WTO protests may become annual tradition

Last week, some 48 hours before protesters danced on Seattle streets or clashed with police, Chris Cain walked into the Parks Administration Building trailed by journalists and a man dressed in a 10-foot-tall Statue of Liberty costume.

Once inside, Cain quietly gave a stack of applications to a man sitting behind his desk. The applications, a dozen in all, sought permits so that Cain and others could gather at Westlake Park.

But the event had wider implications than met the eye: Not only was Cain applying for permits for this year, but he was asking to gather in the park on Nov. 30, 2001, as well.

Yes, the demonstrations, the wildly entertaining street theater, the violent clashes between protesters and police during the World Trade Organization conference could become an annual event here -- Seattle's way of ushering in the holiday season.

"We will be back year after year," Cain warned, "until the problem is solved."

Seattle, of course, would not be the first city to see such acts of civil disobedience or public violence or gatherings of the masses commemorated.

Consider the streets of Detroit.

On Oct. 30, 1984, arsonists first set fire to hundreds of buildings around the city. The police vowed to put an end to the mayhem, and that, some say, assured that the fires on "Devil's Night" would become an annual tradition.

Or talk to police and bar owners in the Midwest, particularly in the city of Carbondale, Ill.

For years now, the state's most raucous Halloween celebrations have unfolded on Carbondale's streets.

This Halloween weekend, more than 2,000 revelers marked the holiday by clashing with police, leading the City Council there to crack down on bars and keg sales during the last week of October.

Or visit the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala.

On a Sunday afternoon on March 7, 1965, during the height of the civil rights movement, John Lewis led 600 people over the rusty, gray span.

Alabama state troopers and sheriff's deputies had been waiting, and they attacked the group, fracturing Lewis' skull and beating others bloody.

Later that month, 25,000 people from across the country marched across the bridge, prompting the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Each year, thousands turn out to remember "Bloody Sunday" by crossing the bridge, which spans the muddy Alabama River.

Rose White was among the original 600 "foot soldiers" who marched across the bridge 35 years ago. Today, her picture hangs in the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute in Selma.

"I'm glad people come back every year," she said. "I think it's very important to keep the memories alive.

"When people cross the bridge, it shows that things can change, that things can better."

But Jeffrey St. Clair, who co-authored a book on the WTO riots, "5 Days That Shook the World, Seattle and Beyond," thinks that the real meaning behind the protests will be lost if demonstrators return year after year.

"The 1999 version was definitely one of those, where-were-you-when moments," St. Clair said. "People will never recapture the feeling on the streets in 1999, no matter how much everyone wants to.

"And the real danger in trying to relive something like that is it can become a Woodstock kind of event," he explained. "It's drained of all its political meaning."

If Mayor Paul Schell is concerned about demonstrators making an annual pilgrimage to Seattle, he surely isn't showing it.

"That's OK," Schell said last week. "That's what makes a city a city."

The mayor also pointed out that the city learned a lot from the riots that took place on the city's streets in 1999. This time, the Police Department was more prepared.

But what would happen if another mayor is suddenly faced with protests?

In Detroit, the "Devil's Night" fires dropped from nearly 300 in 1984 to 61 in 1995. But in 1994, firefighters struggled with 182 blazes. That year, a new mayoral administration dealt with its first Devil's Night.

Back in Seattle, protesters seem intent on keeping the spirit of the demonstrations alive.

Last Thursday, for example, as scores of protesters confronted police at Westlake Center, a young activist persuaded about two dozen people to disperse.

He urged them to remember the past as well as the future.

"We will march down to the Labor Temple," the activist said through a bullhorn, "where we will celebrate last year's victory, this year's victory and next year's victory."

But St. Clair, the book author, just doesn't see it happening.

"The protests in 1999 were great," he said. "But now, the real work isn't out on the streets, it's in political organizing.

"It's good to have a continuity of protests, but protests for the sake of protests are self-defeating. You run the real risk of having people hurt or thrown in jail. And what are you gaining by that?

"The coherent message or objective in 1999 was to shut down the WTO, and people met that objective.

"Can they do that again?" St. Clair asked. "Probably not."

Assistant metro editor Mark Waligore can be reached at 206-448-8217 or markwaligore@seattle-pi.com

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