Worldwide anti-WTO solidarity

Seattle wasn’t the only city where world citizens protested the WTO on Tuesday. The Observer’s far-flung correspondents report that in Berlin, hundreds marched in the cold and mockingly displayed banners calling for more order, more police, more security, and "wealth for eels" (in the German, a pun on "wealth for all.") Deep in the heart of Texas, which is almost a foreign country, more than 1,000 protesters marched in Austin. And in Amsterdam, a group of protesters went to the airport and very politely asked Northwest Airlines, a sponsor of the WTO Ministerial, to fly them to Seattle so they could take part in the negotiations. You mean that’s not what "sponsor" means?

That’s the whole point

The Observer finally got a chance Wednesday to visit parts of Seattle that were not (as the local news media put it) "under siege," and found that outside the city’s center you’d hardly know that international headlines were being made downtown. After a rainy Monorail ride we found the Seattle Center almost deserted, except for a group of senior citizens attending their weekly waltz party. A fast-food server spotted our protest buttons, however, and offered a take on the demonstrations we hope is not widely shared among the citizens of Puget Sound: "Hey, those protesters should be grateful they’re not in China. The police would have killed them there."

Let’s get our priorities straight

The military presence downtown Wednesday inconvenienced lots of Seattleites who were just trying to go about their daily routine. It was frustrating and baffling to find that, for example, you could walk south from the intersection of Fifth and Spring, but then couldn’t turn around and go back the way you came. One local was observed pleading with a member of the National Guard: "I just want to go in that coffeehouse right there. I need my espresso." After the guardsman politely but firmly refused, the caffeine-deprived citizen walked away muttering, "In Seattle, it takes the National Guard to keep us from our coffee."

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