Direct Action Network Protests example essay topic

Black Flag Over Seattle by Paul de Armond Editor's forward Read any war memoir, and notice that veterans almost always comment on the battlefield stillness before the fighting begins. Often it is the only personal note in the writing; the rest of the account describes history book heroism and savagery, troop movements and general's strategies, cannon fire and the screams of the injured. But these preceeding hours of quietude always seem as memorable as the carnage that follows. Welcome to Seattle Washington, as dawn rises on Tuesday, November 30, 1999, and about five hundred members of law enforcement prepared for duty. Sharing their own moments of stillness are about 35,000 protesters plus 15,000 members of organized labor.

The police are outnumbered 10 to 1. The evening before, the forces had aligned themselves into camps. There was the Direct Action Network (a coalition of enviro and human rights groups), which planned to shut down the WTO conference by swarming the streets. There was the AFL-CIO, which planned to hold a rally and parade in an effort to influence national trade policy -- and the upcoming presidential elections.

There was the Seattle Police Department, tasked with preventing the protests while allowing the labor parade. There was the camp of outside law enforcement agencies, champing at the bit to enter into the fray -- but as long as the SPD maintained order, they would be forced to sit on the sidelines. And milling around the edges were the Black Blocs, fondling their crowbars and dreaming of chaos. What would happen next was anybody's guess -- but as old veterans say, no plan of battle survives contact with the opposition. We present the story of the Battle of Seattle in 20 parts, meant to be read in sequence.

Please don't skip ahead; each section builds on important details revealed before. The Plans for Battle The police on the streets expected to disperse the few hundred protesters before noon What exactly happened during the crucial hours of that Tuesday, November 30 morning battle in Seattle is shrouded in confusion and controversy, but the broad outlines can be discerned. "It was a classic example of two armies coming into contact and immediately experiencing the total collapse of their battle plans", said Daniel Junas, a Seattle political researcher. Each faction had a strategy that would ensure that their forces would control the streets -- or so they thought. On the face of it, the Direct Action Network protesters had a straightforward battle plan: To show up, cross flimsy police barriers, and be arrested -- probably with a light seasoning of pepper spray.

The mayor and the chief of police expected a paltry handful of demonstrators to show up downtown and get arrested in a mutual display of civility. Police Chief Norm Stamper had decided the protests could be peacefully controlled by his own forces without outside assistance -- knowing that the price of assistance could be the peace. His plan was to protect the WTO conference with a "tripwire" outer perimeter around the Convention Center, arresting protesters that crossed the line. This was to be reinforced by an inner perimeter to block protesters from entering the Center and disrupting the meeting. The police on the streets expected to disperse the few hundred protesters before noon, maybe with a little tussle. But they were going to maintain discipline, show restraint, and "not be the spark" if things got out of hand.

A crucial part of the police strategy depended upon the AFL-CIO. The labor union's goal was simple: To dominate media coverage with a colorful parade from the Seattle Center towards -- but not too close to -- downtown. As the protests grew out of hand, however, the mayor and cops would change strategy to hope that the parade would draw the bulk of the protesters away from the Convention Center. And finally there was the battle plan of the Black Bloc, who expected to do a little graffiti and smash some carefully selected windows just as soon as the police got too preoccupied with the demonstrators. Bad advice from FBI and Secret Service Significant wildcards in the police strategy were the federal law enforcement agencies.

The FBI and Secret Service cried doom and gloom over the city's plan to use the AFL-CIO parade to divert protesters, yet signed off on Mayor Schell and Chief Stamper's plan. The FBI, if their "Terrorist Threat Advisory" can be believed, were preparing to counter a terrorist onslaught in cyberspace while combating terrorist home invasions or kidnappings. Actually, some of the FBI were dressing up in protester disguises complete with black masks, and getting ready to join in the street party with the Black Bloc as close observers. But the intelligence picture was damaged by the claims of federal law enforcement officials that the protests would be violent. The publicly released text of one FBI forecast was replete with hysterical predictions: .".. elements within the protest community are planning to disrupt the conference... environmental or animal rights extremists or anarchist-induced violence... computer-based attacks on WTO-related web sites, as well as key corporate and financial sites... Corporate sponsors... may be subject to surveillance efforts from these groups... to identify the residences of key employees of sponsoring corporations...

These employees should remain alert for individuals who may be targeting them in furtherance of anti-WTO activities... Recipients should remain sensitive to threats made by anti-WTO groups". Buried within this froth was "The FBI assesses the potential threat of violence, to include criminal acts of civil disturbance, as low to medium for the Seattle area during the time frame of the WTO Meeting". Asked by reporters what "low to medium" meant, FBI spokesman Ray Lauer refused to answer, citing the "law-enforcement sensitive" nature of the report and the "controversy concerning planning over WTO". An anonymous law enforcement source cited by the Seattle Times stated that "low to medium" covered anything from simple civil disobedience to and Oklahoma City-style terrorist bombing. Nowhere in the FBI "Terrorist Threat Advisory" was the slightest inkling of what was going to be happening in the streets beyond the fact that the conference was going to be "disrupted".

The Direct Action Network and AFL-CIO plans had been trumpeted loudly, widely and in considerable detail in the press by the organizers, summing up to non-violent civil disobedience shutting down the conference and an ineffectual parade designed to keep protesters away from the Convention Center. The city officials at the top elected to pick and choose among information to support their plans. The front-line officers did the same, if with opposite results. The rumors within the police department (fantasy or otherwise) about federal expectations of dead and wounded police added to the unreality. The real question which faced the police was whether they would be confronting a protest or a parade. The police put their money on the parade -- and lost.

The Old Guard Stumped by a New Kind of War The labor parade as the dominant factor of the protests was the least likely of all outcomes, but the only one which the police had a chance of controlling. The current theory of controlling protests usually revolves around the willingness of protesters to be steered into some venue in which they can be controlled and the protest neutralized, marginalized and trivialized. When this agreement doesn't exist, the older police strategy is to treat a protest as a riot -- gas, baton charges, assault and occasionally arrests. On Tuesday, the first strategy failed. On Wednesday, the second strategy failed.

