[ed. note: ETS! received a number of submissions and accounts of events on and around N30 2000. Since our space is limited, we are taking excerpts from several of the different articles so as to have as many voices as possible. Thanks to everybody who sent something in.]

Most of 11-30 was pretty calm. The police actually seemed a model of restraint. By early evening there'd been a grand total of a half dozen arrests, one of them involving a fellow standing on top of a police car. There were marches from two parts of the city converging on Westlake Plaza, site of last year's first mass arrests. One group left from Seattle Central Community College in the Capitol Hill area. There was one incident we were aware of where a peacekeeper wandered off from the march and was looking at CDs in a music store window. He ended up being detained and released by the police.

Probably around 6 PM the crowd dispersed and headed down the street, some to Capitol Hill, others to the Labor Temple for some festivities. I marched with the second. People took to the streets and there were resounding cheers of "Whose Streets? Our Streets!" It felt great.

Then a few hours later people are running into the Labor Temple, saying that the police are attacking and arresting people in Westlake Park. I jump in a cab and head over there. There are police lines blocking entry so I have to run around a few blocks to find an entry. There're lines of cops in body armor and I count seven "less lethal" launchers. The crowd seems a mixture of curiosity seekers, people trying to get them to leave and a few folks bent on creating a confrontation. I also notice the legal observers are starting to fill in--there's maybe ten of us now. I learn that there's already been some pepper spray and questionable arrests. Some yahoo on a bike is riding up and down the police line calling them every name in the book. The police seem to outnumber the demonstrators. Things are getting hairy.

Soon there's another march to the Labor Temple. The marshals are doing everything in their power to move folks to the Labor Temple and it seems to be working. I'm also noticing there's the occasional idiotic act. A thrown glass bottle. I wonder, if these people are into property destruction as a form of protest, why they're not, say, at the Microsoft campus or one of our millionaire city attorney Mark Sidran's eight houses--doesn't seem like a great tactic to antagonize the police when they outnumber us. Especially since you're leaving other folks to bear the consequences of your actions.

After a few blocks of this, I notice police on bicycles forming lines to either side of us. "It's a trap," shouts one of the protesters. A couple of the bike cops mimic the protester's remarks. I've seen the same thing in Washington D.C. on April 15, the day before the World Bank demos. Cops form lines, protesters are encircled and mass arrests follow. Over the next few minutes, it's a replay of the D.C. tactic. Every few minutes the police push the demonstrators back another twenty feet, fifty feet. There's a cluster of demonstrators and bystanders talking to what seems to be one of the cops in charge. Nonnegotiable. I learn later, the legal observers caught in the pincher movement were the first arrested.

I notice that a couple of the cops on this line are holding AR-15s, a kind of very lethal military assault rifle, and one of them isn't wearing a badge. When I ask him his badge number he turns to look in the other direction. Our new police chief, Gil Kerlikowske, comes by. I ask him about this, and he ignores me too. Why not? As former administrator of the federal COPs (Community Oriented Policing) grants, he likely had a hand in approving the funding for these rifles. I realize if I stay close the possibility is that they'll try to encircle those of us that are left. I back off a bit and there's some sort of an explosion, probably a flash bang grenade. I really can't tell at this distance. There's not a lot more I can do here.

I make it back to the small office where we're doing legal support. We've got one line and everyone's pulling out their cell phones to make outgoing calls so we can catch calls from jail. One person staffing the office notes how different it is from last year. "It's like the cops busted a beer party." None of these people wanted to be arrested and they all want to get out.

But what I'm most amazed at the is way people are leaping in to staff the office, to hold vigils outside the jail, to meet with black robed figures and mutter the correct ancient Latin incantations to free those locked up inside. Those in our team who were arrested on the evening of the 30th, are back doing support work on the 1st and the 2nd. I said earlier that activists are filled with hope, believe in miracles and here's a good reason why.

It's only been a few weeks since we found a firm with the muscle to file a class suit for the 1999 round, and it looks like the city of Seattle is ready to invite another. In many ways this action is a ratcheting up of the tactics for the SPD. Last year, during the mass arrests, there was some semblance of safety for reporters and others. We didn't have a single legal observer arrested and I don't know of a single marshal arrested either. This year this seemed to be the people they first targeted.

I want to thank the many people who gave generously of their time on the legal support team. The dozens of legal observers who attended the events and the vigils, the people who spent long time staffing our office and the many attorneys who worked all hours filing writs, wading through the jail bureaucracy and losing any semblance of free time.

Thanks in alphabetic order to Allison, Bill, Clare, Delaney, Dmitri, Doug, Floris, Ginny, Heidi, Isak, Jim, Johanna, Legrand, Lisa, Manu, Mick, Neil, Nicolle, Paul M., Val, and all the others.

--Paul Richmond, Seattle National Lawyers Guild