NOVEMBER 30, 1999: "THE BATTLE IN SEATTLE"
TUESDAY MORNING. The alarm went off at 6:15. I hit the snooze button a couple times, fell back asleep, and finally, when it was time to get up, lay there and listened to the rain while cursing myself for agreeing to participate in the Santa Claus activity. I pondered resetting my alarm for nine o'clock and walking downtown by myself later. I didn't think it would be too hard to find ten other Santas walking around the streets. I turned on the news and looked at live footage of crowds of people gathering at different points across town to join the protests. I realized then that it was happening, it was for real, and began to feel excited enough to wake myself up and start getting ready. I didn't know what to expect but I was excited for whatever was going to happen. I took a shower, got dressed, and put my Santa Claus costume on over my clothes. I heard my brother's car pull up outside my window and pulled the shades back to see three Santa Clauses peering back at me. They all laughed when they saw me in my outfit and beard looking back at them. I grabbed my accordion and umbrella, locked the door behind me, and adjusted my beard as I walked to the car. Katie, Curtis, Joel, Eve, and myself all laughed as we pulled away from the building. It was absurd. I wanted to be back in bed, but we were off to begin our day. We drove downtown in the rain, parked near COCA, and walked to The Lux coffee shop. When we arrived, there were seven other Santas adjusting their costumes in front of a mirror and drinking coffee. The baristas all had amused smiles on their faces. We assembled for a few minutes of "Santa Calisthenics," and jokingly stretched the arms we would use to wave to the crowd. Then we practiced holding our bellies and ho-ho-ing. A few minutes after seven o'clock we headed down Second Avenue towards the Pike Place Market. We waved at the drivers in passing cars. Curtis was holding a sign he had painted. On one side it said "Buy," on the other "Bye" with a picture of the Earth. Some people honked and waved as they passed, others looked at us with confused expressions on their faces. I felt grouchy and not very Santa-like. When we got to the park next to Pike Place Market where all the protestors were to assemble and begin their march, we saw that there was nobody there--they had already left. We continued on our way downtown and eventually caught up with the rear of the march. There were people everywhere, on every side street surrounding the Convention Center where the W.T.O. conference was set to begin.
When people saw us approaching smiles appeared on their faces. We were eleven Santa Clauses spreading good cheer throughout the city. There was an interesting feeling in the air, a mix of fear, rebellion, and excitement. We were walking on streets where there was normally traffic, streets normally filled with cars and pedestrians. Chants and cheers filled the air. People clapped and played drums. I wasn't sure how much I really cared about the W.T.O. even though I was opposed to some of the things they did. I felt like I was more interested in witnessing the potential chaos, the dynamics of a mass demonstration, and the chance for a whole city to attain a total party atmosphere like Mardi Gras or the festival in Rio De Janeiro. I was a very tired and lethargic Santa Claus. The others seemed to be more in character, holding their bellies and laughing loudly as we moved through the crowd. I had the feeling that we didn't know where we were heading or what we were really doing--not just us but everyone in the streets. There was no shape to the day yet and it felt like after the first realization of just how many people had showed up downtown to participate as protestors or observers that we were just milling about waiting for something to happen. The crowd moved slowly into the heart of downtown. I was restless to witness some chaos but I was unaware of its presence lurking just ahead, around the corner. It felt for a moment like we were walking towards an unknown fate, an exhilarating but also disconcerting sensation. Throughout this whole procession, I was amazed by how many people I knew who were also walking in the crowd, watching the events unfold. When we reached another corner I saw Ian leaning against the Old Navy store, watching the crowd. He smirked and gave us a nod as we passed. As I saw more and more people I knew it began to feel like the whole thing was being choreographed for us, like we were all part of something bigger than the mere protest we had set out to participate in or watch, and that we had all showed up to play a given role but didn't quite know what that role was yet. It felt good to be walking down the middle of the downtown streets. I felt free, tired, grumpy, and foolish in my Santa Claus outfit all at the same time.
If we found ourselves involved in any real chaos I realized then that it might not be so smart to be in a Santa outfit and wished for a moment that I was in my street clothes so that I might better be able to blend in with the crowd. Hundreds of people raised their cameras to photograph us as we passed. There were video cameras and news crews everywhere. As we walked by the apartment building on the corner a block away from the Paramount Theatre I had my first realization that we were involved in some serious business. There were riot police forming a wall in front of the apartment building lobby. They held long wooden clubs and were wearing black ponchos, gas masks, and helmets, and appeared faceless and threatening, as if they were ready and waiting to strike a blow against any one of us. "This is for real." I thought when I saw them. We walked down to the Christmas tree at the Westlake Center and paused to take a group picture. After we had finished doing this, we noticed little groups of people in suits with briefcases wandering and mingling together across the street. They all had W.T.O. credentials hanging around their necks--they were delegates trying to get to their meeting, unsure of where to walk, unsure of their safety. Some protestors tried to get us to confront the delegates. Some of them yelled at them accusingly: "Delegates!" We walked up Fifth Avenue to Fifth and Pike, where a line of riot police were facing off against a line of protestors sitting on the ground in the intersection with their arms locked. We stood behind the protestors and formed a line of our own, a line of Santa Clauses. I saw one of the riot police smile behind his visor.