The Direct Action Network (DAN) represents an emerging species of political organization based on networks rather than institutions. The primary networked organizations in the Direct Action Network were a coalition of groups such as Rainforest Action Network, Art & Revolution and the Ruckus Society. Through the Direct Action Network, these groups coordinated non-violent protest training, communications and collective strategy and tactics through a decentralized process of consultation / consensus decision-making. The strategy and tactics of these new -- and primarily information-based -- networks of non-governmental organizations evolved from trends represented by the ad hoc mobilization committees of the Viet Nam protest era, the "alternative summits" at recent world environmental and human rights conferences, and the loose coalitions which formed in opposition to U.S. policy during the Gulf War.

Networks, as opposed to institutions, are shaped by decentralized command and control structures; are resistant to "decapitation" attacks targeting leaders, and are amorphous enough to weld together coalitions with significantly different agendas while concentrating forces on a single symbolic target. Conflicts involving networks blur the distinction between offensive and defensive. The overall strategic goal of the Direct Action Network was to "shut down" the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. This would be done by a variety of actions summing up to a street blockade in the immediate vicinity of the WTO conference.

Once the blockade came into being, the emphasis would shift to defending the blockade for as long as possible in the streets. In the spotlight of media attention created by the blockade, DAN would then launch a variety of informational operations emphasizing the anti-democratic tendencies of trans-national trade agreements. Underlying the failure of the police strategy for controlling the demonstrations was the fundamental failure of intelligence. The picture which law enforcement built of the developing protests was a catastrophe of wishful thinking, breathing their own exhaust and the most classic of all blunders -- mistaking tactics for strategy. The Seattle police and all of the responsible federal law enforcement agencies had the information necessary to appraise the situation. What was lacking was a comprehensive understanding of the strategy of the protests.

Without that, all of the pieces of the intelligence puzzle were not going to fit into an accurate assessment and strategic plan. The wishful thinking centered on the alliance between the police and the AFL-CIO. The plan for the labor parade to engulf the protests and steer them into a marginal venue was never a real possibility. The Direct Action Network and their allies had no intention of turning the protest organizing over to a conservative alliance which was trumpeting Pat Buchanan as "the only presidential candidate who understands the trade issue", through the mouthpiece of Teamster leader Hoffa on national television Sunday. The Left has had decades of experience being sold down the river by organized labor and has learned that lesson well. If there was going to be an alliance between protesters and paraders, it was going to be on the protesters terms or not at all.

The city officials chose to believe their labor allies assurances of controlling the protesters. This led the police to drastically underestimate the number of protesters, who were at least as numerous as the paraders. Due to the stealthy approach aspect of netwar conflicts, they never saw them coming. What is Netwar? Zapatista conflict in Chiapas an example of netwar The Direct Action Network's strategy is a classic example of "netwar" conflict. Netwar is a concept introduced in the early 1990's by two researchers at the RAND corporation, a government-funded think tank which began under the auspices of the U.S. Air Force.

In a now-seminal paper titled "Cyber war is Coming!" , RAND analysts David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla proposed a new framework for viewing conflict in the information age. The essence of netwar is the emerging forms of conflict in which one or more of the major participants consist of networks, rather than institutions. The central feature of informational conflicts is the struggle for understanding and knowledge, as opposed to more traditional conflicts which focus on controlling territories or resources. Netwar conflicts are struggles for understanding and information.

The FBI fantasies of violent terrorists directing the protests blinded and disabled the police. The more inaccurate the assessment of opposing forces, the greater the advantage to the side which possesses "top view" -- comprehensive and realistic understanding. Netwar is inherently less violent than other forms of conflict, particularly when it involves non-governmental organizations dedicated to human rights and peace causes. One of the first full-blown manifestations of netwar was the Zapatista conflict in Chiapas. The networked intervention of international groups placed very real limits on the use of violence by the Mexican government in suppressing the insurrection. In the case of the Direct Action Network, the central prize consisted of the understanding that the WTO multi-lateral trade agreements are intensely corrosive to democracy, at least that form of democracy which entails a knowledgeable public participating in policy formation in meaningful ways.

Attempts to arrest "ringleaders" were fruitless Netwar are fought by networks; collections of groups and organizations guided by non-hierarchical command structures which communicate through "all-points" communications channels of considerable bandwidth and complexity which had global reach via the internet. Institutions, such as police and the AFL-CIO, tend to depend on narrow communications channels which are highly centralized and hierarchical. Networks operate by "swarming" their opponents, approaching stealthily and from many directions in offense and reacting much like anti-bodies in defense. In netwar, the line between offense and defense can be blurred, leaving opponents unclear about what is occurring and how to respond. Throughout the protests, the Direct Action Network were able to offensively swarm their opponents repeatedly, as shown by the seizure of key intersections on Tuesday and the easy penetration of the "no-protest" zone on Wednesday. The anti-body defense was shown when crowds moved towards police attacks or mass arrests and when numerous groups within the AFL-CIO rally and parade successfully resisted efforts by the union leadership to keep them from supporting the DAN blockade of the WTO convention site.

The network form of organization is particularly robust in the face of adversity. The decentralized command and control structure allows rapid shifts of strategic targeting, resistance to "decapitation" (attacks which target leadership), and the disruption of communication channels. All three of these feature were present during the WTO protests. The diffuse communications network allowed all participants to continuously adapt to changing conditions. The consultative form of decision-making enhanced the ability to coordinate large-scale actions. Thus attempts to arrest "ringleaders" on Wednesday were fruitless, since leadership was widely shared throughout the network of protest groups.

The communications network was continuously being expanded and modified. On Tuesday, police cut off many of the Direct Action Network communications channels, but in a few hours a new and larger network was functioning. Troops Move Into Position "Sheriff, we " re trapped" At 5 AM Tuesday morning, Washington State Patrol Chief Annette Sandberg had coffee at the Starbucks near the Convention Center. Nobody would be having coffee there that evening, as it would be smashed and looted.

