December 15, 1999
Published by the kind permission of the author. Paul Lehto is an Everett, Washington attorney (just north of Seattle) who owns his own small law firm and practices in the area of business law and business litigation.
The view from the 'front lines' here at the Battle of Seattle is one of contrast, between what everyone who was there saw with their own eyes, and what the media actually reported and continues to report.
I was there, so I know and saw. Yet, I feel oddly condemned to take these "secrets" of Seattle to the grave with me, even if I screamed them at the top of my lungs. The reason I feel so odd about this is because of the huge gap between what the media is telling everyone, and what really happened down there. The media tends to insulate people against the truths I am about to say, which will probably create some real dissonance for you, as they do for me.
To start, as with any story or court trial about an assault, a fight or a "battle", the paramount question is "Who struck first?" This chronology of what came first and what came second establishes who the aggressor was and who acted in self-defense, or at least acted out of anger at being attacked. Isn't this the most key question in covering the "riot" in Seattle?
Despite the key importance of chronology in events of this type, the media refuses to report the central key truth of Seattle: There was no significant property damage until after the police starting gassing and clubbing at around 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, November 30. Literally the only allegation of property damage or any type of violence up to that time is eight tipped-over newspaper boxes, which were then used as street drums without damaging them permanently.
Also totally missed is the fact that when tear gas, rubber bullets and clubs are used without provocation, it causes a riot virtually 100% of the time, because there will always be a few among the thousands of angry people pissed off enough to fight back. Also ignored is the fact that tear gas should never be used unless it is clearly avoiding some type of greater violence or greater problem, given that with such tactics there is a 100% chance of a very high rate of "collateral damage". Also papered over is that tear gas and pepper spray are illegal chemical weapons under applicable international law, because the only difference between lethality and nonlethality of tear gas is the concentration of the dose.
In a nutshell, what really happened in Seattle is that police gambled with tens of thousands of lives because they were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of protesters, and the protesters were winning. Until the police decided to start gassing early Tuesday morning, the headlines would have been "Protesters Succeed in Public Vow to Shut Down WTO Peacefully, Police Totally Unprepared Despite Many Assurances Beforehand". As soon as police decided not to arrest but rather to gas and start a riot, the headlines became "Vandals Riot in Seattle". Only the gassing and rubber bullets created the chaos, energy and anger for the vandals to do their work, and the crowd energy sufficient for a handful to riot despite the best efforts of peaceful protesters and the lack of any effort by the cops to stop them. Kudos to the police for effective spin and headline control!
The second main problem with media coverage is equating property damage with violence against people administered by the police. While a small fraction of the police attacks and beatings were shown on local and national media, these are always objectively described, as perhaps is appropriate. However, when it comes to merchant losses from broken windows or a shut-down city, the media coverage is sustained and empathetic, exhorting shoppers to come downtown as an expression of community pride and patriotism, to "reclaim the city" as it were. The local "heroes" have been those who have helped restored merchants to profitability, while those who helped even "innocent" injured shoppers (by implication are peaceful protesters "guilty"?) are not subject to any significant mention at all. The Seattle Times dropped its objectivity again on December 14 to put in a full page ad thanking all of those who cleaned (OK) or shopped (what?) to help downtown recover, with the Seattle Times signing off ON BEHALF OF all of downtown Seattle.
The net effect of these media biases is political polarization, with tens of thousands of eye witnesses (along with perhaps hundreds of thousands of their friends and family members) having their eyes opened to the stunning corporate bias of the media and the willingness of the system to use violence against people to insure that meetings of the WTO may continue without a hitch, rather than following the normal script of civil disobedience and making mass arrests, leaving everyone safe and happy. The other side of this polarization are all of those who have received only media input, and therefore think there were general riots in Seattle that the police had to do their level best to put down at significant risk to their personal safety, and that if there were excesses that's perhaps excusable given the heat of the moment.
But instead of concentrating on further media deceptions, let's get down to some of the substantiated (but not yet proven in a court of law) incidents that happened in Seattle. So, here is what the ACLU (in part) is suing about, and what Amnesty International is investigating for "widespread human rights violations" in the Battle of Seattle: (This information is taken from over fifteen hours of testimony so far before the Seattle City Council about police abuses and brutality):
1. Of 120 people who spoke in the first 8 hours of testimony, 117 spoke against the police's actions, and three in favor.* The one police officer who spoke got on TV asking for "compassion" for officers, and the media reported that "most" were against the police while "some" were in favor, then cut to the actuality of the police officer talking and asking for compassion.
