It wasn't a good scene, the protesters were nothing but a giant, milling mob of destruction plenty of private businesses suffered, the property damage was horrible, and many of those there for the protest weren't even from that area and didn't care about the after effects caused by the rampage. It wasn't good.
I could turn this into a long rant about protesters, and how I think most of them are just lemmings, uneducated about the subject they seem so adamant about, but, I will hold back. However, the next time you hear someone talk about the "last old growth redwood tree" ask them about the 12 thousand acres of old growth parkland they have to drive through to get to the protest site, oh, and thank them for getting my husband laid off from his great paying job because the mills closed.
Sorry, it turned into a rant anyway. I feel very strongly about some subjects, can you tell? :)
Creative Director
|
I was living in North Seattle and working in Renton at Wizards of the Coast at the time, and since the Pokemon Bucks hadn't yet hit, I didn't have a car so I was dependant on the bus to get to and from work. Normally, the bus commute to and from work was about an hour, but I do remember the ride home turning into a 4-hour adventure during that week, especailly the time where the busses weren't running downtown so I had to hoof it from the train station on the south side of Downtown to the bus stop near Denny and Aurora on the north side. During which time there was wierdly no traffic in the downtown region but there WERE a lot of soldiers with guns. It was kind of weird.
A conversation came up last night about the Battle of Seattle and I was just wondering if any of y'all happened to be in the the city when the WTO came to town? If so, anyone want to share some stories?
I was deployed with the Washington Army National Guard for the WTO riots and spent the week in Seattle guarding delegates and doing my best to keep idiots from smashing the city to pieces. We didn't carry guns. :-) The military is not allowed to police domestically (thankfully) and we were just practicing non-violent crowd control for most of the week. Most of the WTO Riots action happened on that Monday, though, and we didn't arrive until Tuesday morning. Our arrival calmed things down a bit, to say the least.
Recently, myself and two other Paizo employees (Phil and Cosmo) were extras for the filming of Battle in Seattle (the movie they're doing about it.) That was fun--though weird considering my experience. I played a riot cop and a protester in different scenes, Cosmo was a Seattle cop and a protester (and got to menace Andre3000 from Outkast), and Phil (the long-haired hippy!) was a protester both days.
...and Phil (the long-haired hippy!) was a protester both days.
I also forgot to mention that I maced Phil about 300 hundred times over the span of a morning shooting one of the scenes. Ahh, that was fun. Though the mace was fake. Phil does a good job faking pain, so if you see a riot cop spray a long-haired protester type in the face in the movie, that was Phil and me.
I lived in South Park down by Boeing Field and wasn't at all threatened by any of it. I have a friend, though, who lived downtown (right on Pine St.) and I remember calling him at work when the chaos started to see if he needed a place to stay for the night.
I guess he thought I was joking because he turned down the offer until he saw footage of the riots on the news and called me back...
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
|
A conversation came up last night about the Battle of Seattle and I was just wondering if any of y'all happened to be in the the city when the WTO came to town? If so, anyone want to share some stories?
Uh, so this is me being on the 'clueless' boat. What the hell is the WTO and what is the 'Battle of Seattle?' The posts here suggest that there was a riot in Seattle at some point (in 1999?). I didn't hear a single thing about it.
This, of course, means that my cultural isolation experiment is a staggering success.
|
Director of Narrative
|
I didn't bother reading this, so I hope it is fair in it's treatment.
I'm keeping this politics neutral, but one thing to keep in mind is that this huge protest was not all Black Bloc Anarachists and hoodlums chunking bricks. There were heaps of everyday people out there speaking their mind.
A few bad apples indeed.
|
Director of Sales
|
At the time I was sequestered in Small town, Idaho, so I was pretty well-insulated from the hub-bub. But I knew that Josh was deployed as crowd control (see above), so I was kinda worried when the evening news stopped reporting a protest and started reporting a riot.
Y'see... Josh has cool stuff. And I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get his cool stuff if he was trampled in a riot. Thankfully, he wasn't.