Some excerpts from reports and analyses over the history of ETS! We kinda ran out of time to go through some of the more recent issues (sorry, Troy!), but you'll get the idea.

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A few months ago, when Seahawks owner Ken Behring tried to move his NFL team to Southern California, the morning host of local sports-talk radio KJR recorded an opinion piece played throughout the day that savaged not only Behring but everyone in his income bracket. ("The rich are not like you and me...they can write their own laws...") As a blatant comment on the class war that passes for public policy these days, it was far gutsier than anything that, say, NPR would dare air--and it came from the sports chuckleheads that intellectual progressive types love to sneer at. It was a welcome and useful reminder--not heard, of course, by anyone not listening to KJR at the time--that what radicals sometimes think to be daring observations are just plain common sense to an awful lot of folks.

So what happened? Now a new, even richer, owner is on the horizon, and those same fans want to bail out billionaire Paul Allen by having the public build him a new stadium. ("Yes, but he's OUR billionaire...")

--Geov Parrish, 9-17-96, from "Sports Stadiums, Class War, and the Race for Governor," published nine months before Allen's repugnant statewide stadium vote.

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It is hard to find any issue involving money on which Clinton isn't at least arguably as bad as Reagan and Bush: environment, military, welfare, free trade, corporate welfare, civil liberties, prisons, drug war, bashing youth, supporting dictators, corruption, judicial appointments, ad nauseam. Moreover, unlike what you may have read in every mainstream paper in the country, this abysmal record isn't a cynical move to the right; Clinton has always been there. He was just as conservative as governor of Arkansas, just as conservative in founding the DLC and in his '92 campaign. There is absolutely no reason to believe a second term will be better.

--Geov Parrish, 10-22-96, from 1996 election preview article.

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If I attend another [demonstration] with the same 50 (small), 200 (medium), or 500 (large) people (95% white) in Victor Westlake Federal Park, I may nod off from sheer boredom: the same marches and speakers and gauntlet of eight competing Marxist groups (none of whom helped plan the thing) selling their newspapers and debating each other. The same comfortable social event where everyone circulates and then goes home and wonders why they aren't on the news, or why the policy in question that day didn't change.

Demonstrations have two purposes: to change policy or to be an organizing opportunity for people trying to change policy. The former rarely happens and the latter can't when the event is so damn predictable, dull, self-marginalized.

Where's the creativity? Where's the joy? Where are the actions that people can take to be visible and make a difference? Where are the puppets, the theatre, the coordinated props, the focus, the new venues and audiences, the challenge, the rebellion, the risk, the advocacy, the conflict, the spirit, the relevance?

Many things could be done to zip up these events. As a modest initial contribution (we'll be happy to consider others), Eat the State! presents our top ten list of chants we never, ever, ever want to hear again:

Bonus Pick, Applicable Only To Seattle: "Go Back To Bellevue!" (if you stopped sneering at Bellevue long enough, you might find a lot of its residents agree with you; you might also find that the counter-demonstrators you're yelling at live in your own chic city neighborhood, or some working class district "the people" never go to) The Top Ten: 10. "No Blood For Oil!" (presumably, starvation and disease for oil have been fine, and blood for petroleum substitutes is A-OK) 9. "We're Fired Up, Won't Take No More!" (until we go home in an hour) 8. "No Justice! No Peace!" (see 9.) 7. Anything in Spanish from a crowd more than 90% non-Spanish-speaking 6. "What Do We Want? (something) When Do We Want It? (timeline)" 5. "Power! Power! Power To The People..." (or anything else with "The People," a phrase freely and arrogantly substituted for "us") 4. "The People, United, Will Never Be Defeated" (if the people were united there would be no one to defeat, now, would there?) 3. "Two, Four, Six, Eight," anything after this that rhymes with "eight" (we're policy advocates, not Big Bird) 2. "Hey Hey, Ho Ho," anything after this, period. (we're policy advocates, not the Seven Dwarfs) 1. "The Whole World Is Watching!" (the most embarrassingly and obviously false statement imaginable)

Eliminating these phrases from rallies and marches would do a lot to make small, thoughtful public groups of concerned citizens appear far less idiotic to everyone else.

--Geov Parrish, "The People United Still Can't Fill the Plaza," 10-29-96

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In the hearing, also made public for the first time was a plan submitted to the city last month by the Downtown Seattle Association, the retail group that derailed the Reststop. The plan claims no public hygiene facility is needed. The reason? "Downtown Seattle already has enough restrooms." And the DBA helpfully supplies an exhaustive list of downtown toilets the public can use--including the ones at Nordstrom's, Niketown, and so on.

Lots of city and private agencies have long established the dire need for a project like the Urban Reststop. But as with the various other reasons offered, lack of need is a fig leaf for the real reason it died: the homeless should not exist, and offering services everybody needs simply encourages them to continue to exist.

