This may be kind of old, but I’ve just gotten back into the swing of things on the board and wanted to get everyone’s take on this.
I have lived in Seattle for less than 1 month now and was pretty stunned by some of the goings on of the riots here during the WTO conference week.
One night, while walking to my neighborhood grocery store, it was like a war zone around me with helicopters zooming around with search lights, tear gas everywhere, people running around wearing gas masks and looking lost, big BOOM sounds in the background that sounded like grenades.
Did anyone hear about this? Did anyone care about this? What’s your take?
Actually I had made a post on the WTO riots, and their ridiculousness. (I made up a new word today!)
Demonstrations are fine, I have no problems with that, even though I don’t necessarilty believe in what they were demonstrating, or the reasons, they do have that right.
Once things got out of hand, it turned into a farce.
Personally I am glad I lived in Redmond, and I just avoided anywhere west of Bellevue for that week.
Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
I agree with BMU, demonstrations are fine(a proud tradition, in fact) but violence sours the cause, whatever it is.
The thing that struck me about this particular event was the diversity of the demonstrators. “Treehuggers and Steelworkers side by side” is the way I heard one participant put it. That was kinda neat in a way, but it seemed everybody had their own agenda in this thing. To me, it was much more of a free-for-all protest than an organized, articulate argument against WTO. certainly got people’s attention, though.
What chaffes my arse is that the violence is needlessly directed against those who have no bearing on what is usually being protested! I’m am not condoning violence in any manifestation, but in the recent Seattle riots, people go into Starbuck’s, order their double-decafe mocha lattes and then hit the pavement screaming, “Starbuck’s SUCKS!” What does Starbuck’s have to do with Congress’ approval of NAFTA? Human rights violations? Environmental concerns?
The same thing occurred in LA after the verdict was announced in the Rodney King trial. The blacks hit the streets and who did they burn out? The Vietnamese! What did Vietmanese have to do with the verdict? Was everyone on that jury Asian? Go figure!?
I think it is just a case of The Haves vs. The Have-Nots. The Have-Nots use the protests as a disguise to smash 'n grab.
What a sorry world we live in. I heard or read somewhere that the USA is the second-longest continuous democracy behind (I believe) the Roman Empire and we all know that empire eventually collapsed. I think that we are not too far from our own demise.
I was chiding my brother the Seattlite via e-mail about him rioting in the streets. He said that the first night was mostly idiots at the fringes of the organized protests and that the second and third nights were the police having fun.
I don’t know how serious he was, but it was an interesting perspective.
So the police are against the WTO too? Or might they have thought that watching some 25,000 spoiled ignorant brats break shop windows was their sort of fun? (Sigh.)
I suppose it counts as progress that the children can find nothing better to react against than technical codicils to intricate and unenforceable trade agreements that nary a one of them understands; but I must go along with ConMan to some degree. (Though the Roman Empire bit is a tad over the top.)
Bustin’ up yer own community to protest things ye don’t understand rather implies motives beyond the ken of a ‘NewsWeek’ analysis.