2. Detailed testimony was given about torture techniques designed to leave no marks (but did anyway) on the hands of up to a dozen jailed demonstrators, involving use of a pencil and bending the fingers. Amnesty International is involved. This is covered only in passing as "allegations about jail mistreatment".
2. Testimony from MDs providing expert testimony that symptoms of protesters like immediate out of cycle menstruation, diarrhea and others were consistent with acetylcholine esterase inhibition, a kind of nerve agent/action not possible with tear gas, pepper spray and OC gas.
The media here sat on this information for over two days, then led with a headline and lead story that "police deny gas rumors as nonsense'" and interviewed OTHER doctors and hospitals besides the treating doctors who denied treating any such symptoms in order to create the impression that no such incidents occurred. Some unmarked gas canisters have been sealed for testing in a lab.
3. Testimony of two miscarriages caused by unprovoked police violence, including one physical assault and another from gas and pepper spray. In one very emotional case, a man called into local talk radio, growing from emotional to finally weeping about how they emerged from a downtown hotel they worked at (which he did not want to name) and were immediately attacked by police with clubs and fell down face first, causing his wife seven stitches, and a miscarriage at four months of pregnancy. It was an incredibly emotional phone call. The right-wing talk show host simply said sorry in an unconvincing way, and then cut to a commercial. When they came back, he had the manager of the Sheraton Hotel (remember, he refused to say which of twenty downtown hotels he worked at before he hung up crying) to deny he had heard any such rumors at work. The talk show host then stressed that this was an entirely unconfirmed report and "as you can see" the manager of the Sheraton has "not heard anything". It is telling however, that the caller made no political statements, he merely wanted to deny the oft-repeated statement that there were "no serious injuries" in Seattle.
4. Incredibly disturbing video of huddled protesters in the fetal position being attacked by numerous police officers with batons, one pulling a protesters head back in order to spray pepper spray directly in his eye, making him writhe in incredible pain, hands squeezing his head like he was trying to pull his own head off.
5. Testimony that virtually the only businesses damaged were targeted multinationals, yet the media coverage, and even Clinton himself, bemoaned all the property damage to "downtown SMALL businesses". Despite only windows being broken and two stores looted, damages are inexplicably pegged at $3 million for property damage alone, and $20 million for sales losses.
6. Hundreds of cases of jailed demonstrators being denied food, water, medicines, their legal right to counsel, being stripped and humiliated in front of people of the opposite sex, and being strapped into restraint chairs for refusing to give any name other than "Jane WTO" or "John WTO".
7. Refusal of the city attorney, Mark Sidran, to negotiate in good faith with attorneys for the demonstrators or to recognize that a "no-protest zone" is based on the content of speech and therefore prima facie unconstitutional. People were harassed even at Seatac airport for carrying anti-WTO signs, which were forbidden by a newly created unconstitutional rule, the only purpose of which would seem to be to keep protesters out of the sight of delegates from the WTO.
In this testimony totaling now over 15 hours on two occasions (with a third planned), the crowd and even council members were moved to tears, many, many times by very credible stories. Yet the media persists in doling out "feel good" media, perhaps so that people can continue to have confidence in the "justice" of their community here. But other explanations, including the identities of the corporations that pay the advertising fees of the media are also compelling. As one person testified, the US media doesn't need censorship because it censors itself. The mainstream media not only will not attack its own clients, it will actively protect them, and even drop all pretenses of objectivity to urge all shoppers downtown to restore the multinationals there to their normal profitability while leaving injured people to normal dispassionate journalism.
As further evidence, 60 Minutes II on Tuesday, December 14 did a piece on how the Eugene anarchists wanted to go back to nature in small eco-villages, but said the anarchists were also incredibly violent, including hard to get (hmmm....) sustained close-ups of anarchists in Oregon with large rocks in their hands behind their backs. Emphasizing the danger of this movement 60 Minutes said was "growing" were incredulous reactions from the 60 Minutes interviewer when he was told that at one point the police retreated "for their own safety" from a "mob" of anarchists.
