WTO Memories

[from 12/2/09]

I'm writing this a full week before it's due out, because Glorious Editorial Manager wants Thanksgiving Day AND Thanksgiving Weekend off, and he has the better union. Whenever I have to write a column so soon I wonder what irrelevant topic I'll write about this time. It should seem vaguely entertaining, while not having anything to do with anything recent.

One possibility was to talk about squirrels. I think squirrels can be very funny. You know the expression "squirrels away"? When I hear it I think of Seafair Pirates loading squirrels in their brass cannon, and firing it off, shouting "squirrel's away!" Technically, I'm not so amused there by the squirrel as by the apostrophe. But it's fun to imagine the squirrel's high pitched squirrel curses as it sails through the air. Don't worry, they aim him at a tree and he lands safely. I abandon this line of thought, on the grounds that it not only has nothing to do with anything recent, it has nothing to do with anything ever.

Because I'm writing this so early, I'm not over the whole WTO Ten Year Anniversary hoopla that's sweeping Seattle, as you are. You there, with your cigarette in your rosy future one week from now. You are so blasé about WTO now. "I'm done; I'll turn in as soon as I smoke this down," you say.

Well you shouldn't be blasé! The WTO and the protests surrounding it continued from November 30 all the way to December 3, when the conference collapsed. So if it's not Friday yet you can still remember it in that cute annual way that you all enjoy! Because secretly you all worship the Sun, and still think the seasons are due to its progress through space, when they are actually due to changes in the Earth's position relative to it!

Here are some personal memories of WTO.

1. Watching two files of storm troopers form on 3rd Ave between Pine and Stewart by the Bon before a crowd of onlookers, to goose-step, literally, around the block to the west and back, just for show.

2. Walking north on 2nd Ave between Virginia and Lenora, and witnessing the "occupation"  of 2nd & Lenora by storm troopers delivered to the scene hanging to the side of a Humvee, after they first softened up the desired acquisition by lobbing gas canisters at it. The most memorable aspect of this was that there were no protesters, no anarchists, and no vandals at that intersection. There weren't even cars as the occupiers arrived. But, boy, did they look proud of themselves.

3. Several hours later after a prohibition against walking downtown was lifted, I remember walking from Belltown to Pioneer Square. I remember the helicopters with the searchlights trained on Westlake. I was most taken by the file of, I estimated, fifty cop cruisers, all with sirens on continuously, winding randomly through the city streets at fifty miles per hour, with no other evident purpose than to terrify.

As much as those memories mean to me, just because I saw those things myself, and in the case of #2, smelled them, I have to say, and I don't think I'm alone in saying this,  that the worst thing that happened at WTO 1999 was Mayor Paul Schell's downtown 50-block no protest zone.

We've all got over everything else. We've cleared our lungs of the pepper spray. Our courts dismissed charges against 200 wrongly arrested protesters. Our city paid 200 wrongly arrested protesters damages for having arrested them in the first place. Justice is what you get when get what you had coming to you. Like when you stand in front of a speeding ice cream truck, you get the ice cream you deserve.

But we haven't overcome the result of Paul Schell's illegal abrogation of the Constitution and the imprimatur it was given by the so-called liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Our Constitutional Rights have not yet been restored.

That's the current news.

Seattle's Not From Here

The Last Demonstration Zone

© Dr. Wes Browning

Welcome to the Last Demonstration Zone,

Step right up, take your megaphone, set permanently on mute.

The American Protest Theme Park greets you,

bring your quaint belief in what’s true, they take it for cute.

Remember, don’t mention Mickey Mouse.

You’ll get thrown out of the house, you’ll pay a fine.

Anyone in America can speak out.

Take a number, don’t shout, wait in line.

Welcome to the Last Free Speech hole in the ground.

You may now speak freely to whoever’s around, nobody cares here.

Step behind the rope, dope, nobody cares here.

Is anyone besides me aware that all inauguration ceremonies are propaganda? And that propaganda is government speech? And that therefore if Pennsylvania Ave. is a designated Demonstration Free Zone, then there can’t be an inauguration there either? Is it just me who thinks Demonstration Zones are the worst things that have happened to this country since war rations? What next? Talking Zones? Thinking Zones?

