Through the Tear Gas, We Saw Our Power

Nobody could have anticipated what happened in Seattle the week of the World Trade Organization meeting.

Because nobody can anticipate movement. On November 30, 1999, 40,000 people in the streets Seattle representing labor, the environment, and human rights, experienced the energy, the press of humanity, the exhilaration that comes when and only when organization crosses the line into movement. Nobody there will forget it.

The headlines and many of the pictures were of a small group of committed anarchists, some ignorant mischief-making kids, the riot squads, and broken windows. But the real story on Tuesday, November 30 was of disciplined, well-trained student activists who took over streets and intersections and 30,000 marching, occasionally dancing trade unionists, environmentalists, and activists whose outrage at the WTO and corporate greed, and new-found respect and affection for each other, created a tangible human energy that built with the growing awareness that we had stopped the machine for a day.

We had stopped the machine, the faceless, soulless, global monster that turns children into robots, takes jobs and futures from good people, drowns turtles, levels old-growth forests, and causes governments to oppress and repress their own people.

Together, we had shut down Seattle and the WTO.

When was the last time a major American city was shut down by the forces of social justice? When was the last time our corporate masters didn’t get their way?

We learned in our guts that day what we have been learning in our minds: child labor is directly related to prison labor, is directly related to environmental degradation, is directly related to sweatshops, is directly related to middle-class Americans forced into poverty, is directly related to an obscene income and wealth gap. And that all of us who care about each of those abuses of our planet and our people only have the power to stop it when and if we act together.

We acted together in Seattle.

We didn’t all do the same thing, but together we created a one-day movement harmony that shook a nation and maybe our world.

November 30 began at 4:00 a.m. for those of us an assignment to the AFL-CIO rally and march. We gathered at Memorial Stadium at 5:30 in drizzling, cold Seattle winter rain, hoping the numbers would come anyway.

About 9:00 we began to hear about downtown. The students were taking over the streets and intersections. The police were using pepper spray and tear gas.

Just in time for the rally — about 9:30 or so — the raining slowed, then stopped and the sun broke through.

The stadium began to fill. We knew it would hold 20,000, and it kept filling even as the speeches went on; the people kept coming, buses pouring in.

We had worried about too many speeches and too long a program. We were right to worry. Just as the stadium filled to capacity, they began to trickle out — not to go home, to hit the streets.

The Steelworkers went. Then the Longshoremen went, chanting “ILWU.” As others went, Steve Yokich of the Autoworkers said, “It’s time to march.”

The crowd began to surge, like an irresistible human wave. We struggled to hold it until we could form up the front line.

Those of us with march responsibility struggled to do our job — to create space for the march and its frontline in streets jammed with people — knowing this was much more, and much bigger, than any other labor march. We felt the power — the power of unity that I’ve talked about since the sit-in at my Georgia high school in 1972.

Labor could not have stopped the WTO that day by itself; the students were the frontline of that effort. But without 20,000 or 25,000 trade unionists filling the streets, the students and young activists would have been swept away much sooner and more viciously.

So we marched through the streets our allies occupied. They had taken the streets with civil disobedience, and they held the streets because we filled them with mile after mile of union people.

Together, we stopped them — for at least one day.

On Wednesday, December 1, we reassembled on the docks for a Steelworker rally in spite of the police and National Guard backlash. Some trade unionists wanted to show solidarity with our allies — “the kids” — and respond to the police crackdown. So we assembled, and marched back into downtown, toward the WTO at the Westin Hotel and the Convention Center, growing in size as we went, following the leadership of unionists and young activists.

The police met us just off the waterfront with percussion grenades and lots of tear gas. I had smelled tear gas the night before, as we tried to clear the union people off the streets before the police sweep.

That night I was gassed — twice. As we struggled to stay together and keep our wits amid the intentional disorientation of the police, I kept thinking that my obvious middle-age maturity meant nothing to the people behind the face shields and black garb who launched the chemicals and wielded batons.

I split off, stumbling back to the apartment, eyes and throat burning. But a critical mass stayed together until they were dispersed by the police with their chemical tools in the wee hours of the night.

But one week in Seattle, we set the agenda, we stopped the machine, and they couldn’t control the streets, nor us.

It won’t be the last time.