A limousine tried to pass through the crowd but another line of protestors formed to keep it from getting through. They leaned against it, yelled into the windows, and pounded on the hood. A police car moved through the crowd fifty feet ahead. Suddenly there was the sound of an explosion, or of a window being smashed in, it was hard to tell. Many in the crowd scattered. Others ran towards the police car and surrounded it. One of the Santas yelled "Santas!" which was the signal for us all to gather together and decide what we wanted to do next. We had all agreed that we wanted to stay away from any trouble, although now that it was happening near me I felt the urge to be a part of it and was drawn towards the crowd around the police car and the limousine to see what was going to happen next. Less than thirty seconds had passed following the police car's window being smashed when a sport utility vehicle with tinted windows sped into the intersection and screached to a halt. Its doors opened and ten or twelve riot police with laser-equipped M-16's got out and ran towards the police car to defend its occupants. They ran right past us, oblivious to the fact that we were eleven Santa Clauses. Their faces were gaunt, serious, and determined, and their guns were real. My heart pounded as my instincts told me to follow the action, to see what was going to happen, but the other Santas wanted to move up the street. It was a smart decision, but still I was amazed at how drawn to the danger I was feeling now that we were in the midst of it. Nicholas ran into the fray to take a picture. When he returned, we moved up Pike towards the Sheraton Hotel and gathered near the big bronze teddy bear in front of F.A.O. Schwartz. There were riot police guarding the entrance to the hotel where I was once a banquet waiter. I saw the head of the banquet department staring baffled at the scenes that were unfolding in front of his hotel. By this time, somewhere around nine-thirty in the morning, there was a palpable feeling of impending chaos in the air. Nerves were on edge and you could feel that the day had shifted into a different level. My eyes began to dart from face to face, from corner to corner, as if I was trying to anticipate where The Trouble was going to come from, who would start The Trouble first. Would a bomb go off? Had anyone in the crowd brought a gun? Suddenly there was no center to anything, no script. The day was beginning to evolve and find its own rhythm. Order was breaking down even while the illusion of order still remained in the guise of the faceless riot police and their batons. I no longer felt like we were merely downtown, where we all went about our business at one time or another. It was now feeling like some kind of stage on which something was supposed to happen. A bunch of people wearing black clothes and masks stashed some bags in a garbage can near the teddy bear and spray-painted the words First Aid on the side. We didn't know if they were planting a bomb or if they were about to instigate some kind of action that might get us involved with something we didn't want to be involved in. When a few of them reached into the garbage can and pulled out their bags we saw that they were bottles of water mixed with baking soda to pour into people's eyes if the police used tear gas. On the corner a group of five people stood wearing gas masks with the words First Aid written in red letters on their sleeves. They were waiting for shit to happen, waiting to help those who might be struck down. It was reassuring that there were strangers in the crowd poised to help out. I began to notice the different types of protestors in the crowd. There were the peaceful ones and then there were the ones wearing black clothes and masks, moving amongst the crowd, preparing to do something.
A group of W.T.O. delegates ran through the crowd with terrified looks on their faces after being spit on by a group of protestors. Another group of protestors converged on the scene shouting "No Violence!" and "Do Not Spit On The Delegates!" The delegates gathered at the corner where a group of uniformed police officers formed a circle around them and escorted them away from the area. The lines were being tested. Confrontations were being instigated by some of those in the crowd. The "rules" were being tested and thrown out the window. Anything might happen now, I thought. It was both horrifying and beautiful, like a Bosch painting. I realized that I had become bored just standing around, mingling with the protestors, chanting the boring chants, and that I wanted something to happen. I wanted to see some chaos. Where did this feeling come from? What primal need would this desire for chaos fulfill in me? I had not gone downtown with the intention of contributing to it. I was not there to instigate it but I instinctually felt the desire to see it happen, to watch it break out. What was the source of this fascination? I felt disappointed when it was time for us to leave the downtown area and walk to the Five Spot bar, where we were to meet a late arriving Santa and go to the labor rally and march at Memorial Stadium. It felt like we were leaving something behind, the way one would feel leaving a concert after the opening act, before the main show began, but I had no idea what we were going to miss. There was something in the air, the feeling that something was about to happen. We walked down Third Avenue towards the Space Needle. Downtown was void of its usual activity. All the stores we passed were closed. There were very few cars, very few pedestrians. It was like The Omega Man with Charlton Heston, in which he is one of the only survivors in Los Angeles following some kind of biological holocaust. As we passed a construction site, a worker looked through a chain link fence at us and said: "I want a Lear jet and a helicopter." We walked past a reporter for Channel Seven news who didn't even react when we walked by, eleven Santa Clauses on empty Seattle streets.