They can’t even hide behind state’s rights on this. We’re talking about the District of Columbia, where all the law is Congressional law. That bit about “Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech” has full force in D. C.

Meanwhile our own mayor Schell wants to define Tent City as a political act, apparently because in the past he’s had some success forcing political acts to go away. In connection with the trials of Tent City a word has cropped up often: transient.

transient adj. 1. not lasting, enduring, or permanent; transitory 2. lasting only a short time; existing briefly; temporary -- n. a person or thing that is transient.

Mayor Schell would clearly like to see to it that Tent City is transient. But more importantly, there is the notion that the people who make up Tent City are not deserving of Seattle’s concern, because they are transient, they are only here in Seattle for a while, they are no natives.

I have heard the following statistic quoted: half of all Seattle’s homeless are not from here.

I’ve got news for you all: as of the last twenty years at least, anyone who is from Seattle isn’t a normal Seattleite.

I don’t have to go back to the pioneer days to establish the fact, but I will, just because I can’t resist mentioning that Chief Noah Seattle was born on Kitsap. Or that Denny came from Indiana, or that Doc Maynard came all the way from Vermont.

Do I have to tell anyone that John W. Nordstrom was born in Sweden? That William Boeing grew up in Detroit and didn’t move to this city until he was thirty?

I don’t have to go back that far. I can look at... I don’t know, let’s see now... the Mayor! Paul Schell, born in Fort Dodge, Iowa? So Schell once really did get out of Dodge?

City Council-person Margaret Pageler was born in CHINA for crying out loud. Jim Compton came here by way of Portland Oregon. Jan Drago and Heidi Wills are from another planet.

The Stranger was born in Chicago. More than nine-tenth’s of the Burke Museum was born in British Columbia or the Great Plains. The Pike Place Market got its start in Morocco. The Space Needle was shipped here in a box from the set of the Jetsons.

Surveys have been done that have shown that considerably more than fifty percent of us aren’t from here.

Does that make the majority of Seattle transient? Sounds fair to me.

Mayor's Job Is Just Politics

I'll bet you all think I'm going to crab about the election. I know what people expect of me, I get fan mail. That's right, people write to me and say things like, "Dear Dr. Wes, All you ever do is complain, you carping bilious nattering freak… " Everyone thinks I'm a big whiner. Well I'm not going to do it this time.

Instead let me share a letter from a satisfied reader:

Dear Dr. Wess,

I here u have rit thet I am ilitable illitu that I'm not gud with wurds. Aktuelly I didn’t here it my bruther red it and he told me. He sez u also sed I am not as compassionate (didn't no I cud spel lik that did u?) as I hev sed I am. I wil show u how gud I am with wurds. I even rote this pome witch u can stik in your crabby colum.

So u think I'm not compassionate?

When I ain't dun nuthin yet?

Well I'll have u no

u libral so-an-so

yore sociopolitical (I can soo spel, see) band-ade-applyin

muny-flingin and freedum steelin and while I'm at it

deth row-inmate-sparin

Anti-ballistic-missile-not-buildin (hah!), baby-killing, and

2^nd-Amendment-Rights-takin-awayin (take thet!)

pfhilosophy

is all wet.

-- Anon Anun I'm not telling u my name

I really appreciate input like that, Mr. Name, and be sure to keep your brother reading!

While we're talking carp, our glorious Mayor Schell is beginning to look more like a candidate for Bush's cabinet. What else could explain this recent exchange with a Beacon Hill resident (quoting from Schell's monthly talk show on KUOW.)

["Chris"]: "We have a very small business district that's being badly affected. What are you going to do about Tent City and when?"

[Mayor]: "I absolutely agree with you. I don't think living outdoors in a tent is acceptable conduct. And I do think it is by and large a political statement."

OK, Mr. Schell, the honeymoon's over. I've been nice to you so far. I didn't say hardly a word about you the whole first year you were elected except to wish you a happy birthday and offer to help you with your arithmetic.

