Letter to the Seattle Times

This is in response to your WTO Poll article.

An interesting question to add to the poll would have been:

From where did you get your information on WTO related events?

A. I was downtown and experienced most of it first hand.
B. Through the media (TV, radio, newspapers).

I believe the results on all the other questions in the poll would have been dramatically different between groups A & B above... particularly in regards to treatment by police which was atrocious. Though there are literally thousands of hours of video footage proving the police acted brutally, the media has done a poor job spotlighting the police behavior on Nov 30 and Dec 1. As a predictable result, people who would answer in group B have a very limited perspective on the actual events.

Another interesting question that should have been included in the poll...

Is suspending the Constitution of the United States a good thing to do when freedom of speech somehow becomes inconvenient?

A. Yes
B. No

The correct answer of course is B, but it would have been interesting to see how many of those polled are actually no more than fair-weather friends of the US Constitution.

Mattro
Seattle