Sandberg saw demonstrators moving into strategic positions before any police had arrived. The converging columns of the Direct Action Network began to shut down Seattle. The first Direct Action Network "arrest" affinity groups moved in on the strategic intersections in the vicinity of the Convention Center. Afterwards, these protesters said that they were surprised by the absence of any police presence on the streets. In many locations, the "arrest" groups arrived earlier than the "non-arrest" groups which were supposed to protect them from removal by the police. The news photographs of these initial "lock-down" groups have a surrealistic air to them.

In the empty streets after dawn, groups of protesters lock themselves together with bicycle locks or tubes covering their linked arms to prevent police from removing them individually. King County Sheriff Dave Reichert says he got a telephone call at 8 AM from a county detective. "He said, 'Sheriff, we " re trapped... We have no backup,' " Reichert claimed. "I had officers barricaded in the hotel with a mob literally pounding on the glass, and there was nobody to help them. Nobody".

Reichert wasn't on the scene, but already he was seeing "mobs". KIRO-7 television crews were at the same location and show lines of grinning demonstrators holding hands and blocking the street -- no "mob literally pounding on the glass". Sheriff Reichert was the first self-inflicted casualty of the intelligence failure. In the blame storm of controversy which erupted after the protests, Reichert was the head cheerleader among the hardliners who condemned the Seattle Police's "lack of preparedness". The Seattle Police were prepared for non-violent demonstrations and their only failure of strategic intelligence was misjudging the size of the crowds. Nobody could be prepared for the fantasies of the FBI and the Sheriff.

There were no "terrorists" behind the demonstrations, no "mobs", no "violent protesters". The police need to fantasize violence on the part of the protesters was a projection of their own desire for violence. This fundamental disconnect between reality and fantasy continually crippled the police strategy and rendered it ineffective. Theory of the three waves The Direct Action Network planned more effectively, and in the end more realistically, with a "Peoples Convergence" consisting of three waves of blockaders enclosing the WTO conference site: The first wave consisted of "affinity groups" who had opted for non-violent civil disobedience and arrest. Their job was to penetrate the area close to the conference site, seize the dozen strategic intersections which controlled movement in the protest target and hang on until reinforcements arrived. In the second wave were protesters who had opted for non-violent demonstration and not being arrested.

Their task was to protect the first wave from police violence and plug up the streets by sheer numbers and passive resistance. The third wave was a march by the People's Assembly, composed mostly of environmental and human rights groups who elected to participated in the street protests instead of the labor parade. This group entered downtown from the south at about 1 PM and marched to the Paramount Theatre inside the protest zone. The three-layered intersection blockade.

Seated in the center are the "lock-down" protesters who form the "arrest" faction of their Direct Action Network affinity group (Tinted red in photo inset). They are cuffed together with heavy tubes covering their arms. Standing around them are the "non-arrest" members of the affinity group -- whose task is to protect the "lock-down" group from police violence (tinted green) In the background, the third layer of "spectator / participant " protesters can be seen. The first and second waves were loosely organized into a dozen simultaneously converging affinity groups, swarming the protest target from all directions. Each affinity group blockaded a specific intersection. The blockade would be maintained as long as possible until police had arrested sufficient demonstrators to regain control of the streets.

The direct point of contact between the Direct Action Network and the WTO was the Seattle Police Department (SPD). Under the leadership of Chief Norm Stamper, the SPD has become a national laboratory for a progressive philosophy of law enforcement known as "community policing". Recently, the relations between the police and Mayor Schell's administration have not been good. One of the outcomes of Chief Stamper's community policing initiative has been the formation of a police accountability organization which reports separately to the Chief and the City Council through two separate boards. The road to community policing has been rocky, particularly in light of the resistance from rank and file cops.

Add to that the heightened tensions because of contract negotiations between the City and the police union. The total size of the Seattle Police Department is roughly 1,800 officers, of whom about 850 are available for street duty throughout the city. Of these, 400 were assigned to the WTO demonstrations. Seattle has about the same ratio of police to population as Chicago, but Seattle's smaller size limited in the number of officers it could field against the protesters -- unless, of course, the SPD entered into some sort of joint WTO operation with other police agencies in the region. By Wednesday, the second day of the protests, more than 500 state and regional police, plus some 200 National Guard would be deployed. The largest two outside police forces available to Seattle are the King County Sheriff's department and the Washington State Patrol.

Sheriff Dave Reichert is a conservative Republican and political foe of Mayor Schell. This reflects the long-standing division between Seattle and the King County government. The suburban fringe surrounding Seattle is the traditional political battleground in which statewide elections are fought, with the outlying areas going to the Republicans, the heavily urbanized areas going to the Democrats and the suburbs swinging back and forth between the two. The State Patrol chief is responsible to Gov. Gary Locke, a nominal Democrat who rose to the governorship through the King County Council. The governor also controls the National Guard, although these forces can't be committed to street action without the declaration of a state of emergency by the governor and the request of the mayor.

Neither the King County police nor the State Patrol are supporters of community policing policies, which meant that outside assistance would entail Chief Stamper presiding over a joint command divided by fundamental policy differences. Mayor Schell decided that he and Chief Stamper would deal with the demonstrations without the direct support of other law enforcement agencies. Most critics have claimed that this decision was the reason the protests succeeded. There are strong reasons to believe that this is not so, and that the Tuesday protests would have succeeded in attaining their goals (though in a less spectacular fashion) even if the police presence had included the outside agencies.

One of the considerations which weighed against the employment of outside police was the strong possibility that they would attack city residents, as indeed happened on Wednesday night. First Skirmishes Though the police didn't realize it, the Direct Action Network had already swarmed them By 8 AM, most of the key intersections had been seized by the protesters, now reinforced by their second wave. Meanwhile, at the Memorial Stadium at the Seattle Center, the gates are opening for the AFL-CIO rally, which is scheduled to begin at 10 AM. Chartered busses from around the region have been on the road for some time, carrying a mixture of union members and protesters to Seattle. The AFL-CIO had done a mass mailing throughout Washington State, sending tasteful green postcards to non-union supporters of a variety of liberal and progressive organizations.