This fear of anarchists might be attributed to regular TV sensationalism except that it was followed immediately after by an article on the Khmer Rouge "getting away with killing 1.7 million people" in the name of back to the land and small eco-villages. Thus, the purpose of the interviewer's earlier question to the Eugene anarchists of whether Ted Kazcynski's actions could ever be morally justifiable (the anarchists were split) became more clear. While never explicitly argued, the inference is clear to the viewer of average intelligence: The environmental movement's ultimate goal could be genocide since it puts nature above property and ultimately above people. But 60 Minutes need not defend this gross distortion and smear of the entire environmental movement because it never "said" this, right?
Meanwhile, off duty police officers rallied last Friday in Seattle and, in effect, demanded the deference to which they are normally entitled, based on their hazardous service to the community. The lead for this story in the Seattle Times was that "an endless stream" of people thanked the officers for their work, even though TV pictures showed there was never more than several hundred people in the Westlake Center area and that included the counter-demonstration against the police officers. The media has never mentioned that Seattle's brave and wonderful firefighter's union refused many requests to come in and use their hoses against the nonviolent peaceful protesters. Let's give respect when and where respect is due, and I'll be the first to praise police when they go in, without riot gear of any kind, and catch a murderer.
[12/20/99 - On December 18, a WTO poll taken by Elway Research in Seattle AFTER all of this media disinformation found that the total number of people who either approved or strongly approved of those protesters who took part in planned demonstrations was HIGHER than those who approved or strongly approved of police performance. Yet, despite this "man bites dog" result where demonstrators get higher approval than police, KIRO TV totally ignored that and simply reported that "police get high marks and the mayor gets low marks" in handling of the WTO protests. The Sunday Seattle Times (December 19, 1999) did report the higher marks for protesters but buried it in the article. Despite the fact that fully 56% of all people surveyed said the police "overreacted" in clashes in the Capitol Hill area, and fully 31% said the police overreacted and went too far generally, this is nevertheless reported as "high marks" for the police.]
Clearly, there is tremendous energy here in Seattle and a new movement is brewing. It appears, even to the Seattle Times & Post-Intelligencer editorialists, that a worldwide movement is in the works against the WTO and corporate domination. Yet, only three weeks ago, in my last pre-WTO political act, I gave a small contribution to John McCain to help his campaign against Bush and to honor of his stands for campaign reform and the environment. I would have called myself an inactive, moderate progressive who would ultimately vote Democratic in the presidential election.
But now, having seen with my own eyes what happened in Seattle I have to reassess. And it appears from here that there is a movement, that there is a corporate media bias, and that they are running scared but still "on message", and that they are willing to distort the news as much as necessary to keep the advertising clients of the mainstream media in control, printing serious allegations only in the form of denials, so as to avoid charges of censorship but keep the real facts from having any power. And the battle started in Seattle has only begun.
[12/18/99 Update: More media distortion. KIRO-TV did a piece on Independent Media Center's release of an hourlong documentary on the Battle in Seattle. KIRO stated that the video was a "political viewpoint" the activists wished to disseminate (how is this different from KIRO-TV?). They then showed only a few very brief excerpts out of context, including the comments of a person named WarCry with a mask on, and an indymedia cameraman/reporter suggesting to a WTO delegate that some feared the fascism of WWII was making a comeback, to which the WTO delegate simply laughed and dismissively walked away. Out of context and in the safety of their living rooms, Americans would likely conclude such a charge of fascism to be a significant stretch. Yet, the ten seconds of the WTO delegate's interview just before that 3 second exchange showed empty streets under martial law and the only vehicle present is a metro bus with every seat filled by armed riot police (!) in full black body armor driving by. The public reaction at showings of the film by the Independent Media Center was to laugh at the WTO delegate for denying the signs of fascism and control right in front of his face, but the KIRO version suggests that people laugh at the the exaggeration of the indymedia reporter for his out-of-the-blue charge of fascism, confirmed by the businessman/delegate's dismissive laughter. It's a rare opportunity to see exactly what is cut and left on the TV's editing room floor. ]
* 150 people signed up, but apparently only 120 spoke, thus explaining the discrepancy between the overall numbers reported in my letter of 12/9/99 and this article.
Published in the Jackson Progressive by the kind permission of the author. Reproduction for noncommercial purposes is hereby authorized, provided credit is given.