends.

Anarchism Saves The Nation State?
While I consider myself to be an anarchist, I come from a tradition that has nothing to do with the anarcho-primitivists that were involved in the property destruction in Seattle. Most people think of anarchism in very vague terms without realizing the many different sorts of ideas people hold that call themselves anarchists. The anarcho-primitivists come from a strain of ideas that rejects the idea of modern society and civilization, but many anarchists have a different view from that of the root causes of the worlds ills. The basic thing that holds all anarchists together is that we are all equally critical of Government and Capitalism, and all forms of social oppression such as racism and sexism. This is different from socialism, which criticizes capitalism but sees little problem with an authoritarian state, and different from libertarianism which criticizes government but trusts markets and capitalism to govern best in people's interest. I'm an anarchist because I think that both today's nation states and capitalism are fundamentally flawed. But different anarchists have very different visions of a better future and how to get there. The anarchism that interests me is rooted in the direct participatory democracy of town meetings, and it is an anarchism that embraces a scientific worldview, with people democratically controlling the uses of technology. And it is not about smashing anything, but re-equipping communities with the tools of self governance. Similar to Noam Chomsky's anarchist positions, I am willing to (in a given tactical moment) leverage the political process and the government in order to reign in individual worst excesses of capitalism before the market destroys the planet-- as we plot a course towards a future of political stuctures based on direct democracy and local control. I don't see participating in reformist politics to make small tactical changes as any different from working at a normal job for a company in order to make money to live, even if you'd rather be working in a co-operative. Doing normal politics or working a normal job is just expedient for living today, as we try to build the future we are trying to attain. I don't believe that real fundamental solutions to the worlds problems can be gotten from the currently weakening power structure of representative democracy, or from the currently growing power structures of technocracy and rule by capital. Anarchism rooted in individualism, nihilism, primitivism, or punk rock and smelly clothes and suburban rebellion have no appeal to me.

Truthfully, I thought that the organizers of the blockades were much closer to the anarchism I believe in than the window breakers. They used consensus, made decisions in open and transparent groups, listened carefully to all sides and resected other opinions, and did not bow down to any arbitrary authority but their collective conscience. These were the people who I felt were preparing the tools of self-governance that we could use in a better future.

I also think if these anarcho-primitivist groups were really ethical and had any real guts, they should have organized their own actions on separate days and not taken cover amidst the crowd of people who had agreed to a non-violent plan together. As far as I am concerned, they could have gone ahead and run through town and broken the windows of the ruling class any other day when they were not screwing up everyone else's plan and not putting others at risk. On the other hand, little as I agree with the anarcho-primitivists in Seattle, I have to say I think that the villification of the anarcho-primitivists by the "peaceful protesters" was a bit over the top and many people in the streets that day appreciated the feisty anarchist response to the police. It's a moral horror for holiday shopping to go on as usual while people (who were just trying to save the planet from an international gang of rapacious thug corporations) were getting beaten to a pulp in the streets by police. The actions of the anarcho-primitivists added to the epic nature and stark reliefs of the days events, and I think it would have been almost unnatural if no one would have fought back. Tear gas and pepper spray and rubber bullets against unarmed civilians make even the nicest people really, really angry, and willing to do things they would not ordinarily do.

One of the great ironies of Seattle is that one day historians may proclaim that anarchists (of all stripes) had a role in preserving the power of the nation state. The deals that were being cut by the WTO usurped the power of nations to govern on behalf of their citizens. They were creating alternative international power structures that could punish governments that used their democratic processes to make decisions that were for whatever reason uncomfortable for multi-national corporations. Many of these pathetic representatives of governments came prepared to give up their governments power and sovereignty to a handful of unelected representatives of international capitalism. So it was the anarchists who prevented the governments from giving all their power to the corporations!

I Count Myself Incredibly Fortunate For What I Learned In Seattle.
1. Ordinary people can stop corporate rule using little more than our bodies.
2. You can overcome your fear of tear gas if you get past the initial shock.
3. Even anarchists can practice together and make a really excellent marching band.
4. I am not nearly as invisible as I think I am.
5. I really need my glasses, and I make bad decisions when I am hungry.
6. Even the most powerful men in the world have hearts, and with hard work and direct action a social movement can get under these people's skin. 7. There is a difference between an action that you can morally justify and what action has the most power. And the most aggressive, radical sounding action that can be morally justified is not always the most powerful. If you know deep in your heart that you have done right and your actions have been clear, direct and unambiguous, you can be truly fearless.