"Join the March of the Century", the cards read. The AFL-CIO strategy of parading without protesting dovetailed neatly with the city plans for a minuscule protest and a media genic parade. As the number of protesters increased, the 400 police remained in their lines around the Convention Center or at their positions at the Memorial Stadium. The slow infiltration of demonstrators made it difficult for the police to gauge the intentions of the crowd. Though the police didn't realize it, the Direct Action Network had already swarmed them and now shifting to a defensive strategy of holding on to the streets that they now controlled. The flimsy rope and netting barriers, the "tripwire" at the Paramount Theatre, went down as protesters walked towards the line of city busses next to the theater.

The busses were a second line of defense, separating the police from the crowd. The Direct Action Network's goal was sufficiently broad to join together two major WTO opponents. The Direct Action Network protesters clustered around the international network of non-governmental organizations devoted to extending the principles of liberal democracy. The DAN factions can be distinguished by their varying focus on environmental or human rights issues. The second major WTO opponent was American organized labor, the AFL-CIO.

In contrast to the Direct Action Network, the AFL-CIO is a hierarchical institution which emphasizes top-down command. There is little participation by rank and file in union decision-making, though ceremonial elections are sometimes held to legitimize leadership decisions. Essentially nationalist in outlook, the AFL-CIO policy goals are directed more at American politics and less at international issues. Simply stated, the AFL-CIO's strategic target was supporting and legitimizing President Clinton's actions at the conference through purely symbolic displays. As discussed later, Clinton acknowledged that there was considerable coordination between his administration and the AFL-CIO in regards to the parade and protests. Overall, the advantage went to the Direct Action Network, since their informational strategy effectively enclosed the coordinated strategy of the AFL-CIO and the federal government.

As will be seen, at the critical moment in the street actions, the balance shifted to the Direct Action Network as non-union protesters and a few union members left the AFL-CIO parade and joined the street protests, effectively sealing the success of the Direct Action Network's day-long blockade. The Police Battle Themselves Though the police didn't realize it, the protester's plan had shut down the WTO. The competing strategies of the Direct Action Network and the AFL-CIO put the police in the classically disastrous position of dividing their forces and inviting defeat in detail. The AFL-CIO rally and parade was planned in conjunction with the police, and although it would not require much more in the way of security than any other parade, it still demanded adequate coverage both for the rally and along the parade route. The security requirements at the WTO conference site were subject to considerably more uncertainty. The DAN organizers had participated in lengthy negotiations with the police and had made their blockade strategy known, at least in general outline.

DAN had repeatedly and publicly stated that their goal was to "shut down the WTO". Mayor Schell and Chief Stamper were faced with the difficult decision of allocating forces against two different opponents using markedly different strategies. By 9: 10 AM, "crowd-control efforts were encountering difficulty", according to Washington State Patrol Chief Sandberg. She placed troopers throughout Western Washington on alert. The day was barely started and the police plan was already beginning to break down. The Secret Service, responsible for the security of federal and visiting government officials, discovered that the streets between the Convention Center, the adjacent hotels and the Paramount Theater -- a distance of up to five blocks along some routes -- were closed by protesters.

"It hadn't taken long for things not to be working very well". said Ronald Began, the special agent in charge of the Seattle office of the Secret Service. Though the police didn't realize it, the Direct Action Network plan had achieved its goal -- they had blockaded the streets and shut down the WTO. According to the agreed-upon script, the police would now arrest the protesters. Unfortunately, the protesters had been so successful at blockading the area around the convention center that police couldn't move. It makes no sense to arrest someone if you can't remove them from the area. SPD Capt. Jim Puget, who commanded the force in the streets, later said he had too few officers to make mass arrests.

The next phase of the protest plan was to hang on to the streets as long as possible. Since the police remained stationary for the most part, other than slowly moving single vehicles through the crowds, there was little for the protesters to do but enjoy themselves with chants, singing and drumming. The overall mood was festive, rather than hostile. The protesters had won, though it was too early for anyone to know that for sure.

Until several hours after dark, the Direct Action Network would control all movement in triangle of streets under blockade. Strategic surprise doesn't occur in the field, so much as in the mind of the opponent. The longer it's delayed, the more complete its effects. In the case of Mayor Schell, the surprise and disbelief would dominate his actions until late afternoon.

By 9: 30 AM, the police command post was being inundated by reports from the streets that control of the situation -- meaning the ability to move police and delegates through the streets -- had been lost. The divisions between the rival commanders began to widen as the morning wore on. "This was not an integrated command structure", King County Sheriff Dave Reichert said. "While everybody was at the table, it was made clear that the rest of us were relegated to supporting roles.

Seattle was running the show". The criminal element in the Seattle Police There was a wild card in the police pack: The segment of the Seattle Police Department which actively sought to disrupt the chain of command and force the initial confrontation with demonstrators into chaos. To put it bluntly, these officers comprise the faction within the police department which has been most threatened by Chief Stamper's reforms -- the criminal element. "Organized crime is the continuation of business by criminal means", says Dr. Phil Williams, international expert on organized crime. And criminal business, just like legitimate business, requires the active support and participation of law enforcement.

In the late 1960's and early 1970's, Seattle went through a series of scandals involving organized crime and police corruption. The popular view of organized crime as an "underworld" operation, totally divorced from everyday business and politics was seriously challenged by the work of William J. Chamblis, a sociologist at the University of Washington. Chamblis's tudy of organized crime in Seattle, On the Take: From Petty Crooks to Presidents showed that "crime is not a by-product of an otherwise effectively working political economy, it a main product of that economy. Crime is in fact a cornerstone on which the political and economic relations of societies are constructed". Rather than a "few bad apples", corruption is the normal state of affairs. Chamblis' work and other research on shows that "organized crime really consists of a coalition of politicians, law-enforcement people, businessmen, union leaders and (in some ways least important of all) racketeers".

Seattle's police history has been as colorfully sordid as any other American city's. The criminal economy of drugs, prostitution, gambling, and the financial apparatus which such large-scale businesses require is no different in Seattle than elsewhere. From Seattle's beginnings around the "Skid Road" leading at the Denny sawmill to the current flap over police "misconduct", police morale has been a reliable indicator of the level of corruption. Recently, morale has been low, which means that the crooked cops have been on the defensive.

