CHARLIE KIMBER from the British Socialist Worker newspaper was in Seattle during the protests against the World Trade Organization. Here we print his eyewitness account.
The resistance to rule by the rich which the WTO symbolizes began early. From 7am onwards thousands of people were gathering around the convention centre. Many were students or green activists, or just young people who are angry at poverty and injustice and see that official politics is a farce.
By 9am there were so many protesters in the street that many delegates, including US trade representative Charlene Barshefsky, several members of President Clinton's cabinet and United National general secretary Kofi Annan could not leave their plush hotels.
Soon afterwards police fired the first tear gas. They could not clear the streets, but were beginning to clear a little of the area around the conference.
The crucial moment was arriving. Two miles away a vast trade union rally was gathering. Around 40,000 people packed into a sports stadium and the area around it. They came from 25 US states, 55 unions and over 100 countries. All around the stadium were groups of workers, dressed in their union rain-ponchos to ward off the rain.
"Nothing moves across the globe without people like us," truck driver Bud Brusa told Socialist Worker. "When I look round this stadium I can see an alternative to the global governance of the corporations."
As the march moved off towards the town centre, the battles between police and protesters around the conference centre were intensifying. "Robocop"-style police in full body armour, full face helmets and an array of riot weapons were thrown into action.
News of the repression spread through the trade union led march. Many people reacted with horror and fury.
But the trade union leaders were determined to keep the demonstration away from the convention centre. Under pressure from the police, they ordered a change to the planned route, away from the WTO summit, away from where protesters were battling police.
As the moment came to swing the march away, union leaders drew up over 100 trusted officials to channel the demonstrators down a side street. Unwillingly, hesitantly, the first group obeyed their instructions.
Then came the longshoremen. Their large contingent was packed with people who had stopped work in protest at the WTO -- 1,200 out in Seattle, a similar number at Tacomo and hundreds more at San Francisco, Los Angeles and Long Beach.
As their ILWU union section met the marshals a noisy argument began. "We're going to the convention, this ain't no token protest," shouted one crane operator. "I'm going to help those turtle-kids," said another docker.
For a minute the line of marshals held and then, slowly, it began to part. Chanting, cheering almost dancing with delight, the trade unionists swept straight on for the WTO centre. From the gas-soaked centre of town the protesters could hear the marchers coming.
Then in an electrifying moment, the two groups met.
"Union!" screamed the trade unionists. "Power!" replied the students and youth. "Solidarity! Solidarity!" they chanted together. In the centre of Seattle, by the citadels of corporate power, stood men in stetson hats and 16 year olds in black-hooded tops.
"Disperse or you will be subject to riot control measures," announced the police. Were they going to teargas the Teamsters and the steelworkers and machinists? Were they going to fire rubber bullets into a crowd which might just contain union leader James Hoffa junior and other senior figures? They were not.
They chose defeat on the day instead of risking an even wider and deeper rebellion.
For the two hours while the union-led march went past the WTO meeting, the police fired no gas or rubber bullets. They were beaten and they knew it. The WTO opening ceremony was cancelled. Delegates remained penned up in their hotels.
It was only later, as the trade unionists left, that the police unleashed their fury. Humiliated and desperate, they fired gas cannisters into the crowd. It was indiscriminate and vengeful violence. Dozens of protesters fell choking, their eyes and nose burnt by the gas and pepper spray. Others suffered wounds from the rubber bullets. Next came volleys of percussion grenades, deafening people, and then armoured cars sweeping the police forward.
In 1968 when police smashed demonstrators against the Vietnam War at the Democratic Party convention, the protesters had chanted, "the whole world is watching." Now the same chant was taken up again. Every inch of ground was contested against the police advance.
There was some damage to shops, but only those most associated with exploitation and environmental damage -- McDonalds, Starbucks coffee, Gap, US Bank and others.
"These people wreck the earth, they get debts off starving children, they make their products in sweat shops and pay their own workers piss-all. What right have they got to talk about vandalism and damage," one of the protesters told Socialist Worker.
Long into the night the gas swirled round the city. The next day it was virtually martial law, with hundreds of National Guardsmen and police reinforcements brought in to crush protest. Hundreds were arrested.
But these arrests could not hide the fact that the protesters had won, and the corporations and the WTO had lost.