7:30 am, Tuesday

I show up at the WTO press office in the Convention Center to collect a ticket for the opening ceremony. There are maybe ten people in line. Someone sticks his head out the door and says that photographers don't need tickets since they won't get seats. No one leaves.

8:00
Tickets are distributed. I get #12 and head for the door. "Sorry sir, the building is locked down." Drink coffee. Lockdown is lifted. Set out for the Paramount Theatre. There are police everywhere, with helmets, walkie-talkies, some with gas masks, some with nightsticks. Some are on foot, others mounted on horses, bikes, motorcycles, some in squadcars, a few in something that looks like a toy tank. Across the entrance from the theater are several reticulated buses, parked bumper to bumper in an arc like so many covered wagonsWe gather under the theater marquee to get out of the rain. Drums throb somewhere in the wilderness behind the buses.

8:45
A Secret Serviceman in uniform announces that journalists will enter through a side door. They take ten or so of us, ask the photographers to deposit their gear inside the door, then retreat while dogs sniff and guards open everything but the cameras themselves. From there the nonphotographers are directed to the left-hand half of the upper balcony. I grab a front-row seat and admire the old, ornate building. There is a table on the stage with eight chairs behind it, then a row of a dozen seats behind that. Two giant TV screens hang above and behind the chairs. People trickle in.

9:10
Trickle still a trickle.

9:35
Maybe 30 of the 150 or so seats meant for journalists are occupied. This could take all day.

9:45
My ticket says the program is to start now. The hall is still at least 90 percent empty. A dozen or so people mill about on the stage, but I'm too far away to see who they are.

10:35
I count 40 reporters. We may be here 'til Christmas.

10:40
Reporter from the Minneapolis Star-Trib gets a call on his cellphone, announces that tear gas has been sprayed outside the Hilton and lots of delegates are trapped inside. Also says that Clinton, who was going to keynote the opening session, had postponed his appearance until tomorrow. Madeline Albright is supposed to represent the administration this morning.

10:45
A man approaches, peers at my badge, says, "Do you remember me?" I do. It's Remi Parmentier, now "Head, Political Unit" of Greenpeace, based in Amsterdam. "Don't go to sleep," he says, "we need to deliver a message." He has had phone messages indicating that delegates are bottled up in hotels all over because of the crowds in the streets.

11:05
Nearly half the reporters have bailed out. Do they know something I don't?

11:20
I wander down to the front of the balcony. Mike Moore is on stage schmoozing. Renato Ruggiero, Moore's predecessor, is down on the floor doing likewise. Remi has a plain brown sack full of "Practice Safe Trade" condoms, which I suspect he plans to shower on the delegates from the balcony. Wonder how he got them in.

11:30
A bearded man announces that they still plan to have the session today. "Thank you for your patience."

11:20
Remi's colleague from Brasil comes to my seat to report that Remi has been arrested for condom-tossing and could I help her phone an attorney. Before we get through, Remi returns, having been told he can distribute all the condoms he wants, just not via air mail.

12:20 pm
A young woman approaches the lecturn, turns on the mike (whoever is running the giant-screen monitor assumes she's official and turns it on). "I'm Medea Benjamin from Global Exchange in San Francisco. Since we're off to a slow start today, we thought we'd take the opporunity to start a dialog that should have begun years ago." Kevin Danaher takes the mike, but before he can say much, both are surrounded by security people and dragged from the stage. Remi starts chanting from the balcony "freedom of speech, freedom of speech," and is instantly jumped by five guards who take his NGO badge, give it back, search his briefcase, and march him away. "Can't I say 'freedom of speech?'" he says repeatedly, to no answer.

1:00
We give up and leave. Outside, there is a sea of people in all directions, held back by police lines. Later we learn that the opening ceremonies were cancelled altogether. Looks like they shut it down after all.

Tom Turner

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