"The range of abuses intentionally committed against nonviolent protesters suggest that Schell is too unfamiliar with the First Amendment--too incapable of coping with its expression--to be fit for public office .... Get Schell out. Now." -- ETS!, 12-8-99

I was rather surprised and disappointed last year that more political attention was not focused on the role of Seattle Mayor Paul Schell in the aftermath of the anti-WTO protests. Protesters seemed to focus on the police themselves; law enforcement advocates and the mainstream media (when they're not the same thing) seemed mostly willing to wait for the blizzard of ass-covering Official Assessments that served, a few months later, to confuse rather than clarify the responsibility.

But Schell himself, during WTO week, claimed responsibility and suggested that if voters didn't like his performance, they could (eventually) vote him out. More people should have listened to what he was saying.

This year, as the city considered how to handle the anniversary of those protests, there could be no confusion. There was no need to protect the Convention Center. There were no Eugene anarchists--as Schell himself noted, "no evidence that [the celebrations] will be anything other than peaceful." The FBI wasn't warning law enforcement officials that some of their ranks would be dead by week's end. The President wasn't coming to town; war criminal Madeleine Albright wasn't trapped in her hotel room, raging at whomever she could page. The international media hordes were gone. So were most of the protesters.

In short, Paul Schell had months, not hours, in which to formulate his strategy, he had no political pressure from above, and the stakes were far lower. So we now know that 1999's suspension of the Constitution was no fluke.

Thursday night's police sweep--described in detail in previous articles--was bad enough. In particular, the arrest of labor leaders, legal observers, and members of the media evokes some Third World military dictatorship.

That, however, was merely the denouement of a weeks-long campaign. Repeatedly, Schell and his new, hand-picked police chief falsely linked 1999's events to those of a year later, as though a picnic by a few hundred celebrants was equivalent to window-smashing or to civil disobedience by tens of thousands. Permits were denied; celebrants had no idea, when they gathered on Nov. 30, whether the city would arrest them simply for gathering. Many stayed away out of fear.

Dr. Charles Mitchell, President of Seattle Central Community College, cited phone calls from the mayor's office when he told student groups who had already organized a Dec. 2 forum on the WTO that he would cancel their event without hefty rental fees usually charged only to non-student groups. The students wound up having to cut the event short, change its name, and supply 15 "peacekeepers"--as well as pay $2,000--to hold the event, all to fend off Paul Schell. Mitchell told the students that he didn't want to be like the Evergreen State College president who recently resigned; she cited two years of harassment from some state legislators after a controversial student commencement speech.

This is suppression of political speech because of its content. It's unconstitutional. It should concern people who have no interest whatsoever in the WTO, trade policy, or even the politics of protest. What possible business is it of the mayor if students want to hold an educational forum? Paul Schell seems to think he has the right to be an arbiter of what ideas the public should hear.

Two days after N30, an event of similar size--a labor rally and march to support striking newspaper workers--had absolutely no police presence beyond a few traffic cops. This, despite widely reported "violence" at the picket line at the North Seattle printing plant, and despite the presence of what labor leaders referred to during the rally as "jackbooted goons" at the Times offices themselves.

Apparently, in the city's eyes, some political advocates are a threat; others are OK. I asked one of the cops present at the strike march why SPD's deployment was so strikingly (sorry, bad pun) different than it had been two days earlier. He explained that on Thursday there were anarchists from Eugene present who were going to smash up downtown.

Where did the officer get this idea? Did he get it from hysterical media coverage? Did he get it from the SPD hierarchy? Or did he get it from Schell, who actually sent out a memo to city employees on Nov. 29 invoking the possibility of calling another civil emergency for these tiny marches? And why in hell would "anarchists from Eugene" justify the presence of most of the city's 1,400 cops, anyway?

Tellingly, media coverage of the mysterious fumes that closed the bus tunnel on Dec. 1 immediately linked it to the previous day's protests--without any evidence whatsoever. They could have as easily been linked to the following day's protests--or, for that matter, to some nefarious plot by the mayor. It's important to hold SPD accountable as well, but the most serious violence being committed in Seattle these days is being committed by Paul Schell--to the Bill of Rights. Our freedoms are in jeopardy in this city. All of the city's civil society needs to band together and decide how we will respond.