The focus of the criminal element's displeasure has been Chief Stamper and his Senior Leadership Team -- or as the department's rank and file pronounce it, the "sluts". The criminal element seeks to embarrass Mayor Schell and Chief Stamper and appoint a new chief more favorable to the criminal business establishment. The initial approach by the opponents of police accountability was the circulation of mutinous talk regarding the "softness" of the official strategy for dealing with the demonstrators. In October at a crowd control training session, Assistant Chief Ed Joiner had answered questions about protester violence by saying that there was nothing to worry about and the protests would be non-violent. SPD Officer Brett Smith and others claim the FBI and Secret Service had briefed King County Sheriff's officers training to intervene in the protests to "fully anticipate that five to six officers would be lost during the protests, either seriously injured or killed", as Smith told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Dan Rally. When Officer Smith and others spoke with their commander about the stories coming from the King County police, they were told not to spread rumors.

It appears likely that statements predicting violent attacks were part of the Sheriff's training and it is certain that the predictions were hysterical and provocative. The success in undermining Chief Stamper's command depended on the breakdown of law and order in the streets. Whose law and what order was the question. If the Mayor and police chief could be maneuvered into declaring a civil emergency, then the regional, state and federal agencies would be able to enter the conflict and the hard-liners strategy would prevail for a while. The Battle Engaged First use of tear gas Shortly after 10 AM, the Seattle Police Department got their show on the road and began using tear gas to clear the streets.

It's still not clear if the order was issued by Assistant Chief Ed Joiner -- Chief Stamper had delegated control of WTO to him and did not arrive at the commanders' meeting until late that afternoon -- or if was a spontaneous decision made by officers in the street. Fragmentary transcripts of recently released tapes of police radio traffic have so far not cast any light on this critical question. The use of gas may have been an effort to open a pathway into the protest area from outside, as the gas was fired at on Sixth Avenue, between University and Union Streets. This is the extreme southern end of the triangular area blockaded by the Direct Action Network. The Seattle Times said "police used gas to disperse demonstrators massing". Police officials later explained that the gas was an attempt to expand and re-connect their now isolated perimeters inside the crowds.

None of these explanations makes much sense. The events surrounding the decision to use gas continue to be cloaked in confusion and controversy. Later claims that the police resorted to gas in response to widespread violent attacks and vandalism are now known to be absolutely untrue. The counter-claims that police were unprovoked and that the crowds were non-confront ive are equally untrue. The more aggressive demonstrators had moved towards the police positions and videotapes clearly show that there was no buffer space between the opposing sides in many areas. One segment aired on KIRO TV shows members of the Black Bloc confronting police and being extremely provocative, but not attacking anyone or committing vandalism.

The police view of the crowd was framed by these more aggressive demonstrators, while the vast majority of the crowd was unable to see the police and was in a giddy, triumphant mood. It will require the investigations by the Seattle City Council, the ACLU, Amnesty International and other groups to determine if the use of gas was ordered by the police command or if it was a decision made in the streets. After the first canisters were fired, the use of tear gas and pepper spray spread rapidly throughout the protest area. The crowds were now frightened and angry With the release of the gas, mood in the streets rapidly changed. The police were successful in advancing against the crowd. There were no instances where police charges were repulsed, or where the crowds counter-attacked and cut off police.

One major effort to re-open the street connecting the Paramount Theatre to the hotels moved the crowds back until running out of steam. In short, the police tactics were of limited success and ineffective. The net effect of the use of gas and the police charges was to cause the crowds to surge from one point to another without allowing police to gain control of the streets. In the midst of the melee, the "lock-down" affinity groups remained in place, blocking intersections and anchoring the protest to the area around the convention center. Police gassed and pepper-sprayed the immobile groups, but could not arrest them and remove them from the area due to the continued blockade.

These tactics were both ineffective in getting the blockaders to move and successful in infuriating the crowds who saw their main mission as the protection of these groups. The crowds were now frightened and angry, but determined to maintain control of the streets. The overall strategic situation remained unchanged, despite the tactical chaos. The protesters numbers were sufficient to keep the blockade intact, though it was now a blockade of continuous movement. The police remained isolated inside the protest area without an open avenue to the outside through which arresters could be removed. Both sides remained under the overall command of their respective strategies, regardless of the excitement.

The area involved in the disorder -- and that's what it clearly was after an hour of tear gas and chaos -- spread down Pike and Pine Streets. The protests remained centered on the Convention Center and although the crowds expanded into the surrounding blocks under the police attacks, they kept surging back towards the conference site and the "lock-down" affinity groups holding the key intersections. Floating above the tear gas was an infosphere of enormous bandwidth The cohesion of the Direct Action Network was partly due to their improvised communications network assembled out of cell phones, radios, police scanners and portable computers. Protesters in the street with wireless Palm Pilots were able to link into continuously updated web pages giving reports from the streets. Police scanners monitored transmissions and provided some warning of changing police tactics. Cell phones were widely used.

Kelly Quirk e, Executive Director of the Rainforest Action Network, reports that early Tuesday, "the authorities had successfully squashed DAN's communications system". The solution to the infrastructure attack was quickly resolved by purchasing new Nextel cell phones. According to Han Shan, the Ruckus Society's WTO action coordinator, his organization and other protest groups that formed the Direct Action Network used the Nextel system to create a cellular grid over the city. They broke into talk groups of eight people each. One of the eight overlapped with another talk group, helping to quickly communicate through the ranks.

In addition to the organizers' all-points network, protest communications were leavened with individual protesters using cell phones, direct transmissions from roving independent media feeding directly onto the internet, personal computers with wireless modems broadcasting live video, and a variety of other networked communications. Floating above the tear gas was a pulsing infosphere of enormous bandwidth, reaching around the planet via the Internet. Labor's U-turn Would police dare cancel union parade? By 11 AM, the rally at Memorial stadium had been underway for an hour. Roughly 20,000 people only half-filled the stadium. The union numbers were swelled by the anti-WTO organizations which had opted not to engage in the direct action to shut down the conference.

Environmentalists have received most of the media coverage for their participation in the labor parade, but the role of human-rights organizations, particularly those working through churches in a "faith-based" network, got even shorter shrift from the media than the unions. Human rights groups are the critical bond between labor and the left. If the labor alliance fractures, it will be along these lines, not because of any action taken by "mainstream" environmental groups. The rally at the Seattle Center represented a major turn to the left on the part of organized labor.

