It will take some time to sort out the ramifications of Seattle. The idiotic rambling of this post betrays the desperate lengths to which spin attempts to recast events. I suspect it will comfort those who need comforting - especially in a season of commodity hypnosis and comfortable stupefaction. I'm certain that many found Seattle a learning experience. Here are two lessons that were imposed on a population.
1. The power of relatively small groups (some 70 individual organizations) collectively unified for a single action can bring to general consciousness issues that had been effectively ignored or suppressed by the "establishment" media.
2. The rude awakening to many of the unleashed power of State police apparatus.
The media has spilled a lot of ink on the matter of police and the "problems of crowd control". Though an important issue, it is the iron mask that hides the true focus which should be the WTO itself - the culmination and pinnacle of global, neo-colonial capitalism.
Personally I was encouraged by many things in Seattle, not least of which was the huge numbers of young people who were quite (surprisingly) sophisticated largely due to the internet.
I left Seattle on Saturday evening. There were still a couple of hundred of us sitting in front of the jail demanding the release of fellow protestors. (they had all been booked as "John WTO"). The days headline for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was: "Summit ends in Failure. These young people can justly claim they played a part.
For those who think the police were "just doing their job" you might check out http://www.emperors-clothes.com/ - with particular attention to an observer's letter.