Did I complain much about you last year? Yes, but who didn't? You had your WTO, what did you expect. But I wasn't the one who said you looked like Uncle Fester from the Addam's Family. I could have, but I restrained myself, because I was being a nice guy.

No more. You've made me mad now.

SO. Our Mayor thinks living outdoors is "unacceptable conduct." What a coincidence. To most of the people living at Tent Village on Beacon Hill having to live outdoors would always be "unacceptable," particularly in winter. But since they don't have the kind of power our Mayor has, they accept it anyway, as the alternative, more shelter beds, isn't happening.

So far, reading Mayor Schell's comment all we have is the usual failure to grasp the fundamental facts of homelessness which we here at Real Change have come to expect from a Mayor who thinks the homeless should just retire to their villas in France and leave him alone.

That's not what has us fuming. What has us fuming is Paul Schell's little deprecation of political statements of the homeless.

Are the homeless of this city not entitled to make political statements? "Chris", Beacon Hill resident, can call into KUOW every month to complain about Tent Village, but when the homeless complain about a lack of any alternative it's just politics?

Last month I was invited to speak at a Shoreline Community College philosophy class. They wanted to hear about the politics of homelessness, in that ethics is an important branch of philosophy, and politics is the sub-branch of ethics that concerns life and power in the cities.

Maybe Paul Schell could benefit from a course in ethics. He might learn to give proper respect to political statements, which are after all only statements about what is right.

Meanwhile, since when is sheer survival a statement of any kind?

WTO Sucks Before It Happens

I hate ongoing events.

Everyone’s been wanting to know what’s my take on the WTO conference.

How can I have a take on the WTO conference? I’m writing this before it has happened!

Therefore I present you with a dozen or so things that haven’t happened yet at the WTO conference, but that would have really sucked by the time you will have read this:

Mayor Schell created an international incident when he performed his Charlie Chong impersonation for the benefit of the Ambassador from the People’s Republic of China.

The bad news: with motorcades of officials criss-crossing Seattle for five days, traffic became a nonsense word. The good news: now everyone knows what life under I-5 is going to be like in years to come.

The worst traffic jams occurred in Redmond, of course, as thousands of rented Mercedes Benzes clogged the streets on their way to the seat of the local government, in the hopes of cashing in on some Free Trade chips.

For no apparent reason, WTO officials announced in the middle of the conference that the WTO’s official name would be changed to the “Windows 2000 World Trade Organization”, for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, during a vote-gathering tour of the city, unleashed Sandpoint dogs urinated on Al Gore, expecting that he would be environmentally friendly. Instead, he kicked them all in their tender spots, thus permanently losing the support of the SPCA, ALF, PAWS, and PETA.

In a surprise visit to the proceedings, Muamer Qadhafy got no further than 4th and Cherry. Awe-inspired by the depth of the brilliant ideas of Mark Sidran, amazed by Sidran’s keen analysis of the reactionary behavior of improperly-indoctrinated masses, Qadhafy rushed back to Libya to teach his people his new understanding of the value of civilty, “Starbuck’s style”.

The admiration apparently being mutual, Sidran surprised no-one by declaring, “to hell with Giuliani, from now on I want to be thought of as the Muamer Qadhafy of Seattle” and began appearing in public in high heels and long dresses and encouraging others to do so. “It’s just one more way we can instill a lady-like respect for public decency and decorum”.

President Clinton’s unscheduled meeting with the Pope next to Rachel the Pig in the market ended in disaster when the Pope was struck by a stray airborne salmon. Fortunately, the world’s free trade was not significantly harmed, as the volume of Pacific Northwest fish exports to the Vatican has been negligible up until now.

In a sharp moment of public empathy, Deputy Mayor Tom Byers recalled that he once wore purple bellbottoms and wide belts and got yelled at by his dad for growing his hair long. “Therefore”, he said, “I really understand the problems that you people face on the streets.” Then he said, “No, seriously, you can have your tent city during WTO-- NOT!!! Ha ha, ha!”