There will be considerable attention to how this new alliance proceeds in the coming months. Fault lines run through it in every direction, but the fact remains that when the AFL-CIO brought their national agenda to Seattle, they looked to the right and saw Pat Buchanan standing alone and without meaningful support, while on the left was a broad array of grassroots support reaching not only across America, but around the world. How this alliance proceeds will hinge on the ability of labor leaders to shift their overtly nationalist agenda to a more international viewpoint. The disorder spreading through the streets downtown was instantly communicated to the crowd through cell phones, radios and the rest of the infosphere. Behind the scenes, furious activity was taking place to prevent the parade from being canceled by city authorities.

Chaos at police command center Meanwhile, back at the police command center, Assistant Chief Ed Joiner was turning down demands from his field commanders to declare a state of civil emergency which would cancel the parade. Joiner said he overruled a recommendation by Assistant Chief John Pirak to declare a state of emergency Tuesday about 11 AM. The veto, Joiner said, was made in consideration of plans for the AFL-CIO march towards downtown. "I felt declaring a state of emergency at that time, before the march ever got under way, was going to send a very strong public message that we already had major difficulties as a city", Joiner said. Joiner's statement underscores the widespread fantasy on the part of city officials that the uproar which followed the decision to deploy tear gas was somehow a secret which they could keep. This air of unreality was demonstrated by Seattle's KOMO TV, which tried to implement a censorship policy by not covering the news as it unfolded in the streets.

KOMO has received richly deserved ridicule for their censorship of "illegal demonstrations", but the attitude was not theirs alone. Anyone with an internet connection could plug into live video and audio feeds from the street battles from the alternative media. The commercial media struggled to keep up, but was continuously hampered by their inability to understand what was going on. The whereabouts and activities of Mayor Schell and Chief Stamper continue to somewhat mysterious during this period. Given the intense concern centering on the AFL-CIO parade on the part of law enforcement officials, it is a reasonable guess that much of the mayor and chief's time between 11 AM and 1 PM was devoted to negotiations with the labor leaders. The post-WTO investigations by the Seattle City Council and the ACLU lawsuit over the constitutionality of the city's civil emergency law may lift some of the veil which currently hides this period.

The final decision was to allow the AFL-CIO parade from the Seattle Center to downtown. This sealed the fate of the street actions as a victory for the Direct Action Network. If the march had been canceled and the additional protesters had been prevented from joining in the chaos downtown, the city stood a better chance of restoring order. Instead, the strategy of using the AFL-CIO to contain and neutralize the Direct Action Network protests was drastically modified.

The city's capitulation to the protests was underscored at 1 PM by the announcement from the WTO that it was canceling the opening ceremonies. The decision by Mayor Schell and Chief Stamper to allow the march was bizarre. A December 16 story by Seattle Times reporters Mike Carter and David Postman chronicled the decision: About 11 AM, SPD Assistant Chief Pirak -- watching events unfold from the city's emergency operation center -- called Joiner at the MACC and "asked whether we wanted to ask the mayor if we wanted to declare a state of emergency", Joiner said. Despite the fact "we were getting hit with much larger numbers of protesters than we had anticipated", Joiner refused. Instead, he opted to let the AFL-CIO march proceed, a move that aimed as many as 20,000 more people toward downtown as skirmishes between police, demonstrators and anarchist vandals were escalating. Joiner believed the march would actually work in favor of his stretched police lines.

The strategy, he said, was for the peaceful march to sweep the other demonstrators into its ranks and deposit them several blocks away... toward a "dispersal point" [where] the police intended to move in behind the demonstrators and expand the perimeter around the hotels and convention center. Instead, thousands of the demonstrators turned into town and chaos ensued. "I still believe we could have controlled what we were dealing with at that time had the march turned", Joiner said. "It was not going to be clean.

It would have been messy. But I think we would have been able to open a corridor to get delegates in and out". In other words, the Direct Action Network protesters were expected to abandon the streets and leave downtown when they saw their reinforcements arrive. Assistant Chief Joiner's explanation is simply not credible, as the WTO ceremonies had been canceled before the parade began. Whatever the level of chaos and unreality at the command center, it is unlikely that anyone thought a column of twenty thousand people would march downtown and then "sweep the other demonstrators into its ranks".

Whoever was going to be gassed or pepper-sprayed in Seattle, it wasn't going to be the labor leaders Several factors affected the decision to allow the AFL-CIO parade to proceed. First of all, the police were running short of tear gas and needed time to obtain new supplies and deliver them downtown. Second, they were not prepared to arrest marchers at the Seattle Center -- due to both political and logistical reasons. If the police tried and failed to prevent the march, things would clearly take a turn for the worse. Third, if the parade was canceled, the AFL-CIO would be denied any credit for the outcome of the protests. Finally, whoever was going to be gassed or pepper-sprayed in Seattle, it wasn't going to be the labor leaders.

Greta Gaard had ridden to the rally on a labor bus from Bellingham, one hundred miles to the north of Seattle. She reports in Bellingham's Every Other Weekly that the "rainbow flag" (non-union) participants at the rally decided around noon that they were going to leave the stadium and march downtown. The word of the street battles had reached the stadium only minutes after the first gas was released at 10 AM. It took an hour before the crowd was lined up in the streets, chanting "We want to march!" The walk towards downtown was oddly quiet.

"There were no police, media or crowd-watchers in sight", wrote Gaard. "Then the answer hit me: we weren't a threat". A sheet-metal union member, Mike Ottoloino, got into a confrontation with the AFL-CIO marshals, saying, "This isn't a march, this is a parade!" As the parade arrived at 4th and Pike, AFL-CIO marshals began blocking progress towards the convention center, saying "The route has been changed. Circle around here". Police were massing several blocks away, but were not visible to the people arriving from the Seattle Center. Gaard and several thousand others turned away from the march, just in time to run into the renewed police push to move people away from the convention center.

