Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 22:53:26 -0500 (EST)
From: ****
Subject: Re: The end of the story from Seattle..

Warning -- this is possibly the longest email I have ever written.

I've been in Seattle since Friday before the big day, leaving tonight... Here are some more parts of the story. I haven't had much chance to follow the media outside Seattle and I would love to know what came across and what didn't. I'm going to get on the internet and check it all out soon.
lw

--
I worked on the direct action network communication team on Tuesday and Wednesday, staying near the direct actions on the south west side of the convention center, reporting on strange doings and calling for reinforcements from the processions when needed to keep a large enough crowd to keep the jumpy cops at bay. The organization was beyond belief -- the communications team was very sharp and each time I radioed out for more people the call went straight to a whole loose band of intertwined processions and one of them would just peel off and come on over, with puppets, marching band, whatever. Eventually the police ordered our locked down activists to unlock or be subject to pain compliance (i.e. torture)... they decided to unlock and were immediately replaced by two lines of protesters with linked arms and a movable chain link fence that the police had left sitting around for some purpose. A little later we had a double line of people sitting with arms and legs interlocked in front of the police, still controlling access thru the intersection and keeping most delegates out.

When these protesters refused to disperse the police started pepper spraying them directly in the face and prying them out and throwing them by the arms onto the sidewalk. (I had time to send out a call for additional medics and legal observers before they started). I saw a cop punch one guy hard in the chest while he was still sitting, possibly in retaliation for some kind of smart remark... an anarchist marching band marched through with black masks, tuba and big bass drum... people were screaming and crying...

About 2 pm my batteries ran down and I went downtown to recharge. I came through an intersection where I swear about 40 people were locked in a circle, with arms locked into pipes, and another 50 or 60 standing around, completely closing the intersection... I gave them the news that the ministerial had been completely shut down all day, and they all began to cheer and play drums and sing and dance!

They arrested my little sister on wednesday morning, sitting with a crowd in a downtown intersection. They surrounded the crowd and told them to disperse, then let only a few disperse and arrested the rest. They were taken in one of those buses out to sand point naval base (wherever that is) and held for 10 to 15 hours without food or bathrooms, since everybody refused to get off the bus and be processed without access to the lawyers. There were media all around the buses -- perhaps you saw the picture of the bus with someone inside holding up a sign saying 'got rights?' -- then they drove the bus about 20 feet away and no one followed to see when they sprayed pepper spray into the whole bus. People were pepper sprayed in the buses, at sand point, while the buses were driving, on the way out of the bus... I'll put in more stories from inside a little later... I got to talk to her on friday afternoon and she said in all that time she'd gotten two peanut butter sandwiches.

I ran into **** on wednesday afternoon and she told me my sister had been arrested on the local news. I quit the communications team and went to work with the legal team trying to track people and figure out who was inside and get messages in and out, if possible. When the protest ended up outside the jail I went down there and stayed. We blocked the front door of the King County jail for 3 days and nights, and had a big party and nonstop protest, and there was nothing they could do about it! All our people inside brought the jail to a near complete stop, and we closed off the front door, and tons of people inside were refusing to be arraigned and leave... pretty soon they were waking them up in the middle of the night just to trick them into leaving the jail, they were practically throwing people out the front door without charging them. They took four guys down to be arraigned and released, and all four refused to be arraigned, and the judge nearly started to cry. Katya the lawyer came out and said we had reduced just about everyone in the system to tears at some time or another.

Meanwhile we had drums and dance parties outside, we were meeting people at the door with cheers and hugs and hot coffee; the teamsters and nurses' unions were bringing us food and coffee; **** and **** from San Francisco set up the generator and sound system and people were going up and playing guitars; pretty soon we had a propane stove and a full kitchen serving us all soup and the amount of donated food and drinks and blankets and pads and tarps for the rain were incredible. A garbage man drove by every morning and picked up our trash bags personally... taxi drivers kept coming by and asking if they could bring us things... after the wto meeting was completely over with there were protests in amsterdam, berlin, all over africa and india for our kids in jail! Every few hours another group of 6 or 8 people would come out the door, and tell us that knowing we were out there kept them going inside. Then we would show them the headlines that said 'WTO Meeting Ends in Failure'. Then they would get on the mike and tell us what happened to them inside, and we would cry.

They had people shackled hands to feet naked in solitary; they were swinging guys from their dreadlocks until afterwards you could take hold of their hair and it would fall right off; they twisted my friend ****'s arm behind her and forced her face into the floor and broke her nose, and then left her sitting in a pool of blood. They restrained a man in some kind of chair, and put a hood over his head and poured pepper spray into it until he passed out. They pulled another guy's head back and poured pepper spray into both his eyes, they poured tear gas down someone's throat. I heard these stories as they came out of the jail. Believe that there will be lawsuits. You probably already know that they were not allowed to speak to lawyers, which is constitutionally guaranteed.

I stood outside the jail all night and listened to these stories, and cried and waited for my sister to come out. By noon the next day (when she came out) I was a complete wreck. Of course she was fine. She was on the news again coming out. We are hoping to find the footage on the internet. I was down the street getting coffee, but **** met her along with all the cameras when she came out. We both stayed at the jail to get everyone else out, until she left for ****, since she was getting some kind of flu. I stayed. Finally (late Sunday night?) we negotiated to get everyone out except, I think, for the people with felony charges? federal charges? I am confused... anyway we agreed to unblock the jail in exchange for most of our remaining people, which was wise since people were trickling away and we wouldn't have lasted too much more. While it lasted it was amazing. A true autonomous zone, and on the steps of the county jail! All the free food we could eat, music, all kinds of great people, absolute cooperation and tolerance, a real feeling of homecoming. We stopped the WTO, possibly permanently, we kicked off a far more meaningful dialogue on the costs of economic globalization, we got our kids out of jail and we showed the world -- and ourselves -- what amazing power ordinary people have when we choose to use it.

Except for the people still in jail. It broke my heart to leave while they are still in there. All the big daily meetings have stopped, the d.a.n. meeting space is closed up, and it's hard to find out what's going on, how many people and who are still in there. I've heard anything from 4 to 15, including people who had prior warrants for arrest... I think some are still in solitary, and I think they have one of the kids from Eugene, and I'm afraid they'll take some kind of fall for the rest of us. I don't like leaving while I don't know what's going to happen to them, but the dan legal team says they're on it and they don't seem to go for the same kind of openness and transparency that most of the action had. So I hope they come through. Let's keep our eyes on these kids, and hope they get out of this okay.

Remember there are no stories of anyone besides the police hurting anyone. I am not willing to disown even the 'violent anarchists'. First of all at least half of the people I have talked to here including great numbers of the 'nonviolent protestors' who tried to stop the riots call themselves anarchists. Secondly, the kids in black masks are our kids too. Many of them are vegans who won't hurt animals by causing them to be killed or even kept in dairy farms, and aren't about to hurt another person either. They have the same beautiful vision of a cooperative society without oppression and poverty that we have, and they have a startlingly reasonable case for destruction of property in the form of McDonalds, Niketown, Old Navy stores which are the weapons of very real violence to our friends overseas and our communities. Those destructive actions played hell with our public relations, but I think we need to take this as a call to work out an attack that is robust to the tactics of our more 'active' colleagues, because we will not get rid of them (and they may be right). I'm not sure what I think about all this yet.

Both my parents are dead now, I just turned thirty and now this. Something big is incubating here in this movement. What a perfect kickoff for the new millenium!

love + kisses...
****