brad nelson

I got my first taste and only taste of tear gas ten years ago today. I was an 18 year old college freshman at the University of Washington. It was a typical November day in Seattle, about 50 degrees and drizzling. Around 10 in the morning I was walking to my calculus class through red square on the UW campus. When I saw my friends Marcel and Aaron walking with about 100 other people,  I joined them. At first I figured I would walk for 50 feet and then go to class, but they were having too much fun and it looked like a better idea than calculus class.

There had been signs around campus and booths for about a month prior, so I was aware that the WTO was meeting in Seattle. I knew it was a big deal, President Clinton was making a rare stop to Seattle. I didn’t know what it all meant and I knew I was ignorant to why people had issues with the WTO. I was pretty sure that I would fall on the side of the protesters. Both my parents are in Unions, my grandpa and uncles are in unions and I’ve always been liberal. Holding signs and marching felt right.

Still, I wasn’t sure why it mattered. I wanted to find out.

We walked from the UW to the Seattle Center and then to Downtown; all along the way, walking down the middle of roads. There were hundreds of us maybe thousands by the time we got downtown, gathering more along the way. I remember seeing people on Eastlake waving to us from their balcony’s. It was surreal. We were chanting, some were holding signs. By the time we arrived at the Center, I was tired and nervous about missing my last chemistry lab that afternoon, so I separated from the group and wandered downtown by myself to jump on a bus back to school. I walked up 5th Avenue. Around Pacific Place I realized that this was the real deal. There was a feeling in the air that this was different. People were locking arms in the street to stop the flow of traffic. There were more people downtown than I’ve ever seen before. I wandered around for a while just taking it all in. It was a sight to be seen.

For maybe the first time in my life I saw a group of people who cared about things that were going on. That was empowering. It felt like a movement that wasn’t going to go away.

Because I was trying to be a good student (although I didn’t fair so well in Chemistry and became a music major the next quarter), I jumped on a bus to go back to school in order to not miss my chemistry lab. Afterwards I rushed across campus back to my dorm. Everyone in the lounge was watching the news. I had to go back. There was no way I was going to miss this. I dropped off some books and grabbed my water bottle, while keeping my chemistry goggles. I had a feeling they might be useful. I planned on heading back by myself, but about 10 others wanted to go too, so we all walked across campus to the bus.

When we arrived there were about twice as many people. The cops looked like storm troopers and there was much more destruction. People were still locking arms to shut down the talks. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before, it felt like a movie. Slowly, one by one, my group of 10 grew smaller. Eventually it was just me and one or two other people. We made our way to the corner of Pike and 6th where there was a lot of activity, opposite NikeTown. A dumpster was in the middle of the intersection and people were playing hand drums. There may have been a small fire in the dumpster too, but I can’t remember exactly. We stood there for a little while, again just taking it in. It was quite the scene – really wish I had a camera with me. After some time, the stormtrooper cops start to move toward us down Pike. Once they got closer I heard a large bang. My first instinct was that it was a terrorist (this was pre-9/11). Then someone told me it was a concussion grenade, intended to make people scatter. Then they started releasing the tear gas. We took off and were able to cut down the alley way halfway down the block. The wind was blowing into the alley, so we were safe from the teargas. It was an amazing sight to see the clouds of gas floating down the city street through the city lights. My chemistry goggles were incredibly helpful at this point, the friends didn’t have the luxury and got the teargas much worse than I. They used some of my water to wash out their eyes. The police were on the offensive, and we decided that it was time to leave.

I left the protests feeling empowered.  Globalization wasn’t giving everyone the same opportunities and I took solace in the fact that people weren’t going to take that lying down. The excessive destruction was unnecessary, it was done by a very small minority of people. Unfortunately, very few people can make a lot of destruction in a situation like that.

It should have been the beginning of something bigger, an opportunity for world leaders to notice that maybe globalization wasn’t working out for everybody. Looking back it didn’t turn out that way. 9/11 happened two years later, and instead we were talking about anthrax and war. It’s really unfortunate. This was a movement that could have gone a long way to address the needs of those who were being left out.

That was the biggest tragedy of the 1999 WTO meeting in Seattle.