But why not take the Downtown Business Association at its word? Let's use Nordstrom's.

Let's pick a day, and everyone in Seattle grab a towel, a washcloth, some soap and grooming supplies, and meet at Nordstrom's. Be sure to drink lots of liquids first. Who could object? It's the City Council's preferred solution, and everybody wants to be clean!!! If there are long lines, we could always try the facilities at Niketown, Planet Hollywood, Cineplex Odeon, and Westlake Mall. For that extra civic contribution, surely The Bon wouldn't mind a de-licing clinic near, say, women's cosmetics. The needle exchange could set up by the bear at FAO Schwartz, with a food line next door, in front of all the emaciated Barbies in the Barbie Boutique. Plus all those plush new hotels. Oh, think of the camera angles!

--Geov Parrish, 1-14-97, responding to an effort before city council to kill downtown restrooms. This demonstration actually happened, and was so successful (and fun) and got so much publicity that the council backed off of its plans--temporarily. Now, of course, we're paying through the nose for restrooms; and the intended site, the Glen Hotel, is instead now where the Independent Media Center, and Eat the State!, are located.

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By a vote of 7-1, with has-been Jane Noland abstaining and Charlie Chong in his usual role as irrational naysayer, an emergency session of Seattle City Council last week passed a new ordinance requiring that registered voters cast a vote for Paul Schell for Seattle mayor in the Nov. 4, 1997 general election.

"We just want to protect people from their own ignorance," noted council head Jan Drago. "Say, isn't Aaron cute?"

The ordinance was to be enforced with Central America-style identity cards, presentable to police upon demand, which would be punched by poll workers once the ballot was inspected to ascertain a proper Schell vote. Absentee voters would be entered into a database, and the cards validated by inserting them for a $1.50 fee into any participating SeaFirst ATM.

However, it appears unlikely the law will be enforced, unless early mail returns favor Chong. Notes City Attorney Mark Sidran, the man charged with heading enforcement of the new measure, "The city has many other more pressing iss--HEY! IS THAT A PIECE OF CRUD BETWEEN YOUR TEETH? UP AGAINST THE WALL, PUNK!"

--"Chong Vote Outlawed," "reprinted from the Seattle Times," 10-28-97

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The judge's decision amounted to less than a slap on the wrist. In fact, it practically assures that Microsoft will continue unimpeded in its drive to control the Internet....Right now, if you can switch to a low-cost, local, small Internet service provider that uses Unix or Linux, you should do it, before these businesses disappear altogether or merge into larger behemoths, like America On-Line, Compuserve, AT&T, or the Microsoft Network....In another year or two, you won't have the wide range of choices you have now. Take advantage of them while you can.

--Maria Tomchick, from "Microsoft World," 12-16-97, scoffing at the then-prevalent notion that the feds' anti-trust case against Microsoft would amount to something.

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Global austerity is coming to the U.S., and not just in the form of social service cuts. Two critical issues to watch for in 1998: utility deregulation and privatization of social security. Both are scams that could literally cost consumers and workers trillions. You know who wins.

--Geov Parrish, just a bit early, from "Underreported Stories of 1997," 12-23-97.

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As the drums beat louder for bombing Baghdad, it might be wise to ask what we're fighting for. Most of the official reasons are absurd on the face of it....The only compelling reason offered to destroy Iraq is that it has, and is willing to use, unconventional weapons of mass destruction. But if that's reason enough to destroy Hussein's palaces, then Washington, D.C. should have been leveled long ago.

--Matt Asher, from "Rah Rah Rah You Fucking Assholes," 2-24-98

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I froze when I heard the radio newscast. "Several school girls and a teacher have been shot by two boys in camouflage." An 11-year-old and a 13-year-old, I later learned. The 13-year-old was avenging his bruised honor, since his girlfriend had (wisely) broken up with him. Subsequent interviews revealed that the boys sung in a church choir, had practiced using guns with their male relatives, and the younger murderer had attended handgun safety classes. This way he was able to safely murder several females without shooting his buddy. Handgun safety education works! Who needs gun control?

Was this a manifestation of family--I mean, patriarchal--values? The next news story made it clear: soundbites from several of Jonesboro's male leaders featured guys closing ranks against any examination of male culture. It's rarely the women who open fire.

--Valerie Jean Rose, from "Learning To Be A Real Man," 4-14-98, commenting on one of the earlier schoolyard massacres, in Jonesboro, Ark.

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Most folks don't understand how the Social Security payroll tax works. It's the only tax that is completely phased out at an upper limit, and it has no lower limit. It's arguably the most regressive tax in existence. No matter how little you make, you still pay it, but higher income people only pay tax on the first $68,400 in wages they make. Anything they make above that is off limits to the Social Security Tax.