The WTO determined that, henceforth, Boeing could only sell as many 767’s per decade throughout the world as the number of Taiwanese suspenders that may be sold per century in Des Moines, Washington. Luckily, since no reporters were allowed to learn about the decision, no one got their shorts in a bunch about it.

Wasn’t that massive earthquake awful? 9.9 on the Richter scale, who would’ve expected that? I hate being dead don’t you? Thank God for tent city, otherwise nobody would have survived!

And who would’ve believed that the apocalypse would have waited for the WTO conference? Wow!! Well, hey, now that it’s happened, what do you, my readers, think? Was it worth waiting for? How ‘bout those locusts? And are you satisfied that the rough places have been made plain? I sure am!! But please, let’s not do it again!! My rough places are raw!!

Atomic Duck Is Here

Last time I promised that I would nag Mayor Paul Schell in this issue. But as I think of how to begin nagging our Mayor, images of cartoon characters fly around and about my psyche. I find myself thinking especially of Atomic Mouse, dispatching mobs of zoot-suited wolves. This is not because I believe that Mayor Schell in any way resembles Atomic Mouse dispatching mobs of zoot-suited wolves. Actually, having seen him and heard him speak, I would picture him more as an Atomic Duck dispatching mobs of publicly inebriated squirrels.

But I don't want to have to justify that statement. Instead I would like to ramble incoherently all over the page, until I can figure out what I am talking about.

Don't you all miss the good old days when we could solve all of the world's problems with a great big heaping helping of atomic power? Remember when Mr. Atom was your friend? I sure do, and I loved my friend Mr. Atom.

Oh, sure there were problems with atomic power, but they were minor compared to the benefits. How did we know? Because really, really smart people worked it all out for us on their sliderules and their computers, that's how!

Thanks to Mr. Atom our electric bills would drop to almost zero. We would have so much cheap electricity that we would never have to dig up coal or drill for oil again. Guys wouldn't have to wear hardhats anymore. Eventually every house would have its own supply of plutonium running its furnaces, ovens, TVs, radios, hair dryers, washing machines, refrigerators, and charging the electric flying cars that would take us to our vast atomic powered and fully automated amusement parks, that we would spend all our lives in, now that labor would be unnecessary.

Even our farms would be operated by atomic powered robots, and we wouldn't even have to bother to pasteurize our milk anymore. We could irradiate it, and get rid of nasty germs once and for all!

When everything is new nothing can be imagined to stand in the way of the march of progress. Yesterday it was Mr. Atom, today it's Ms. DNA and her little sister Ms. Clone. Whole armies of genetically engineered cloned pigs, each patented and owned by the latest incarnation of the spirit if not the flesh of Dow Chemical, are going to grow on their backs human livers, kidneys, hearts, eyeballs, hips, lungs, assorted glands, limbs and appendages. Every conceivable beneficial drug, including miracle drugs not yet discovered, will be harvested from bacteria cleverly engineered to eat only stuff that we have no use for, such as torn nylons, used styrofoam, and Brussels Sprouts.

And again, how do we know all that's right? Because people who are really really smart, smarter than we are, tell us all this is so. Nothing serious can go wrong with the invention of these pigs and those bacteria. Oh sure there will be some minor problems but nothing that these really really smart people (smarter than we are) won't be able to fix on our ignorant behalves.

But I shouldn't be letting myself stray so far from home. None of this could possibly have anything to do with our Mayor, who doesn't have to solve all the problems of the world, who only has a rather medium sized city to look after. Given how much smaller the arena of his problems, and how much simpler those problems are, he is perfectly capable of having all the answers. He is an authority after all: he is a certified urban developer!

Take those public inebriates for example. Now you might think that the problem with public inebriates, particularly in the wintertime, originates not in the fact of inebriation, which goes on behind doors also, but with publicness. I.e. you might think that no one who had a choice would choose to drink outdoors, in the cold, if they had warm places indoors in which to drink. And that the solution to the problem of public inebriation might lie in attacking that fundamental cause.

But no. You would be wrong. The problem, according to Paul Schell, is that these people can buy 40-ouncers of malt liquor at Korean grocery stores in the neighborhoods in which they hang out. So all we have to do is identify those neighborhoods, and pass special laws for just those neighborhoods, restricting what can be sold there.

