WTO Anniversary and The Movie
November 30th is the 8th anniversary of the great 1999 WTO Seattle uprising. The date will be observed collectively here through activist gatherings and forums, and singularly through the memories of the thousands of innocent bystanders who were bothered by the events of that week. A lot of people just had their holiday shopping interrupted, no big deal. Others had their work days truncated when they couldn’t get downtown or back home. And still others were personally assaulted Kristallnacht-style when Seattle’s Finest shot gas canisters into beauty parlors on Capitol Hill, and randomly arrested people waiting at bus stops. I personally watched an 80 year old woman get jabbed in the shoulder by a huge automaton with no badge number. Dangerous times.
The thing to remember is that this goes back to the Ollie North trials of 1980-something. You remember Oliver North, right? He was the Great Patriot who channeled funds from the sale of cocaine to pay for munitions to arm the Contras in Central America. Lots of misery everywhere – now he’s a “best selling author.” Ain’t it great? They don’t call it the “Criminal Justice System” for nothing… Anyway, one day during the trial it accidentally came out that Ollie and his friends had a contingency plan drawn up and ready just in case things got rough on a national scale. The plan called for a) the declaration of a state of emergency and suspension of the constitution, b) the rounding up of political dissidents, c) placing those dissidents in disused military bases, d) doing all of this under the umbrella of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The folks who gave us New Orleans… Anyway, this was revealed and then quickly shoved under the carpet, to be dealt with later, in committee…
Well, all those years later the WTO thing happened and guess what? Clinton was coming to town so the Mayor decided to get tough. He a) declared a state of emergency and suspended the constitution – its was now illegal to wear an anti WTO button or to publicly present any counter-political position in downtown Seattle, b) arrested over 600 dissidents, c) put them in the Sand Point Naval Air Station, a disused military base, which was also a d) FEMA base. Creepy…
So now Hollywood has decided to make a movie about all this. The filming has all been done and it’s now in post production. There’s some big names in it, but I’m not a movie guy so I don’t know who they are. I myself however have a bit part, probably, maybe. See, they put the call out for extras for a particular scene – the one where the activist crowd is marching from the labor rally and some of them split off to go join the blockaders in the intersections. “Official Labor” didn’t want anybody to split ranks and make them look bad. Its that same old story. Anyway, the movie people did a deal that if you came down as an extra – they wanted real activists who had been there – and you signed a release form, then your pay would go to Pepper Spray Productions (http://peppersp.server312.com/), a very cool Seattle-based activist film group. Extras don’t get much, only a hundred dollars or so, but it was a great way to raise money for good work. So there I was, with my guitar over my shoulder in a soft case, marching through the rain with the labor people and then breaking off with a bunch of others to go into the fray. I don’t know if it made it past the cutting room floor but if it did this will be my first Hollywood film! Maybe I’ll get an Oscar for “Best Supporting Extra With A Guitar Case In A Crowd Scene.”
In the meantime, while we wait for reality to reveal itself from these murky doings, I thought I would post this little piece that I wrote a couple of months after the Great Events of 1999.
----------------------
If I had a hammer
I’d hammer in the mornin’
I’d hammer in the evenin’
all over this town
November 30th, gray cloud morning in the city, business almost as usual. Almost.
There used to be low income housing there, where the Convention Center is now. Rooms and hallways full of life. Then the bill of sale and the eviction notices. The wrecking ball and the construction companies. And there it is, all shiny and new, a place for The Wallet to do business in. I remember when they wanted to expand it later and that meant another demolition, and Operation Homestead jumped in to make a scene and try to save it. A bunch of people broke in with crowbars and the cops had to drag them out to arrest them. It hit all the TV, and people were temporarily aware of their problems. Then baseball took over and life went on. The Wallet was back in control.
Now here it is not so many years later and more buildings have been torn down, and it seems like there’s no place to go anymore without money. They even made a law so you can’t sit down if you need to. Took the benches away at the bus stops. They don’t want anybody just being there without contributing to the economy. It’s the Big Business, Box Office, CEO Capital Of the Western World. And now the World Trade Organization comes to town. Perfect timing.
