on 12/8/99 8:39 PM, Bergesons at [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Many of the accounts I read in the Times or
> hear on the news make it sound like the police crackdown was only a response
> to the "violence."  YOur thoughts or observations?
Further thoughts: I frankly didn't see any police-on-droog activity
(assuming the latter stayed garbed in black, making them stand out). After
the initial droog rampage I wandered around some more and then made my way
over to 4th and Union, where yet another intersection was blocked by sitdown
protesters. The police announced that failure to clear the intersection in 2
minutes would lead to arrest. I backed away to make sure I wasn't arrested
(I have kids to pick up from school, etc.), and two minutes later came tear
gas canisters, not arrests. Their bad. That's the sequence in the website.
So by that time the police were apparently trying to take control of the
entire situation, not just the droogs. From there I could see that things
were going steadily downhill, and that once darkness fell, it would get
worse, so I left. (Also had to get kids.) I was right, but I kind of wished
in retrospect that I had stayed for the real action. It's pretty weird
seeing the streets you walk every day taken over by people you've never seen
before. But tear gas is an experience I don't want to repeat any time soon.

Anyway, my sense of the situation was that all sides were expecting a fight
of some kind (even the nonviolents), and that there was a Mexican standoff
(hope that's not unPC to anyone) until the droogs started their rampage.
Before that it was just skirmishes with protesters. After there was a kind
of cascading escalation in violence and repression.
--
Tresy Kilbourne
Seattle WA