Occupy Seattle: Pepper Spray, Tasers and a SWAT Team Raid
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t’s been a historic and dramatic month in Seattle at the occupy camp. There have been glorious victories and crushing defeats, amazing triumphs and grand mistakes. All in all, it’s been an amazing whirlwind of activity and suspense. Somehow I have found myself in the middle of it all, giving speeches, marching, talking to the media, occupying, reporting on events for national radio programs and dodging pepper spray. I wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world… With compelling characters like Dorli Rainy and Jennifer Fox, the story of Occupy Seattle has been a
suspense thriller from the beginning. Never sure when the next crackdown will occur, we have all been challenged to maintain our composure even while the riot cops are breathing down our necks. Just ask the 84year-old activist and the pregnant teenager who claims she had a miscarriage due to the pepper spray and they will both tell you – police often react to acts of non-violent civil disobedience as if it were dangerous criminal activity. The occupation grew to three different sites during the month of November – Seattle city hall, Westlake Park and Seattle Central Community College. Mayor Mike McGinn, in the grand tradition of Northwest politicians, adopted a typical passive aggressive stance – “I support you, but you’ve got to leave the park.” Add: “Or I will send the SPD to harass and arrest you.” The Seattle Police Department is currently the subject of a Department of Justice investigation due to allegations of racial profiling and excessive use of force. Besides harassing protesters at Westlake Park, they also decided to send in a heavily armed SWAT team carrying assault rifles to evict 16 Occupy Seattle squatters from a warehouse on December 3rd. What followed was a virtual news media black out for over twelve hours. It was spooky. As a journalist I was shocked that none of the local news media were there to cover the raid. You’d think that the TV stations would have loved to capture some exclusive footage of a paramilitary SWAT team carrying assault rifles as they climb up onto the roof of the warehouse using a Seattle Fire Dept. ladder truck. Unfortunately, there were no news cameras to document the event so it didn’t really become a big story in the local media. In fact, neither the Seattle Times
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nor the local Fox TV station answered their newsroom telephones that night. At an editorial board meeting a week later I confronted the Seattle Times editors on this lack of coverage. They had no good response except to say, “No one was available at that hour.” 16 people were arrested inside the abandoned warehouse. For some reason, Seattle Police Department charged all of the women in the warehouse with criminal trespass and “obstruction”, although the men were only charged with trespassing. Bottom line – SWAT teams were formed to deal with potentially
being threatened with arrest can attend the protests or speak with their state legislative representatives without the fear of being arrested and charged with criminal trespass. This preliminary ruling is a great victory for both the First and the Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution! As I write this the Occupy Seattle camp of 100 tents is facing an immediate eviction from the Seattle Central Community College campus where it has been located for the last month. The camp has been given a 72 hour notice to leave the property or face police enforcement of the Photo by Guitar Doug eviction. It is clear that some Occupy Seattle folks may choose not to leave the campus voluntarily – more pepper spray and arrests? Whatever happens during this most recent forced eviction, Occupy Seattle will continue to hold its open general assemblies in the park every day of the week, and we will continue to meet as working groups to promote solidarity and organizing. The next big action is planned for Dec. 12th. It will be an attempt to shut down all the major ports on the west coast of the US. Whether this will be possible in Seattle is clearly debatable, given the negative attitude of local law enforcement agencies towards the occupy demonstrations. On the waterfront, the Occupy Seattle protesters will be dealing with more than just a few disgruntled local cops. They will also be facing off with the Coast Guard, Port of Seattle police, and possibly even private security and federal law enforcement. These folks violent incidents like bank robberies and hostage situa- don’t mess around and they could make it very difficult tions. They were not intended to be used to evict nonviolent protesters! On Nov. 28th I was “detained” by police at the Washington State Capitol in Olympia during demonstrations against the state budget cuts to funding for healthcare, education, social programs and public safety. Besides using tasers on protesters to disperse the crowds, the Washington State Patrol were also banning people from the state capitol campus property and surrounding parks. None of these folks were charged with any crime, but their freedom of movement was restricted not by a judge or a jury, but by a law enforcement agency. Four WSP officers carried me out of the capitol dome rotunda that night because I refused to leave the building along with about 50 other people, including five or six news reporters. The police did not detain the corporate news reporters. However, I was arrested while wearing a plainly visible press pass. I had refused to stop reporting on the sit-in that was taking place inside the building after the capitol was closed to the public. 30 people were “detained,” a few were taken to jail and the rest of us were told we were subject to arrest for criminal trespass if we returned to the state capitol within 30 days. I found a well-established law firm and filed a and painful for the activists who converge on the port. class action civil rights lawsuit against the WashingThe Occupy movement will not disappear despite ton State Patrol for violations of my rights to freedom what some right-wing shock jocks are claiming. Millions of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of the of people around the globe are counting on the movepress. On Dec. 6th a federal judge granted me a tem- ment to speak truth to power. No matter how many porary restraining order forbidding the WSP to issue times the police raid, attack and arrest the demonstraany more trespass warnings and overturning my ban tors, the protesters will not give in to the intimidation from the state capitol. Now all of the folks who were tactics being used on them by law enforcement, city
written by Mark Taylor-Canfield officials and the news media. They will be out on the streets marching and proudly chanting, “This is what democracy looks like!” When Paul Kilpatrick, the college president, participated in our general assembly, this was my statement to him: “Participants of occupy Seattle are not only expressing our right to freedom of speech and assembly at SCCC, they are also taking care of displaced people who have been negatively impacted by the continuing cuts in social programs - including major cuts to funding for education, healthcare, social services, public transportation and public safety. These austerity measures being passed by the US Congress and by our Washington State legislature are endangering public health, safety and welfare. The failure of the global and US banking systems, and the resulting economic collapse has caused inflation, home foreclosures, high unemployment and an increase in poverty and homelessness in Seattle and throughout the nation. The failure of our local and federal governments to respond to this crisis has left most of the population feeling powerless and victimized by an unfair and undemocratic political and economic system. People in the US are looking to the Occupy Wall Street movement to give them hope that some of the changes we need to make in our economic and governing systems might just be possible, if the people are free to organize together in order to create those changes. Therefore, Occupy Seattle is an example of how people around the world are gathering together to generate new ideas, share experiences and knowledge and work towards creating a more accountable, equitable and sustainable society where every member of society has the opportunity for health, education and a sustainable income, not just the wealthiest residents of the country and the corporate interests.”
Photo by Guitar Doug
• You Tube video of MTC talking about the SWAT team raid: www.youtube.com/ watch?v=xPKk6EaNjHo of WSP using tasers on protesters: • Video www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ChngNbgkhU&featur e=related
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