And which neighborhoods would those be? That's easy! They are just the same neighborhoods that decades of city policies have driven Seattle's homeless. The same neighborhoods in which most of the shelters and social services are concentrated.

Neighborhoods of a kind that in another age and another country were eventually called ghettoes after enough special laws were passed applying just to them.

So I guess what I'm saying is this: Hooray, Atomic Duck is here to save the day, he'll put our public inebriates away, then ghetto-ize them into sobriety, because he knows best, he's the authority!

Pooty Free Ameter

In last month’s Real Change we announced that we would throw a birthday party for our (that is, Seattle’s) mayor, the distinguished and beloved periodic Frenchperson, Paul Schell. I bet you all thought we were just goofing, didn’t you? Hah! We really meant it! We love to do things like that! Anything for a hoot and a piece of cake! That’s just the way we feel about it around here!

Meanwhile, as the evening of the party approached, what with the flurry of preparations etc., there was an absolute, literal, palpable air of excitement here in the Real Change office. I mean, you could actually really FEEL the air, it was so palpable. Or at least, stuff in it was...

So, anyway, I was inspired by something palpable in the air in our office to write a humble little speech for the occasion of Mayor Paul Schell’s Birthday. Lacking anything better to do, I would like now to share that speech with the entire Real Change readership, at this time (now). So here is that speech:

I would like to talk about Mayor Schell, because this is, after all, HIS birthday party and that’s why we’re all here, to talk about Mayor Paul “max-a-million, any-million” Schell.

But before I do that, I would like first to take some time out to praise iambic tetrameter.

Iambic tetrameter is, as I have said many times before and in many places, the ameter without which the immortal line “they’re coming to take me away, ha, ha!” could never have been uttered.

If that were the only praise I could sing of iambic tetrameter, I would sing that praise endlessly, but luckily, for all of you here listening to me this evening, there is so much more:

For example, iambic tetrameter is NOT a pooty ameter, like that iambic PENT-ameter is, and this endears it to me, as it should to all right-thinking and right-feeling Americans.

Indeed, for hundreds of years pooty English poets, both in their native England and in their non-native other countries that they’ve gone off to (like this one), have pooted all over the place with their pooty iambic pentameter, whose every single pooty line drags on exactly one pooty beat too long.

Iambic tetrameter KNOWS when enough is enough. “ALWAYS LEAVE THEM WANTING MORE!” -- that’s iambic tetrameter’s motto! -- and it lives it, line after line after line after line after line after non-pooty line.

Moreover, iambic tetrameter is faithful. Oh, sure, it isn’t as flashy or as exotic as is, for example, anapestic tetrameter. But iambic tetrameter will always be there for you, waiting patiently and forgivingly while you come slinking home with that anapestic lipstick on your collar, those lacy crotchless silky anapestic panties tucked just inside your left front pant’s pocket, and that anapestic vibrator left carelessly on, wasting batteries, causing that peculiar walk of yours.

There are so many more wonderful things that I could tell you about iambic tetrameter, involving for instance Keiko The Killer Whale and/or Elizabeth Dole, but I have just reminded myself that we are here, after all, to talk about Mayor Schell, so I should get on with that instead.

But before I do that, I would like to present a little poem that I have written. No, actually I was just kidding, I am going to present a poem AND talk about Mayor Schell -- simultaneously! I call my poem

Our Mayor Schell Sure Does Mayor Well!

or Opus 67 (Count Them!) Spanks

by © Dr. Me, Wes Browning

Our Mayor Schell sure mayors well!

He mayors swell! -- as I will tell:

He mayors here, he mayors there,

he mayors gladly anywhere,

He is the mayor with the plan,

he doesn’t sit upon the can!

Five hundred thousand he would spend,

-- far more than any’d dare to lend --

that women & kids be off our streets

as one of many Christmas treats!

It’s not his fault five hundred thou’

is not enough. -- Don’t have a cow!

Our mayor Schell DOES mayor great --

So WHAT if he can’t calculate?

-- Thank You.

