TWO POLICE PROFESSIONAL-ASSOCIATION GUYS wrote a Seattle Times op-ed piece last week, asking Seattle Mayor Paul Schell to step down.
They said Schell’s handling of the World Trade Organization convention, the protests against it, and the police response to the protests was all wrong.
So far, I’ve no disagreement. But then these two go on to explain how and why they think Schell failed. They apparently believe the Schell-led police response wasn’t brutal enough.
No, no, no!
The cops, and the rent-a-cops trucked in from other jurisdictions (whether or not Schell was still in full control of their actions by then, which remains to be investigated), first “did nothing,” or at least very little, to the strategic vandals and random looters. Then, as if by excuse, they spent the following three days tear-gassing and pepper-spraying everybody in sight, as far as a mile or more away from the convention site.
Then, just to show himself to be even more afraid of people and of public life, Schell canceled the Seattle Center New Year’s Eve. (The free, public New Year’s Eve, that is; $50-$150-and-up events elsewhere in town went on, as did the public bashes in Tacoma, NYC, Jerusalem, Belfast, etc.).
In the days after this decision, his excuses for it got ever lamer, to the point where he actually proclaimed himself to not be a wuss.
As my mom always said, if a boy thinks he has to tell you how tough he is all the time, it just shows he’s the real weakling.
Schell did indeed botch the WTO-protest response. But that response was excessively, not insufficiently, forceful. And it was an over-reaction to the results of the municipal power structure’s own narrow vision. Everybody knew there were going to be self-styled anarchists showing up here. It was all over the TV news in the weeks before WTO.
But Schell’s bureaucrats might not belong to “everybody.” Knowing their heavy upscale-baby-boomer makeup, they could very well be part of that certain subculture that only listens to NP-fucking-R and only reads the New York-fucking-Times.
But even if they’re not extreme, Schell and his minions are definitely Out Of It.
They’re near-quintessential Pro-Business Democrats. They’re so concerned with placating downtown chain stores, condo developers, and the affluent that they not only don’t care about the under-50-grand-a-year folks, they seem to actually wish we no longer existed.
But I’d hate for any potential Schell recall movement to degenerate into a two-sided battle between the elitist Democrats he represents and the demoagoguian Republicans the aforementioned police-association men represent.
If there’s something more dangerous than leaders who only listen to NPR, it’s leaders who only listen to Rush Limbaugh and company.
MONDAY: If dot-com hype can fade away, can cyber-futurist hype do the same?
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