The Wallet is in a hurry these days. It’s expanding real fast, doing deals all over the world, sending in the troops when things don’t go right. Usually of course it’s in somebody else’s country, someplace where they just don’t get it and they think they can look a gift horse in the mouth. Usually these people are darker than the average of the Proper Wallet Followers, or they at least speak another language. Almost always they just don’t seem to have a proper appreciation of the good that The Wallet can do them. Foreigners, fucking foreigners. So who would’ve thought...
Who would’ve thought that a bunch of averages, children of suburbia, could cause so much trouble. It’s probably a lack of discipline, said the radio therapists, too much freedom. They’re just whiners, said the talk show jocks, give ‘em a haircut and put ‘em to work, that’ll straighten ‘em out. But there they were, all locked down in these incredibly dangerous positions right in the middle of the intersections and holding their physical bodies in the way of Commerce. There were a lot of them and they were real organized too. The Wallet had to wince at that one.
If I had a gas mask
I’d wear it in the mornin’
I’d wear it in the evenin’
all over this town
Johnny Law was there with all of his clone-like relatives. There must’ve been a thousand of them. City, county, state, federal. FBI, CIA, Secret Service. Even the elite Delta Force who specialize in storming airports and neutralizing Jihad fundamentalists. Most of them you could spot right away, all dressed up like sci-fi-spectaculars with shiny alien heads and dangerous looking weapons. But some were invisible and only showed up when they popped out of the crowd to pick off some passerby. Otherwise normal looking hangers around with radios in their ears. The whole world had an attitude that day.
That was the day, November 30th, that the clouds came down to attack, storming through the streets like a blitzkrieg. Not the friendly water clouds that usually live in these parts, but the angry chemical clouds of armored discipline. Mountains of tear gas, great cumulous eruptions of laboratory vapor that burned your lungs and made your eyes go blind. And the rage, the mechanical madness, like the indiscriminate lunging of pathological guard dogs.
Madelein Albright was fuming, locked helplessly in her hotel room, held hostage by a city full of ruffians. She could bomb the shit out of Eastern Europe, no problem, but she couldn’t get out the door in Seattle. Big Bill was coming to town that night, under cover of darkness, and this nonsense would have to stop. She was beginning to think of herself as Atilla The Madelein. She made a few phone calls and screamed at a few lap dogs and arrangements were made for all hell to break loose. And it did.
And so it was that in the echoing canyons of these Starbucks streets an incredible Fourth Of July reality battered around between the buildings. Concussion grenades rattled the fragile valuables while hundreds of people ran for their lives. Plastic pellets and rubber bullets bounced off of Christmas lights, the big friendly bear at the FAO Schwarz got one right in the nose. The ATMs shuddered and the lattès hid and everything was just a little too loud. A Tear gas canister fired from one those hand held cannons that the cops used ricocheted off the sidewalk and broke the window at the Sea First Bank. Oopse. A curfew was imposed and all downtown was declared a free fire zone. Possession of a gas mask, a sign, a thought in your head or a word in your mouth was reason enough, and six hundred people were arrested and taken away to the FEMA Base at the Sand Point Naval Air Station. Order was being restored.
And somehow in the middle of all of this they said it was all because of those Anarchists From Eugene (AFE). With a totally straight face, they said that if it wasn’t for them none of this would have happened. That the police showed great restraint and that all anyone really wanted was to just get along. On the TV news Jean Ennerson, that great over-decorated anchor-thing, assured us that the city was our friend. Something had gone wrong but it would be fixed. In the meantime we should stay indoors.
Next day, all day, the battle went on. It’s a wonder nobody was killed, but plenty were wounded and damaged. There were rumors that the cops used nerve gas. You heard stories of beatings in jail. And the second night was the bad one on Capital Hill, when they rampaged through the neighborhoods gassing people and assaulting them as they came out of the restaurants. Then somebody gave the order somewhere and things backed off when the third day came. There was going to be a lot of explaining to do.
