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Rage, sense of betrayal running deep in WTO-wounded Seattle
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By ART THIEL
The riot gear is stowed; downtown is reopened, and tinny Christmas carols can barely be heard over the credit card scanners.
Don't be fooled. Currier & Ives, it ain't.
Seattle is one raw, open wound.
From cops to shopkeepers to bystander victims and mostly from people who did not participate in the World Trade Organization debacle but are emotionally invested in Seattle, the rage lingers. Betrayal runs deep.
Even the sudden resignation of Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper seems unlikely to stanch the visceral contempt reflected in e-mail and voice mail following my Friday WTO column on the region's disconnect between leadership and citizens.
Having provoked many a sports fan over the past dozen years with thoughts about games, teams and athletes, I'm used to drawing reaction. But never this much, never so affirming.
In more than 125 e-mails and nearly as many phone calls, readers offered thanks and, often, a profound sense of violation by events of last week.
Print and TV reporters aggressively covered the dueling constituencies. The remaining 98 percent of Seattle and the region absorbed their reports in degrees from dismay to horror over the trashing of a beloved place for reasons little understood.
"You did a succinct job of characterizing how at least some of us around here feel about last week, as well as what our city has become over the last decade," wrote Wayne Wilson, a Seattle lifer. "It is interesting that the delusional state continues with the organizers still calling it a success and the protesters thinking they somehow affected an organization that could not even develop an agenda to begin their meeting . . .
"I am saddened and hurt by what took place in our city."
Grief came through time and again. The virtual hijacking of a place acclaimed for its civility was shocking enough, but that the civic leadership misread so much about the event and misread so much about the values of its citizenry was a source of despair.
Then again, the despair was not new. Respondents pointed out that the failure of the Seattle Commons project was due in part to a citizenry resentful of the proposed loss of jobs, housing and business for a dilletante item on the elites' agenda.
More recently, the success of Initiative 695 was viewed by many as a response to a state government oblivious to the consequences of its power to tax. It may prove to be lousy law and even unconstitutional, but there is little misunderstanding of the nerve struck by the initiative.
The conflict here last week seemed for some to be a metaphor for growing community division. Apart from the politics of the WTO's agenda and the debate over tactics used against protesters, the hubris of the leadership, from Mayor Paul Schell to the congressional delegation to the Port of Seattle, was jaw-dropping.
To continue insisting, before a backdrop of clouds of tear gas, that WTO was a good thing doing well, might have been broken the record for civic disinformation set by Mariners ownership. ("Don't worry; we'll take care of the stadium cost overruns.")
The assumption that bigger and bolder is always better may be valid in software and planeworks, but it is not always so for a neighborhood, a downtown or a civic sensibility.
The incessant need to jump atop the backs of residents and screech, "Hey, world, check out our Six Flags Over Seattle theme park!" is a hallmark of civic insecurity. There would seem to be virtue in being Seattle, not Baja San Francisco or New York With a Mountain.
Or, as reader Vollie Scott wrote: "It's not Seattle Inc., a subsidiary of Microsoft Corp., yet. Or is it?"
Perhaps the greatest benefit that can come from the ensuing investigations and recriminations is that the community won't be found to be just another hard drive for Bill Gates.
The WTO event and its subsequent spitstorm is the latest example of the messy sort of confrontational democracy that almost has a longer tradition in Seattle than banana slugs. The point was made by Dr. Mara Adelman, a communications professor at Seattle University:
"I do think the protest showed that many in Seattle are doing more than fondling their stock options. For me, the protest was an affirmation that I live in a city with a soul."
That civic soul is, however, in play as never before. We've seen the vision for that soul by Schell, the port, et al. And through the despair and the rage, there's a glimpse of an alternative.
Years from now, we may thank the WTO for helping us engage the debate before it was too late.
P-I columnist Art Thiel can be reached at 206-448-8135 or artthiel@seattle-pi.com
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