Hello! I have CANCER!

Thank you for helping me!

On November 30 1999 I was downtown in Seattle. No, not shopping! I was handing out literature about "Globalization," "Corporate Capitalism," the "WTO" (World Trade Organization), "Human Rights," "Ecology," "Labor Rights," and "Freedom."

I was handing lots of it out: to shoppers and downtown workers between the Bon Marche and Nordstrom's. (Normal stuff to do in America: Land of the free, home of...)

Four or more blocks away, the cream of Freedom's crop was demonstrating that they have a heart, a soul, and a brain. Early that misty morning, they came down the streets and surrounded Seattle's Trade Center with NONVIOLENT love, color, and compassion. Some had trained for months. They presented themselves for the greatest sacrifice Freedom knows: willing, public, nonviolent opposition exposed to the consequences of arrest.

They outnumbered the cops, they outnumbered the delegates, they outnumbered the shoppers, they occupied the streets.

They blocked the Convention Center.

They came to say and to stay and they always will.

The whole world was stunned! No one could go in! No meetings could happen! Shut it down! Shut it down? Shut it down!

They shut it down--good. No one got hurt, no one was injured except the face-mask was torn off the WTO to show how damaging and unwanted it is by most of the people of the world.

There was a large peaceful coalition march later that afternoon. Labor unionists, Church people, Ecologists, Environmentalists, Farmers, Consumers, you name it: We, The People, were well represented by 40,000 plus citizens. (Really and probably more ... the "Media" traditionally underestimates.)

Then ... they struck back! The militerrorized Police had laid-in-waiting.

CS gas, OS gas, rubber bullets, batons. Beatings and gas. Gas and beatings. They struck and beat and struck again and again and again. Even one or two straggling reporters. Even bystanders. Even medics. Even public officials. Nobody was gonna get in their way now! POLICE RIOT! LOOK OUT!

Boom! Bang! Pop! Hiss! And more and more and more again! Large clouds of mixed "irritants" (nerve gasses) and smoke arose into large clouds of irritation. Those clouds moved up and down the canyons of Seattle's downtown streets, mixing and changing chemical composition, but not readily "dispersing." I heard the shots. Soon, up the street, I saw the swirling masses, vaguely in the fog of the gasses. Then it hit me. My eyes watered. My nose tingled. My throat started burning. "What's happening?" "Where'd that come from?" "I can't stop coughing! I'm choking! Where can I go? What can I do? HELP!"

There was no help. I stumbled through a door and into a store the gasses hadn't gotten into. I gasped. I wheezed. I slowly stopped burning. Phew! That stuff stinks!

Not yet smart enough to know that I have a right to Free Speech only on days the civil rights of nonviolent protesters are not being violated, I continued the next day to leaflet downtown, again away from the re-barricaded Convention Center. But ... yup, you may have guessed by now, they did it again.

And again the militerrorizing police forces beat and gassed this time up First Avenue. And those nearly translucent clouds got me again, even tho I was on Fourth Avenue. Got me ... again.

Less than a year later I started getting vaguely sick, tired, lethargic. Was it despair? (Nonviolent protesters blamed for police rioting?) Possibly, at least in part. Then mysterious growths and bumps started appearing on various sides of my neck. No one could figure them out. Too much money for a self-employed man with no healthcare coverage. But it got worse, and worse, and worse. Finally, a health clinic referred me to the last of Pac Med's public health. They did a scan. They did biopsies. Yup. There it is. Look at that. Cancer. Cancer of the Tongue and Lymphs in the Throat. The kind of cancer smokers 20 years older than I get ... and I don't smoke! Look at that!

Where did that come from????

Did it come from GMO foods? (Genetically Modified Organisms.)

The WTO loves to serve GMO. Did it come from child labor sweat-shops? (One of NAFTA's dirty little secrets.)

Did it come from dismantled environmental protections? (Enforced by WTO kangaroo courts.) Did it come from the destroyed economies of the little nations of the world? (An IMF and World Bank hallmark.)

Thank you for helping me survive (so far) the WTO coming to my town. Thank you for reading my story. I wish you, me, and the world well.