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few blocks away. I grabbed the only empty stool
next to a long haired steelworker I ordered a bud,
and lit a camel, the steelworker bummed a smoke,
and told the bartender to put my beer on his tab.
We talked. I bought the next round. The
bartender’s tee-shirt said “Five Comers Cafe;
Alcoholics serving alcoholics since 1929.” and he
said the place was open 24 hours a day. Yep, my
kind o f place. By then it was dark outside and the
television told us the Mayor had declared a ‘civil
emergency’ and placed a 7pm curfew on the
downtown area, which included the Five Comers. 1
check the clock, quarter to seven. Someone asked if
we got free beer under marshall law, the answer was
no. People started finishing their drinks and heading
for the door, saying they might as well go home and
watch it all on television
I followed and headed towards the Seattle
Center on my way to Queen Anne Hill where I was
hoping to meet the folks who had offered a couch
for the night. A young woman approached and
asked if I knew how to get to the Labor Temple. I
explained that it was downtown and that downtown
was under a curfew. She said she had to meet her
friends to get a ride to the airport to catch her flight
back to Massachusetts, where she was studying
labor law or something. She said her Union had paid
her way to Seattle, and she’d had a great time but
she had to get home. I couldn’t think o f any way to
help her except maybe help her find a phone to call
her friends. I offered to escort her to the
neighborhood McMenimim’s so she could use the
phone and I could meet my friends. She, perhaps
wisely, perhaps foolishly, decided to take her
chances downtown alone in the night. 1 hope you
made it home safely, Pilar.
The rest o f my stay I kept away from
downtown, visiting friends, buying books, and
talking to people about what was happening. An
elderly woman at the bus stop, who didn’t like the
violence at all; an early morning bartender in
Ballard who said when he’d talked to folks about
whether they were going to protest or not, the ones
that were definitely going to were the ones who
knew the least about the WTO; a guy on the bus
said he thought the cops should have used firehoses
instead o f tear gas and rubber bullets, “It’s safer, it’s
cheaper, it’s more effective, especially in Seattle in
November, and you clean the streets at the same
time.” I think that guy should be Mayor.
So, all in all it was an experience that I
will always remember, a historic moment, a shift o f
power that will be felt for decades to come. There
was little actual violence considering the forces
arrayed against each other. One tragic story I heard
was o f a woman who miscarried after being tear
gassed. The estimates o f damage done were $2
million dollars, and $20 million irt revenue lost. And
the WTO left town without doing what they had
gathered to do, which was to make the world safe
for corporations to pollute the planet, exploit
children, and undermine democracy.
I was listening to KMUN when I got back
and Dave Ambrose was speaking to a woman who
had interviewed delegates to the WTO, and she had
asked several what they thought about the
demonstrations. A delegate from France said he was
surpised that so many Americans would actually
take to the streets. A South African delegate echoed
these sentiments and allowed as it reminded him o f
the days when he demonstrated against apartheid.
And it has been said that when the African and
Caribbean and Pacific delegates stopped the show
by refusing to accept certain agricultural and fishing
rules, they were encouraged by seeing so many
Americans who were willing to stand up to the
WTO.
So, did we stop the WTO? No, they are still in
business. Do we need treaties on global trade? Yes,
but they need to be written by the people not the
corporations. And until the people have a place at
the table, they will be in the streets. Is this fun or
what?
cordon and tried to prevent
vandalism by this group.
As it
happened, there were no police in
the area.
Later reports of this event
left out the attempts of the
protesters to stop the vandalism.
Today, reports of this event claim
that vandalism was done by part of
the protest group!
And Watt sent us this story from a woman
nam ed S tarh aw k ....
Vision and Spirit:
The action included art, dance, celebration,
song, ritual and magic. It was more than a protest; it
was an uprising of a vision of true abundance, a
celebration of life and creativity and connection, that
remained joyful in the face of brutality and brought
alive the creative forces that can truly counter those of
injustice mid control. Many people brought the strength
of their jiersorial spiritual practice to the action.
I saw Buddhists turn away angry delegates with
loving kindness. We Witches led rituals before the
action and in jail, and called on the elements of nature
to sustain us. I was given Reiki when sick and we
celebrated I ianukafi with no candles, hut only the
blessings and the story of the struggle for religious
freedom. We found the spirit to sing in our cells, to
dance a spiral dance in the holding cell, to laugh at the
hundred jietty humiliations the jail inflicts, to comfort
each other and listen to each other in tense moments, to
use our time together to continue teaching and
organizing and envisioning the flourishing of this
movement. For me, it was one of the most profound
spiritual experiences of my life.
I'm writing this for two reasons. First, I want to
give credit to the DAN organizers who did a brilliant
and difficult job, who learned and applied the lessons of
the last twenty years of nonviolent direct action, and
w ho created a powerful, successful and life-changing
action in the face of enormous odds, an action that has
changed the global political landscape and radicalized a
new generation. And secondly, because the true story of
how tliis action was organized provides a powerful
model that activists can learn from. Seattle was only a
beginning. We have before us the task of building a
global movement to overthrow corporate control and
create a new economy based on fairness and justice, on
a sound ecology and a healthy environment, one that
protects hum an rights and serves freedom. We have
many campaigns ahead of us. and we deserve to learn
the true lessons of our successes .