The momentum of the thousands leaving the march and moving towards the Convention Center carried several blocks beyond the parade's pivot at 4th and Pike. Gaard and her friends found themselves at 6th and Pike, one of the most fiercely contested intersections of the battle, but temporarily an island of relative calm due to the absence of police. Behind them, the labor parade moved away from downtown and back towards the Seattle Center, unmolested by police. Though Gaard didn't know it, the unsuccessful police push was timed to herd people into the parade. However, as had been the case all day, the size of the crowds blocked movement and the police ceased advancing when the now-expanded and enlarged crowd could not fall back any further. As shown by Gaard's relatively easy progress to within a block of the Convention Center, the reinforcements strengthened the moving blockade ringing the WTO conference.

The AFL-CIO parade delivered crucial reinforcements to the protesters, instead of sweeping them out of downtown. As marchers left the parade, this completely crushed any police fantasies that the demonstrators would abandon the downtown and return control of the streets to the police. Terrain of the Battlefield A dense, hilly area The police plan to reorganize for an attempt to force the Direct Action Network protesters out of the downtown area and into the AFL-CIO parade set in motion several different actions which had a dramatic effect on perceptions of the Battle in Seattle. In order to understand how these actions converged it is necessary to step back in time to around noon, when Assistant Chief Joiner was turning down requests to declare a civil emergency and cancel the AFL-CIO parade. The repeated attempts by police to establish a perimeter connecting the hotels, the Convention Center and the Paramount Theatre were blocked all day by the numbers of the protesters. The police command retained strategic cohesion, despite the discord at the top and the chaos in the streets.

Tactical orders from the command continued to be executed by the officers in the front line at all times -- they charged when ordered and reformed after each charge. Much attention has been given to excessive violence by officers, the repeated attacks on reporters and the assault by officers on Seattle City Councilman Richard McIver. These incidents were relatively commonplace, but did not involve loss of control by the upper command. Seattle political researcher Dan Junas cites the police ability to regulate the tempo of the street battles as strong evidence that the political leadership remained in control.

"As the labor marchers approached, the police got off the gas", said Junas. The geography of the WTO conference site played a central role in determining the success of the protests. The accompanying 1996 USGS satellite photo show the field of battle and the significant features. First and most importantly, the Washington Trade and Convention Center is located on the edge of downtown. It is built over the I-5 freeway and is accessible from only two sides. As a site for a blockade, it is perfect.

The area is triangular, with the freeway side inaccessible. The Direct Action Network blockaded the area along the north and west streets. The blockade was several blocks deep and concentrated on a dozen intersections. Secondly, the sites of two major skirmishes which dominated media attention, Capitol Hill and the Pike Place Market, had nothing to do with conducting the conference or moving delegates between the Convention Center, the Paramount Theatre or the downtown hotels. Likewise, the area in which the Black Bloc vandalism occurred is outside the blockade area and not part of the streets directly connecting the Convention Center with the Westin Hotel or the Paramount Theatre. Capitol Hill and the Pike Place Market form two poles along the major axis of crowd mobility, the named streets which run northeast / southwest through the downtown.

The Market is built on a steep bluff which formed Seattle's original shoreline. The bluff forms a geographic barrier which stops all movement towards the waterfront. Capitol Hill is a dense residential neighborhood -- the densest in the city. Broadway, the main street which forms the backbone of the Capitol Hill commercial district, runs north / south along the crest. There is a steep change in elevation along Seattle's east-west axis running from the crest of Capital hill to the waterfront.

The area immediately to the north of the convention center is predominantly open parking lots and small buildings, compared to the more densely built-up downtown. To the west, the long blocks of the avenues (7th, 6th, 5th, ending in 1st Ave) in the posh section of downtown form a barrier which channels movement into a few streets (Pike, Pine, Union and University). Blockades on these streets effectively shut off the area. The east and south sides of the Convention Center are cut off by the freeway.

The geography of Seattle's downtown favors protesters To maintain effective control of the area, the police would have needed a perimeter roughly on the order of Thursday's "no protest zone". Given the decision to rely on the Seattle Police alone, this lengthy perimeter was impossible to control with 400 officers. The additional resources of county, state and federal forces would have been hard pressed to maintain such a perimeter in the face of the approximately 40,000 protesters, demonstrators and parade participants present on Tuesday. On Wednesday, these additional police forces were available and the number of protesters was approximately halved. Even with this sizable shift in the numbers on opposing sides, the police were unable to effectively control the downtown. Amidst all the criticism -- mostly coming from law enforcement agencies which failed even more disastrously than the Seattle Police Department in maintaining order -- about the police's "lack of preparedness" for the demonstrations, the larger perimeter, increased security troops and suspension of civil liberties which accompanied the mayor's declaration of civil emergency failed miserably in the face of much smaller numbers of protesters on Wednesday.

The geography of Seattle's downtown favors protesters. In the last decade, two major civil disturbances -- accompanying first the Gulf War protests and the "Rodney King" riots -- have followed much the same path over the same streets, as did the numerous protests during the Viet Nam war. Given sufficient numbers and even the most hair-brained strategy, protesters have the ability to dominate the streets of Seattle. The Generals Panic State Patrol, National Guard rushing toward Seattle at top speed From about noon on, the Multi-Agency Command Center in the Public Safety Building began filling with top-ranking officials from government and law enforcement. Federal officials were speaking loudly about the consequences of not regaining control of the streets. State Patrol Chief Annette Sandberg described the federal officials as in a "kind of panicky mode".

The decision -- never seriously questioned by those in charge -- to guarantee the AFL-CIO parade took place had several requirements attached to it. First of all, the declaration of civil emergency was already in motion. There wasn't really a question of whether it was going to happen, but only if the crackdown would catch the AFL-CIO parade before it withdrew from downtown. At 12: 45 PM, Governor Gary Locke authorized his chief of staff to begin preparing to call up the National Guard. An hour earlier, State Patrol Chief Annette Sandberg had ordered State Patrol troopers in Eastern Washington on higher alert and dispatched a 22-member Civil Disturbance Team from Spokane to drive the 400 miles to Seattle.