It was now ten-fifteen in the morning. We walked into the Five Spot and were welcomed with laughter. The bar was filled with union members drinking and waiting for the labor rally and march to kick into gear. We sat down at a couple of booths and ordered drinks. On t.v. we watched as the police started to use tear gas on people near the Sheraton Hotel where we had been standing just fifteen minutes earlier. The police were shooting rubber bullets into the crowd and hosing people down with pepper spray. Tear gas filled the air. I felt like we were missing out on the action. Not that I wanted to be tear gassed--I just wanted to see what was going on for myself. At the same time, when I looked around, it was fairly satisfying to be sitting in a bar at ten-thirty in the morning, dressed as Santa Claus and drinking beer with ten other Santa Clauses and a bunch of union members while the city began to erupt into chaos on television. A James Brown song was playing on the jukebox and everyone in the bar, Santas included, began to sway their hips and dance. It felt like the beginning of a party and I wished we weren't going to leave the bar. I felt like dancing, I felt like drinking more beer. They had two close-circuit televisions bolted into the wall with cameras pointed into the adjoining laundromat. We watched, all of us laughing, as Jim changed into his Santa Claus outfit next door, up on the monitor in black and white. It was time to go. We gathered our costumes together and assembled outside the bar.
People continued to approach us for pictures. We walked beneath the monorail past the Experience Music Project construction site towards Memorial Stadium. Our plan was to hook up with the Anti-Fascist Marching Band and join in on the march back downtown with the labor union members. We found the band warming up inside the Seattle Center House, which was abuzz with activity. People of all ages were gathering to join the march. It was obvious that there were thousands of people in the crowd not affiliated with any union or protest cause who were simply there for the social aspect of the occasion. There were kids ditching school, workers ditching work, artists, people in costumes, people with banners, musicians, and a small contingency of topless women who were protesting some aspect of the W.T.O.'s agenda. We waited in the crowd with the band for a long time as the marchers filed slowly out onto the parade route. I played my accordion with gusto along with the band as they played. The mood was becoming festive and tribal at the same time. Soon we were moving down Fourth Avenue towards downtown and saw ourselves, eleven Santas, on live television shot by the Channel Five cameraman. A few blocks later, we all agreed that we wanted to have some more beer, and walked into the Two Bells Tavern, which was also filled with union members. We ordered three or four pitchers of beer and sat down to watch the parade of humanity walk by outside. Some of the Santas made phone calls while some others stared into space and nursed their beer. Nicholas sat down at a booth filled with union members and started talking to them. When we were finished with our beers we rejoined the march and headed back towards downtown.
The mood there had changed considerably since we had been there earlier. There was less of a police presence and it felt like we were in control of the streets. A party atmosphere was in the air. The Anti-Fascist Marching Band played as they walked up Pine Street. Skerik and another saxophonist fell into a primitive trance vibe, a convulsion-inducing assault on order while moving together in unison towards the Paramount Theatre. We gathered, eleven fatigued Santas, on the curb in front of the carpet store down the street from the theatre. Hundreds of photographers and videographers gathered around us like paparazzis and took pictures. We heard that the police were using tear gas a few blocks away. I caught a whiff of it as it wafted up the street in the wind. It wasn't such a bad sensation and had an almost pleasant, alluring taste and odor. People walking up from downtown, though, were covering their mouths and coughing. Their eyes were swollen and filled with tears. Things were going on that we could not see down the street and around the corner. The tear gas at that moment felt like it was part of the carnival atmosphere, the way the smell of popcorn and cotton candy fill the air near the merry-go-round. We did not know what was going on in front of the television cameras a few blocks away, where things had descended into a state of total chaos and where the non-peaceful demonstrators were breaking windows, turning over dumpsters, starting fires, and spray painting stores with the Anarchy symbol. We did not know that at that moment the police were shooting rubber bullets at point blank range into the crowds of protestors, and that mass amounts of tear gas and fountains of pepper spray were being expended in an effort to clear the crowd. By this time it was about five o'clock in the evening. The sun was beginning to set and people were streaming up from downtown. It felt like a concert had just ended and people were leaving the concert grounds to go to their cars as the sun set behind them.
