by Brendan Wheeler

On the week of November 30, 1999, over 50,000 people came together in protest against the unchecked and destructive power of the World Trade Organization. Although ugly things happened during the Battle of Seattle, the prevailing result was a victory for the protesters. The victors used a wide variety of tactics, each effective in different ways. Some people believe that Seattle's WTO protesters used "violence." This is not a valid generalization. A minority of protesters destroyed property. Property destruction is not the same thing as violence, as violence occurs against living things. Nobody has been arrested for the homicide of a car or building. Demolition crews who destroy abandoned buildings are not violent; they are destructive. Most of the diverse Seattle crowd was not only nonviolent but also non-destructive and most expressed disapproval at the minority of destructive radicals, chanting "Shame on You," as windows shattered.

The only real violence that occurred was initiated by the police.

Police officers indiscriminately shot rubber bullets, pepper spray pellets, beat with batons, and sprayed with tear gas. Demonstrators who were locked down and immobile in civil disobedience were nevertheless brutalized with pepper spray and an ordeal involving a police motorcycle. That is violence. One woman's doctor attributes her miscarriage to the confused police attack she suffered while returning home from her job at Pike Place Market. Individuals exposed to chemical weapons in the late afternoon and evening of December 1st at two locations downtown blocks adjacent to Pike Place Market and the Seattle neighborhood of Capitol Hill reported a pattern of symptoms which is inconsistent with the pattern of symptoms which may be ascribed to irritating agents. This "atypical" pattern of symptoms includes the rapid onset of: mydriasis (pupillary dilation) with resultant impairment of visual acuity; tachycardia (rapid heart rate) with some palpitations; new-onset hypertension (high blood pressure) in one individual; nausea, vomiting, diarrhea (persisting for days after exposure); abrupt or immediate onset of menstruation (asynchronous with usual menstrual cycle); muscular fasciculation (twitches); muscular dyscoordination; lethargy, confusion, disorientation, diminished concentration, nocturnal hallucinations.While these symptoms are inconsistent with the results of common tear gas and irritants, they are very consistent with the results of chemical weapons, CS and CN, obtained under Seattle's martial law. The only people in history to use the highly toxic CS gas against civilians were Adolph Hitler, Saddam Hussein, and Seattle Mayor Paul Schell. Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper resigned after his participation in this violence.

Unlike the Seattle police and the National Guard, the protesters did not use violence. One effective tactic that a minority of demonstrators did use was the destruction of corporate property.The demonstrators did not target poor, independent, uninsured, or locally owned businesses---or any business with a shred of decency either. They instead received international press for destroying property as a symbolic act against America's corporate machine that lobbies, guides, and profits from the "free trade" dictated by the World Trade Organization. Here are a few targets as reported by the "Black Bloc Communique":

---Fidelity Investment (major investor in Occidental Petroleum, the bane of the U'wa tribe in Columbia)
---Bank of America, US Bancorp, Key Bank and Washington Mutual Bank (financial institutions key in the expansion of corporate repression)
---Old Navy, Banana Republic and the GAP (as Fisher family businesses, rapers of Northwest forest lands and sweatshop laborers)
---NikeTown and Levi's (whose overpriced products are made in sweatshops)
---McDonald's (slave-wage fast-food peddlers responsible for destruction of tropical rain forests for grazing land and slaughter of animals)
---Starbucks (peddlers of an addictive substance whose products are harvested at below-poverty wages by farmers who are forced to destroy their own forests in the process),
---Warner Bros. (media monopolists),
---Planet Hollywood (for being Planet Hollywood)

The "anarchists" followed the example of Frenchman, José Bové, who was known in France for bulldozing McDonalds until he spoke in Seattle against the carcinogenic dangers of hormone-treated beef that the WTO defends and McDonalds serves. He urged protesters to throw the food into the sea.

Similarly, a minority of other protesters did what would otherwise be considered petty vandalism to draw the world's attention to the greater destruction brought by corporations when supported by unrepresentative world government conspiracy. Don't point to aggressive protesting to exemplify violence; chemical warfare on civilians is violence; invasion of the ancestral land of the U'wa for oil is violence; encouragement of coercive labor under starvation wages is violence----broken windows is not violence. The nonviolent destruction of the demonstrators also pales next to the destruction of their enemies.

The destructive tactics were effective. Without the destruction, the media never would have paid so much attention to the protests. The positive political awareness never would have spread so far. More than 50,000 people just showed up for the WTO's meeting, a few people broke things, and soon the diverse coalition had WTO Director-General Mike Moore and President Clinton bending over backwards in attempts to appease their demands. In Geneva, activists of "The Green Apple" damaged electricity transformers linked to WTO headquarters. Police responded to the peaceful Seattle demonstrations with chaos and violence. Ultimately, the varied demonstration and the violence it provoked in authorities ultimately stopped the WTO from even finishing their meeting.The people were victorious.

Now I must leave you to the freedom of your own thoughts and opinions. You do not have to support or practice property destruction (when I protested WTO in Manhattan I did not destroy anything). I simply ask that you do not discredit or disrespect your destructive comrades. Just as nonviolent and nondestructive civil disobedience is highly effective in provoking brutality in authorities and sympathy in spectators, destruction is highly effective in aggressively asserting an uncompromising statement of defiance. Maybe now when people hear, "Seattle" they won't think a of Kurt Cobaine, grunge rock, or Starbucks Coffee, but of a victorious battle against global violence.