Some local activists had a great idea, to hold a “Reclaim the Streets” party Saturday afternoon, along the lines of similar events in England and across the U.S.
The premise: A party, a celebration, an outdoor rave of sorts (albeit without a DJ booth) in a big public place, unauthorized and unofficial.
The justification: The streets, and the city, belong to the citizens, not to politicians or cops or retail chains.
The organizers wanted the event to be a celebration, not a protest. Instead of complaining about society, attendees were asked to make positive statements about creating a new world without cars or malls or dumb laws.
But that was enough of a premise to draw the usual protest infiltrators from the Revolutionary Communist Party and other bands; plus individual marchers who believed in taking any opportunity to call attention to fervently believed-in causes (Mumia Abu-Jamal, police brutality).
And, natch, it was enough to draw great phalanxes of cops (who, at one point near the event’s end, may have outnumbered the participants).
There were cops in riot gear, cops on bicycles, cops on horses, cops in cars, and cops in a big van. There were lines of cops guarding the Convention Center, a Starbucks, the new Hyatt Hotel, and Pacific Place.
There were pepper-sprayings; there were cop horses sticking their heads out at protesters. There were an estimated 18 arrests (almost 10 percent of the marchers).
“Rioting” on the protesters’ side, meanwhile, was limited to just a couple of hammered-at windows at the Gap and Banana Republic, which attracted the extended gazes of the TV news crews, which were apparently out to tell a violent-assault-and-righteous-retribution story no matter what the real situation was.
So why the heavy police over-reaction?
It’s been pretty obvious these past few weeks that Mayor Paul Schell, heavily trailing in the polls for his re-election bid, has been staging silly PR stunts to make him look better in the public eye. The amassing of all those cops (clearly instructed to protect private property above all other priorities, just as they were at Mardi Gras) may have been, at least partly, a show intended to make weekend downtown shoppers believe Schell’s finally got his act together.
And what of the event itself? How could it have more effectively communicated its message and attracted a larger, more diverse set of supporters?
The “Reclaim the Streets” ideology, borrowed whole from out-of-town and out-of-country events (the first was a protest against a British highway project), wasn’t specific to the particular situation of downtown Seattle (or even of U.S. big-city downtowns in general). There are already lotsa Northwesterners who like to live and play where there aren’t malls or cars; these people are sometimes called exurbanites or backpackers. People who’ve chosen to live in town have often done so because they enjoy the bustle and the excitement. A New-New Left celebration in Seattle ought to welcome those who actually like city life, inviting them to help try and take charge of how their city develops.
(Of course, that means it would also have to be inviting toward older people, nonwhite people, non-vegans, and people who don’t necessarily enjoy wearing face bandanas.)