No one in Congress or the White House, however, has suggested that we reverse this situation and set a bottom limit so poor folks don't have to pay the tax, while wealthy and obscenely rich people pay according to their ability. Among people of all income levels who have been polled about solutions to the "Social Security Crisis," raising the wage limit on the tax is the single most popular solution by far. And adding a small capital gains tax (i.e., taxing the money made from selling stocks, bonds, and property) could also rake in millions for the Social Security trust fund.

So forget about the Social Security fund going bankrupt; it's a lie being told by financial companies and politicians to push their own agenda. The real problem with Social Security is the Congressional/Wall Street assault on the Social Security trust fund.

--Maria Tomchick, from "Social Security: Gambling on the Future," 7-22-98, long before George Bush became president.

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The two wings of our one-party corporate state, and the mass media that faithfully parrots their differences as the full spectrum of democratic choice, have succeeded in presenting to the American public the idea that global corporate greed is both a fait accompli and a desirable goal. The WTO contains (along with the very much still alive Multilateral Agreement on Investments) the seeds of a world where local and national governments have no power over corporations, and the mega-corporate urge to profit is somehow thought to contain the purest ideals and best interests of all in its greed-infested heart. That danger is intrinsically sensed by many Americans, but linking it to the specific agendas of the WTO has thus far been a very marginalized affair, put forward by a fringe handful of economic skeptics on the left and Pat Buchanan nationalists and New World Order conspiratorialists on the right.

The challenge of Seattle, for WTO oppositionists, is to make that alarm a mainstream affair. As such, talking heads holding press conferences won't do. Neither will a few hundred people in the rain at Westlake, listening to an endless program of the obligatory political rainbow of speakers parroting points of unity. Seattle organizers must do better on both scores. We must produce bodies--lots of them--demanding local control over corporate excess. That is a major, and primary, organizing job for the next ten months. And we must have something to offer: a positive vision of both governments that take care of public needs and corporations whose global resources are at least in part harnessed to not just profit but the public good.

It's not enough to say we're against what many Americans believe is inevitable; by being painted into that corner, protesters will allow themselves to continue being marginalized in the country providing almost all of the vision and muscle for the global corporate state. We have to find, and adopt as our own, models that work better. Technology and the erosion of national power has enabled corporations to run amok in a fashion that, if allowed to continue and accelerate, literally threatens life on earth (c.f. global warming, ocean pollution, etc.). The technology won't go away, but it can be used by organizing workers as well as economic elites, and dangerous technology (e.g., bioengineering) desperately needs limits other than the laughable self-policing of the Monsantos of the world. And the loss of local sovereignty is a matter of political will. We in Seattle have been handed a chance to contribute a powerful step in reversing the political momentum in these debates. Let's get to work.

--Geov Parrish & Maria Tomchick, "Bring on the WTO," 2-10-99

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Seattle, take a moment and shine. You made history last week.

The impact of last week's demonstrations, particularly the Tuesday direct action that shut down opening ceremonies for the WTO, extended far past the inconvenience to delegates. It contributed to the WTO's inability to agree on new and additionally devastating free trade negotiations. It brought together disparate constituencies (labor, environmental, student) that have now learned to work together. And the spirit of the magical nonviolent protest that infused the week will go back to cities and towns around the world, infusing social change movements with a new optimism and power. We did damn good.

--Geov Parrish, 12-8-99

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The Clinton/Gore administration is attempting to appease Congress (i.e., Ford and GM) by undermining the intent of the Kyoto Protocol. Part of that process is to point a finger at the Third World and demand that poor nations commit to making a bigger sacrifice (when, in fact, it's only fair that the U.S. make the biggest sacrifice, because we are, literally, the biggest offender.) The U.S. also wants to use "pollution credits" to offset emissions here at home. In other words, U.S. businesses would pay companies in other countries to pollute less, thereby allowing U.S. companies to continue to pollute unabated. Everyone else can tighten their belts, except for us.

Other industrial nations are beginning to cut their emissions and are likely to meet the goals specified in the Kyoto agreement (including most of the European Union). The U.S., however, is going in the opposite direction. Current Clinton/Gore policy, if continued, will undermine the treaty completely.

But here's the real shocker that puts the lie to Gore's environmental posturing: even if the U.S. reversed policy and began to cut emissions, and if all nations in the world met their targets under the Kyoto Protocol, it wouldn't be enough. Scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have affirmed that we will soon need to make cuts of at least 60% in carbon emissions to alleviate global warming. Under these circumstances, Al Gore's boast is not only comic, it's hollow and sickening.

--Maria Tomchick, "Gore Plays Kyoto," 11-22-00, summing up the difference between Clinton/Gore and Bush: words, not deeds.

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What we saw in Seattle across those tumultuous days stretching from November 28 through December 3, 1999, and then in Davos, Switzerland, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Prague was the flowering of a new radical movement in America and across the world, rambunctious, anarchic, internationalist, well informed and in some ways more imaginative and supple than kindred radical eruptions in recent decades.

--Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, from "Eat the WTO!" anniversary issue of 11-30-00

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