Next week the police chief resigned, saying he was going to anyway, and everybody started shuffling things around. The mayor said he would get to the bottom of it. They appointed an ex-banking executive to head the investigation. They said it could take months.
The thing to remember is that this goes back to the Ollie North trials of 1980-something. You remember Oliver North, right? He was the Great Patriot who channeled funds from the sale of cocaine to pay for munitions to arm the Contras in Central America. Lots of misery everywhere – now he’s a “best selling author.” Ain’t it great? They don’t call it the “Criminal Justice System” for nothing… Anyway, one day during the trial it accidentally came out that Ollie and his friends had a contingency plan drawn up and ready just in case things got rough on a national scale. The plan called for a) the declaration of a state of emergency and suspension of the constitution, b) the rounding up of political dissidents, c) placing those dissidents in disused military bases, d) doing all of this under the umbrella of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The folks who gave us New Orleans… Anyway, this was revealed and then quickly shoved under the carpet, to be dealt with later, in committee…
Well, all those years later the WTO thing happened and guess what? Clinton was coming to town so the Mayor decided to get tough. He a) declared a state of emergency and suspended the constitution – its was now illegal to wear an anti WTO button or to publicly present any counter-political position in downtown Seattle, b) arrested over 600 dissidents, c) put them in the Sand Point Naval Air Station, a disused military base, which was also a d) FEMA base. Creepy…
So now Hollywood has decided to make a movie about all this. The filming has all been done and it’s now in post production. There’s some big names in it, but I’m not a movie guy so I don’t know who they are. I myself however have a bit part, probably, maybe. See, they put the call out for extras for a particular scene – the one where the activist crowd is marching from the labor rally and some of them split off to go join the blockaders in the intersections. “Official Labor” didn’t want anybody to split ranks and make them look bad. Its that same old story. Anyway, the movie people did a deal that if you came down as an extra – they wanted real activists who had been there – and you signed a release form, then your pay would go to Pepper Spray Productions (http://peppersp.server312.com/), a very cool Seattle-based activist film group. Extras don’t get much, only a hundred dollars or so, but it was a great way to raise money for good work. So there I was, with my guitar over my shoulder in a soft case, marching through the rain with the labor people and then breaking off with a bunch of others to go into the fray. I don’t know if it made it past the cutting room floor but if it did this will be my first Hollywood film! Maybe I’ll get an Oscar for “Best Supporting Extra With A Guitar Case In A Crowd Scene.”
In the meantime, while we wait for reality to reveal itself from these murky doings, I thought I would post this little piece that I wrote a couple of months after the Great Events of 1999.
----------------------
If I had a hammer
I’d hammer in the mornin’
I’d hammer in the evenin’
all over this town
November 30th, gray cloud morning in the city, business almost as usual. Almost.
There used to be low income housing there, where the Convention Center is now. Rooms and hallways full of life. Then the bill of sale and the eviction notices. The wrecking ball and the construction companies. And there it is, all shiny and new, a place for The Wallet to do business in. I remember when they wanted to expand it later and that meant another demolition, and Operation Homestead jumped in to make a scene and try to save it. A bunch of people broke in with crowbars and the cops had to drag them out to arrest them. It hit all the TV, and people were temporarily aware of their problems. Then baseball took over and life went on. The Wallet was back in control.
Now here it is not so many years later and more buildings have been torn down, and it seems like there’s no place to go anymore without money. They even made a law so you can’t sit down if you need to. Took the benches away at the bus stops. They don’t want anybody just being there without contributing to the economy. It’s the Big Business, Box Office, CEO Capital Of the Western World. And now the World Trade Organization comes to town. Perfect timing.