The Truth Is Way Out There

Well, here we are again. It’s deadline time and I’m stuck, as always. I ask Cindy and she suggests “Write about why you are stuck.” I think, “Do I really want to talk about the X-Files here?” But I have nowhere else to go.

As I write this, Anitra L. “Net Mama” Freeman, fellow editor and proof that I am not the world’s biggest nerd, tells me that she wants me to get the following message printed.

“Mulder is a dweeb. He is a lovable dweeb, but he is a dweeb. And YOU, Scully, are an admirable woman in many ways. But you seriously need to enroll in a co-dependency program: ‘Woman Who Love Dweebs.’”

Apparently, how Scully conducts her life is very important to Anitra, and Anitra is certain that her advice will reach Scully. The theory seems to be that some paranoid schizophrenic will read the above paragraph and pass it on to Mulder (all paranoid schizophrenics have Fox Mulder’s unlisted phone number - it’s a union privilege), in the belief that it contains a coded message. Mulder will then show it to Scully, in the hopes that she will be able to decipher it. She will.

But that isn’t what is making it so hard for me to write this month. After sharing my problem with Anitra, she is very alarmed. She says I mustn’t talk about that in public. There are people, she tells me, sad, unfortunate people, who haven’t seen the movie yet! She pleads with me not to spoil it for those miserable people who might nevertheless still find the seven bucks to see it, someday, in a theater.

I’m sorry. Tell you what though, I’ll give you all a warning - WARNING, INFORMATION ABOUT THE END OF THE X-FILES MOVIE FOLLOWS.

OK, you’ve all been warned. So here’s my problem. There they are, BOTH of them, lying in the ice and snow, IN ANTARCTICA, at the edge of this huge crater made by the unexpected take-off of a previously buried tremendously huge alien YOU-KNOW-WHAT. The snow tractor that delivered Mulder to this site is somewhere nearby, BUT IT IS OUT OF GAS. The evil conspirators who brought Scully to this chunk of ice ARE LONG GONE.

So how did they get off Antarctica? What’d they do, thumb a ride on the back of a passing penguin? Walrus, walri? In the very next scene they’re doing their almost-but-not-quite-kissing act in DC, under blossoming cherry trees! What?! Did Mulder dial up the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise on his cell-phone? “Hey, it’s cherry blossom time! Beam us to the Capitol, Scotty!!?” On a continent that does not yet have cellular phone service???

Oh, but THAT can’t be. I forgot that Mulder’s cell-phone would have been in outer space at this point, since he had carelessly dropped it inside the alien YOU-KNOW-WHAT.

SEQUEL ALERT!!: ALIENS have Mulder’s cell-phone! The fun only starts there!

Speaking of evil conspirators...

Let me get this straight... Paul Schell deeply CARES about the plight of the homeless, so long as they aren’t visible? So long as they don’t put up tents? “I LOVE you homeless guy, cause you sleep outdoors without any shelter and you will surely die at that rate, but thank you anyway good buddy! - for not putting that nasty protective tent up!”

Once again, Anitra gets into the act. She wants me to “remember the hamsters”, whatever that means. I remind her that Mayor Schell is on our side. Yeah, really! This is a man who would never beat a dead horse - he LOVES dead horses!

Maybe Paul Schell would like to negotiate with SHARE and WHEEL et al to agree that they may put their unhoused people on the continent of Antarctica. Just so long as they don’t put up any unsightly tents that might offend the eyes of those who may have voted for Mr. Schell, or that might do so in the future, or that might be artichokes.

“Tents are not only ugly, but they are a fire hazard. Snow is much safer.”

And, surely those homeless wimps can’t complain about being isolated, by being put there in Antarctica. For one, they’ll have evil conspirators everywhere around them to keep them company. For two, they will be able to get to DC within minutes (at cherry blossom time).

For three, Mark Sidran himself, renowned humanitarian, is prepared to provide the initial transportation at no cost to the general public (he can write it off as a campaign expense.)

Great, now my spell-checker is telling me to change “unhoused” to “unhorsed”. Some things make no sense, others too much. How’s a guy supposed to concentrate?