It is an eerie feeling to be downtown in a large American city after dark and see no one on the street but riot police and heavily-armed troops facing a ragtag group of protesters.
The police, dressed in Darth Vader black with visors, guns, batons and a tear gas-dispensing armored car, were ready to move.
A form of martial law had been declared. A 7 p.m. curfew had passed. Time to clear the streets.
The protesters, who had been on the streets of Seattle all day to oppose World Trade Organization talks, were burning street signs in a bonfire and waiting for the inevitable charge.
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And I thought I had been sent to Seattle to cover agricultural trade talks.
Instead, the launch of trade talks was delayed as a crowd estimated at more than 50,000 took over the core of the city around the site of the talks.
Instead of trying to figure out if progress was being made in narrowing trade goal differences, I spent the day with protesters, taking photographs as they ran from another tear gas attack and watching the pitched battles surging up one street and down another.
At first, guerrilla theatre filled the streets. Demonstrators dressed as Monarch butterflies being damaged by genetically modified plants competed with undertakers or GM carrots.
But festive turned ugly and trade reporters became riot reporters.
Most delegates I talked to dismissed the protesters as ill-informed publicity seekers. What did they know about family farming or GMO foods or economic growth and trade?
U.S. president Bill Clinton offered a different perspective. He may have been remembering 30 years ago when he demonstrated against the Vietnam war while angry elders wondered what those kids knew about the real world.
Now, the same arguments are being lobbed at those who question whether free trade at the expense of national sovereignty makes people more powerful or less.
Don’t dismiss the protesters, Clinton urged WTO delegates. Recognize that they have a right to dissent and a right to express that dissent.
It is impossible to know if the Battle in Seattle will change the way negotiators think. It certainly put them on notice that (as the protesters chanted in a line stolen from their parents): “The whole world is watching.”