The Wallet is in a hurry these days. It’s expanding real fast, doing deals all over the world, sending in the troops when things don’t go right. Usually of course it’s in somebody else’s country, someplace where they just don’t get it and they think they can look a gift horse in the mouth. Usually these people are darker than the average of the Proper Wallet Followers, or they at least speak another language. Almost always they just don’t seem to have a proper appreciation of the good that The Wallet can do them. Foreigners, fucking foreigners. So who would’ve thought...
Who would’ve thought that a bunch of averages, children of suburbia, could cause so much trouble. It’s probably a lack of discipline, said the radio therapists, too much freedom. They’re just whiners, said the talk show jocks, give ‘em a haircut and put ‘em to work, that’ll straighten ‘em out. But there they were, all locked down in these incredibly dangerous positions right in the middle of the intersections and holding their physical bodies in the way of Commerce. There were a lot of them and they were real organized too. The Wallet had to wince at that one.
If I had a gas mask
I’d wear it in the mornin’
I’d wear it in the evenin’
all over this town
Johnny Law was there with all of his clone-like relatives. There must’ve been a thousand of them. City, county, state, federal. FBI, CIA, Secret Service. Even the elite Delta Force who specialize in storming airports and neutralizing Jihad fundamentalists. Most of them you could spot right away, all dressed up like sci-fi-spectaculars with shiny alien heads and dangerous looking weapons. But some were invisible and only showed up when they popped out of the crowd to pick off some passerby. Otherwise normal looking hangers around with radios in their ears. The whole world had an attitude that day.
That was the day, November 30th, that the clouds came down to attack, storming through the streets like a blitzkrieg. Not the friendly water clouds that usually live in these parts, but the angry chemical clouds of armored discipline. Mountains of tear gas, great cumulous eruptions of laboratory vapor that burned your lungs and made your eyes go blind. And the rage, the mechanical madness, like the indiscriminate lunging of pathological guard dogs.
Madelein Albright was fuming, locked helplessly in her hotel room, held hostage by a city full of ruffians. She could bomb the shit out of Eastern Europe, no problem, but she couldn’t get out the door in Seattle. Big Bill was coming to town that night, under cover of darkness, and this nonsense would have to stop. She was beginning to think of herself as Atilla The Madelein. She made a few phone calls and screamed at a few lap dogs and arrangements were made for all hell to break loose. And it did.
And so it was that in the echoing canyons of these Starbucks streets an incredible Fourth Of July reality battered around between the buildings. Concussion grenades rattled the fragile valuables while hundreds of people ran for their lives. Plastic pellets and rubber bullets bounced off of Christmas lights, the big friendly bear at the FAO Schwarz got one right in the nose. The ATMs shuddered and the lattès hid and everything was just a little too loud. A Tear gas canister fired from one those hand held cannons that the cops used ricocheted off the sidewalk and broke the window at the Sea First Bank. Oopse. A curfew was imposed and all downtown was declared a free fire zone. Possession of a gas mask, a sign, a thought in your head or a word in your mouth was reason enough, and six hundred people were arrested and taken away to the FEMA Base at the Sand Point Naval Air Station. Order was being restored.
And somehow in the middle of all of this they said it was all because of those Anarchists From Eugene (AFE). With a totally straight face, they said that if it wasn’t for them none of this would have happened. That the police showed great restraint and that all anyone really wanted was to just get along. On the TV news Jean Ennerson, that great over-decorated anchor-thing, assured us that the city was our friend. Something had gone wrong but it would be fixed. In the meantime we should stay indoors.
Next day, all day, the battle went on. It’s a wonder nobody was killed, but plenty were wounded and damaged. There were rumors that the cops used nerve gas. You heard stories of beatings in jail. And the second night was the bad one on Capital Hill, when they rampaged through the neighborhoods gassing people and assaulting them as they came out of the restaurants. Then somebody gave the order somewhere and things backed off when the third day came. There was going to be a lot of explaining to do.
Next week the police chief resigned, saying he was going to anyway, and everybody started shuffling things around. The mayor said he would get to the bottom of it. They appointed an ex-banking executive to head the investigation. They said it could take months.
posted by Jim Page at 5:03 PM
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