Most of the Santa Eleven were calling it a day. Only Katie, Curtis, and myself remained. There was word going around that the police were gassing people at Sixth and Pike. I wanted to walk down to the corner of Pine and look down the street to see what was going on. The air was thick with the scent of tear gas now. We continued to run into people we knew. DJ Justice rode by on his bike, just off work, looking to see what was going on. We stood on the corner next to Barnes and Noble and watched as a panic spread across the crowd, forcing it to flee suddenly towards us like a herd of gazelles being hunted down by lions. It happened so fast that there was nothing to do but turn and try to run ourselves. Katie, Curtis, and I began to run across the street but my instincts kicked in and I grabbed Katie's sleeve and pulled her towards the building we were in front of. "Stay on the edge!" I yelled. As quickly as the crowd had bolted, it came to a halt. Some storefront windows were smashed and people were yelling. We smelled more tear gas in the air and decided to move up the hill, away from downtown.
We walked with all the rest of the people who were calling it a day. It was just like the normal rush hour exodus out of downtown except that this time everyone was streaming away from chaos rather than the mundane regularity of their nine to five jobs. I felt like I had missed the real action that was taking place just out of our sight. I felt like I wanted to witness the real chaos that was going on. At the same time, the feeling of doom and danger in the air was real, so it also seemed like a good idea to stay away from where the real trouble was happening. We walked up Pine and decided to stop at Kincora's for a Guiness. We sat down and watched in amazement with the rest of the people in the bar as downtown Seattle melted into true mayhem on the big screen t.v. Tear gas was being dispersed, dumpsters were being rolled, people were running, and the police were chasing them. Small fires burned and many windows were broken. The whole bar watched in silence with mouths open as the chaos snowballed at the corner where we had just been standing. Groups of people were now taking on the police in a skirmish from block to block. It was hard to tell if they were protestors or just people out to cause trouble. People stood outside the bar and watched what was happening on television through the windows. Others arrived from downtown with firsthand reports about what was taking place on the screen just ten blocks away. Every now and then the whole crowd in the bar cheered sarcastically at something said by the newscasters. In general, everyone seemed to be in favor of what was taking place downtown, but we were all amazed to be watching it finally begin to unfold. I went to a payphone and checked my messages. My brother was at The Elysian with Eve having some dinner and beer. We drank another pint and watched for a half hour as downtown Seattle was transformed into a battle zone. Helicopters were hovering overhead, shining their spotlights down on the city. We walked up the hill.
When I got to the Elysian, everyone was gathered around the lone television in the bar, watching the trouble unfold. The situation downtown had melted even further into a beautiful and confusing state of chaos. The police were chasing people up the hill, across the I-5 bridge and onto Capitol Hill. It was exactly seven o'clock, the time I told my students to meet at the Bauhaus, where the air was now thick with tear gas. "My God," I thought, I sent people right into the thick of it." I ordered a beer, a small salad, fish and chips, and leaned back into my seat to watch the battle move up into my neighborhood. The bartender declared it Happy Hour for the rest of the night. Needless to say, we all ordered another one in the spirit of the chaos on the streets. It seemed to finally be happening, what everyone had expected to happen, what many perhaps had secretly wanted to happen.
Two little kids sitting with their parents nearby wanted to have their picture taken with Santa Claus so Nicholas and I put our costumes back on and obliged them their request. "You're not Santa Claus!" one of the kids said to me, tugging on my fake beard. "Your beard's not real!" "Yes, but what about this beard?" I said, pointing to my goatee. He reached up and tugged on it hard enough so that it hurt, then laughed and looked at me like maybe I really was Santa Claus. Meanwhile, the chaos continued to unfold on television. We watched as the police moved further up into Capitol Hill, lobbing tear gas and concussion grenades. They were now up next to the Cha Cha Lounge and Bimbo's Bitchin' Burrito Kitchen. We paid our bill and decided to walk down ourselves to get a closer look at the action. At the corner of Twelfth and Pike, I looked up to see a karate class in progress in a window as a huge cloud of tear gas rose into the sky several blocks behind the building. We didn't want to get too close, we just wanted to see what was happening down there from a few blocks away, where the helicopter was hovering and shining its light down into the clouds of tear gas.