Traveling at top speed, they would not arrive before dark. Shortly after Locke set the National Guard in motion, his office in Olympia received a telephone call from a furious Secretary of State Madeline Albright. Albright demanded the Governor immediately take action to release her from her hotel where she was trapped by the demonstrators. The Governor would later get strong pressure from Attorney General Janet Reno to crack down on the protests. Governor Locke was able to claim that he was taking action -- preparing to call up the National Guard, moving State Patrol troops over long distances and pressuring Mayor Schell to declare a civil emergency -- but all of these things would take time. What he did not do was accept full responsibility and declare a state of emergency.

That was reserved for Schell and Stamper. Locke's staff counsel began compiling a chronology of the Governor's actions for the now-inevitable inquest. Out of tear gas SPD Assistant Chief Joiner prepared more immediate action. The police attacks on the protesters reached a peak shortly before the parade departed from the Seattle Center. According to police sources, nearly all of the available tear gas was expended before the parade approached downtown. [ ] On the police radio, one police leader reported: "We " re surrounded, we " re out of tear gas and we " re withdrawing".

In the preparations for the protest, Mayor Schell and Chief Stamper had laid in stocks of about $20,000 worth of gas. This was one-fifth the amount recommended by federal officials. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, police officers "took matters into their own hands" to obtain new supplies of gas and pepper spray. More recent information suggests that the new supplies were part of Joiner's "messy" post-parade attack plans. Things quieted down while the police organized new supplies of gas and pepper spray. Officers sped to Auburn, Renton and Tukwila police departments, as well as the King County Jail and Department of Corrections, emptying munitions stores and ferrying the supplies back to downtown.

Other officers bought additional chemical agents from a local law enforcement supply business. Meanwhile, a police captain flew to Casper, Wyoming to pick up a large quantity of gas, "stinger shells" and other paraphernalia from Defense Technology Corp., a subsidiary of Armor Holdings. The locally-obtained gas and pepper spray were driven as close to the street action as possible. The munitions were transferred into gym bags and knapsacks which were then run through the streets by plainclothes detectives One officer, told more gas is on the way, got on the radio to say: "Lieutenant, I love you now".

Other preparations did not go as well as the deliveries of tear gas and pepper spray. The declaration of civil emergency was delayed until 3: 24 PM, preventing police reinforcements from other law enforcement agencies and the National Guard from being legally deployed until long after the AFL-CIO march had withdrawn. Assistant Chief Ed Joiner's "messy" plan was also thwarted by the flat refusal of the Seattle Fire Department to turn fire hoses on demonstrators, a detail which was not reported in the press until long after the protests were over. Black Blocs Run Amok The Black Blocs were in Seattle to radicalize the protesters and discredit the AFL-CIO While the police were regrouping and preparing to force the Direct Action Network protesters to join the AFL-CIO parade, several groups took advantage of the lull in the battle.

They " ve all been lumped together into a nameless anarchist horde, but the fact remains there were two distinct groups acting out different agendas, not one "organized" anarchist conspiracy as the myth would have it. The first of these groups were the so-called "Anarchists from Eugene", more correctly known as the "Black Bloc". The media's tag-line of "Anarchists from Eugene" is one of those lazy half-truths which sums up media coverage of the entire protest. The half-truth is that people from Eugene participated in the Black Bloc, the other unreported half of the truth is that people from Seattle and the surrounding region committed most of the vandalism and nearly all of the looting. The lie was that the Eugene faction in the Black Blocs -- which numbered perhaps 40 people at most -- were responsible for the violence in the streets and that the vastly larger number of anarchists -- several thousand, at least -- participating in the non-violent demonstrations endorsed or followed the violent tactics of vandalism and property destruction which the Black Blocs committed. The message which still hasn't penetrated the media is that the Black Blocs accomplished an international coup of "culture jamming" by selectively targeting a handful of posh retailers for broken windows.

In committing this criminal vandalism, they conformed to pre-established media stereotypes of "violent anarchists" and effectively hijacked several weeks of coverage into a fantasy land which served their propaganda goals admirably. The primary target of the Black Blocs was not the WTO or the businesses whose windows were broken. The Black Blocs were in Seattle to radicalize the Direct Action Network protesters and discredit the AFL-CIO and their allies among the "mainstream" environmental groups. And that is precisely what they did -- with the significant assistance of the other wild card group, the out-of-control police who sought to escalate the violence.

Speaking on an anarchist video, "RIP WTO N 30", one masked Eugene anarchist explained targeting the non-violent protesters: "Hopefully, we can come out here and give them a shove in a little more radical direction... I'm hoping that we can come out here and get crazy and fuck enough shit up that every city in the world knows that it can't host a WTO conference. And it better give control back to the poeple of their own lives or else that city is going to get torn to pieces. After the protests, the same anarchist appeared unmasked on 60 Minutes II.

He explained the use of masks: "We want to pose a credible threat to the biggest, most powerful people in the world. And if that's the kind of work you want to dao and you want to do it over your whole life, you have to be able to keep doing your work without quickly being apprehended and being sent away to jail for a long time". It is worth noting that the police who were involved in unjustified use of force or outright criminal misconduct were also very concerned to protect the anonymity of the guilty parties. Undercover FBI agents mixed in with the anarchists At approximately 1 PM, the police temporarily stopped trying to push corridors through the protest area.

The "Black Bloc" anarchists had entered into an understanding with the Direct Action Network that they would refrain from vandalism at least as long as the protests remained peaceful. This is another way of saying that they were loosely following the lead of the DAN organizers while targeting the protesters to take the brunt of the reaction to their attacks. How loosely is shown by the fact the Black Bloc arrived downtown armed with hammers, crowbars, spray paint, M-80 firecrackers and paint bombs. Their goal was a "propaganda of the deed" centering around vandalizing chosen stores -- Nike, Starbucks, the Gap, Old Navy and others -- which they saw as fitting targets.

The Black Bloc was simply biding their time and waiting for an opportunity to vandalize these stores and then get away. They had been closely monitored by the police and FBI since the preceding day. Early Tuesday morning, the FBI had briefed Seattle Police on the Black Bloc's whereabouts and activities. The close observation of the Black Bloc included undercover FBI agents dressed to blend in with the anarchists, right down to wearing masks to hide their faces. Also present in the streets were members of the Army's Delta Force, a paramilitary counter-terrorist group, dressed in civilian clo.