Your beloved editor spent most o f his day
walking and watching people and talking to people
and generally trying to feel the energy so 1 could
describe it to you Words don’t make it. The only
thing comparable to the streets o f Seattle on
Tuesday, Nov. 30, 1999, is standing on the rocks at
Silver Point in a full gale. Watching the Ocean
crash and surge, the energy burst and flow is the
closest I can come to what it looked like. There
were so many things to see: like a guy in a long
yellow convertible, with a “Hemp Racing Team”
sign on the door, being followed by twelve,
count’em, twelve motorcycle cops, who were all
laughing.
Finally, after marching for miles, and beinj
tear gassed, it was time to find a friendly bar. You
could tell the friendly bars, there were protest signs
stacked outside. Five Comers Café sits in the
shadow o f the space needle, out front is the statue
of Chief Seattle, signs with Steelworkers slogans
were stacked out front, the sign on the front door
said; “Smokers welcome, Non-smokers beware.” It
looked like home to me The jukebox was blasting
and the tv above the bar was showing the action a
1^
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VicroRia Swppwllo
Happy Christian New Year
1 heard a radio personality wish the
listeners “ Happy Christian New Year" and
chuckled at my own surprise and then realization
that, yes, it is only Christians or people living
in cultures dominated by Christianity, that
celebrate the beginning o f the New Year on
January I. Other faiths have other calendars:
there's a Jew ish New Year, a Muslim New Year
and a Buddhist New Year, which we Americans
generalize to "Chinese" New Year, even though
lots of other Asian people celebrate new year at
roughly the same lime.
It was pointed out to me that Catholic
Pope Gregory decreed the new year would begin
ten days alter the w inter solstice, just enough o ff
the pagan observation o f the beginning o f the
new cycle to confuse the rest o f us. The other
calendars, o f course, arc a lot older, including the
Jewish, Chinese, and Mayan. This would be
5760 in the Jew ish system and the new year
would begin in the month o f Tishrei, close to the
time the first rains arrive in Israel's fall.
I got interested in calendars last year
when 1 heard that the US was hurry ing up to
bomb Iraq before the beginning o f Ramadan. 1
vaguely remembered that Ramadan was a period
similar to Christian Lent, a time o f self-denial,
prayer, and assessment o f one's spiritual
condition. 1 assumed that Ramadan floated on the
calendar similar to Lent— but I was slightly, but
not all, w rong. Ramadan is actually the ninth
month in the Islamic calendar. During that
month, devout Muslims fast between daw n and
sunset. L uckily most Muslims live in the
northern hemisphere and last year, Ramadan
occured during the northern hemisphere's w inter,
so the days were short and the period o f fasting
each day wasn't as long as it would have been if
it occurred near summer solstice. The Iraqi people
have enough hardship as it is.
Both the Jewish and Islamic calendars
are sensible, I think, in that instead o f an
arbitrary' set o f days and months, they follow the
lunar cycle. There's a connection between these
lunar calendars and our own, ever so obscure.
This attending to the moon as a source o f human
lim ing, is also part o f a very Christian holiday. I
always wondered why Easter floats around,
confusing me about the time o f spring vacation.
Turns out that Easter has pagan roots— it is
celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full
moon after spring equinox. Very handy for early
Christians who were probably necessarily mobile
and didn't carry a lot o f stuff with them, certainly
not written calendars. Can you imagine a day-
timer written on stone tablets? Nah, they
probably would have used hemp or papy rus, like
the Dead Sea Scrolls.
These lunar based, seasonal approaches
to counting time arc so much more sensible.
W ith a husband like mine, who is a stargazer and
sun worshipper, Easter is an easy Sunday to peg.
He always knows, not only when equinox gives
us days and nights o f equal length, but also
roughly w hat phase the moon is in —certainly
the day o f the full moon every month. You can
have a sense o f the "month" by paying attention
to the moon phase, the angle o f the sun, and the
condition o f the landscape, whether draped with
rotting leaves or sprinkled with fresh green buds.
Just tunc in to the natural cycles. But we couldn't
sell a lot o f calendars i f we did it that way. Plus,
that ancient pope may have had some political
agenda that would be served by this arbitrary
calendar—or perhaps he was merely a Virgo like
me and wanted to tidy up our sense o f time. M y
hunch is that it was one more way the clergy
could have a distinctive role in the congregation;
most people couldn't read and if timing were
based on arbitrary rather than natural cycles, that
was one more reason to consult your clergyman.
So, as we approach the end o f a century
and a millennium, according to our "Christian"
calendar, people scurry around, as in the year 999
and worry about the end o f the world as we know
it. Many o f us arc concerned about what end o f
century disruptions w ill occur, especially those
generated by our computer dependent,
technological society. Ah, well, not even all
those things w ill create a problem. This time
IB M failed us. I f we ran everything on
Macintosh, things would be just fine. Apple
computers arc set up with a whole different
system o f tim ing and won't turn toes up until
2034.
Victoria Sloppiello is a w riter living in Ilwaco,
at the lower le/l corner o f Washington State.
P.S. This piece was written to poke fun at our
millcnial fever and cultural biases, but a very
serious correspondent in Naselle has pointed out
several historical inaccuracies; i f you want to
know more, contact me.
ANTHONY STOPPIELLO
"A clever man commits no m inor blunders."
- Goethe (1749-1832)
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