A crowd had gathered and formed a line at the corner of Broadway and Pine. They had managed to assemble a barricade in front of the Egyptian Theatre made up of dumpsters, newspaper vending machines, and construction site debris. They were taunting and yelling profanities at the police, who had formed a line in front of an armored car in front of the Hi-Score Arcade. I walked down towards Linda's and looked in at everybody inside drinking. A lot of people were gathered near the window, looking down the street, waiting to see what was going to happen next. Others were just sitting and talking, seemingly oblivious to what was going on. A few people continued to shoot pool. I walked down the street to get a closer look at the armored car and the faceless riot police standing around it, staring up the hill. I could see people looking down in amazement from their apartments on either side of the street. The air was filled with the scent of tear gas and the noise of the hovering helicopter. The scene was surreal. Why had they come so far from downtown into Capitol Hill? They had succeeded in driving the protestors and hooligans from downtown. What were they trying to do now? We walked back up the hill, took another look at the crowd that had built the barrier, and decided to go to the Bad Juju Lounge for a nightcap. I was beginning to feel tired and like I'd had enough for the day. One more beer, I thought. Though I was certainly aware that I had quaffed quite a few beers in the course of the day, the pure adrenaline pumping through my veins and the chaos in the air seemed to have negated the effect of the alcohol. I never felt buzzed the whole day. I was disappointed to see that they did not have their television tuned into the goings on at the Bad Juju. In the midst of our conversation ten or fifteen police cars, lights flashing and sirens blaring, appeared on the street in front of the bar. Each car was filled with four or five policemen in full riot gear. The Bad Juju Lounge people closed their curtains and I decided that it was time for me to leave, time for me to see what was going on outside, then time to go home and get some rest. I had been up and on my feet since six in the morning and my body was starting to feel it.
As I walked up the alley towards Pike a squad of riot police marched by. I had chosen a rather inappropriate time to leave the bar. I reached the sidewalk and turned to the left. Another squad of riot police was marching down from the precinct behind me. I found myself in between the two squads. More police cars arrived with their sirens blaring. There were now several hundred riot police marching down towards Broadway and Pine to disperse the crowd. I ran into another friend. We watched as the police shot off tear gas and concussion grenades down Broadway in between the buildings of the Seattle Central campus, and decided to walk down Eleventh and over to Broadway to see what was going on. We heard more explosions as we walked in the rain past the reservoir. When we got up to Broadway near the Bonney Watson Funeral Home a wave of tear gas passed over us--for the first time I felt how painful it really was. This pain did not last very long, though, as the cloud of gas had dispersed considerably by the time it reached us. Still, I made a mental note in my mind that I had just been tear gassed for the first time in my life. I looked down Broadway and saw the police in a line near the Seattle Central bookstore. Every now and then they shot a tear gas canister up the street. We turned and decided it was time to head down Broadway and think of going home. When we walked past Jack In The Box and stopped to stand on the other side of the street across from Dick's we saw a young man driving hit a woman who was crossing the street. She had been running and slowed down almost to a walk when he drove by and hit his gas pedal, speeding up and striking her lower leg and foot with his bumper. The girl spun and cried out in pain. The guy who hit her stopped his car and got out to see if she was all right. She reached the curb and sat down. I watched in disbelief as a guy wearing black, with a black hood and a black mask, got into the guy's car, put it into gear and sped off down the street. "Dude, someone's stealing your car!" I yelled, pointing at what was happening in front of us. With the guy whose car was being jacked running after it, the guy who was stealing it gunned the engine, cut into the Jack In The Box parking lot, sent a punk rock girl flying down the sidewalk, and disappeared into the night.
While this was happening, a group of youths had set fire to the contents of two dumpsters they had taken from the Kinko's parking lot. A man was yelling at them from his apartment window. "Why don't you destroy your own neighborhood! Why are you doing this up here?" The crowd of youths taunted him and yelled obscenities as he yelled back at them and threatened to bring out his gun. Several people were drinking beer on the sidewalk. It was beginning to feel like a pretty good time to go home. I looked around and realized that there was no rule of law on the streets around me. There was only the worst, most dangerous form of chaos. I could be mugged, beat up, or killed and there wouldn't be any police around to help if I were to call 911. At home, I took off my shoes, turned off the lights, got into bed, and listened to the sounds of chaos outside. I pictured the dumpsters burning peacefully, almost serenely like a campfire just three blocks from my apartment. A helicopter circled overhead. Sirens filled the air. Order no longer existed on the streets, or rather, the illusion of order that existed before no longer existed. It had been replaced with true chaos. I understood for the first time what it might feel like to live in a city under siege, and even though I felt safe at home, I knew that if I left my apartment, anything might happen and that there would be no one around to help me if it was something bad. I felt exhausted and euphoric at the same time as images from the day passed through my mind. Epic.