Downtown hopes N-30 spells peace, not deja vu

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Susan Paynter

Downtown hopes N-30 spells peace, not deja vu

Art Thiel
Monday, November 20, 2000

By SUSAN PAYNTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

The Seattle Police nickname for it is "N-30." The plan -- don't call it a battle plan -- for the Nov. 30 anniversary of WTO avoids the letters that echo last year's winter of discontent.

The department is prepared and confident that, this time, things will not get out of hand, police say.

Demonstrators are free to speak, carry signs, hand out fliers and balloons if they want to -- within the boundaries of the law. But personal safety and property will be protected. Should people break the law or store windows, arrests will be swift.

And that's about all that police will say as they gird for one week from Thanksgiving.

Ask specific officers about specific strategies and they either won't comment, won't call back, or happily sigh that potential trouble spots are not in their area.

Merchants are girding, too. But they don't want to talk either.

Along a strip of Seattle stores and coffee shops that were marred and scarred by violent demonstrators against last year's World Trade Organization conference, shopkeepers were busy Friday arranging plastic gingerbread houses and jolly holiday-wrapped gift boxes in their windows. Either they were too busy to talk WTO or they see it as a bad dream. The only sound they want to hear come this Nov. 30 is the ca-ching of a cash register. "I don't know about that. Can I help you find something?" a clerk at a cards and glass shop said, adding, "Don't use our name, OK?"

At City Hall, strategists aren't using the old letters either. Mayor Paul Schell's public point man for the N-30 anniversary is press secretary Dick Lilly. He's painfully aware that some who feel their civil rights were stomped on last time around have started ramping up the war of words.

Tim Crowley of Free Speech Seattle, for one, is sending e-mail to the City Council, the mayor's office and the news media demanding a statement that the rights of free speech and assembly will be honored come Nov. 30.

"I am very concerned with the recent saber-rattling by the Seattle Police Department and the mayor's office as we get close to the anniversary of WTO," Crowley wrote on Friday.

Crowley, who lives on Capitol Hill, says he was gassed in his home by "rampaging police" last year and wants an assurance it won't happen again. He claims the message being broadcast by the mayor and police is that the city is prepared to do its worst to silence the citizens of Seattle.

Heaving a sigh, Lilly called that kind of talk "really, really disappointing." Of course, people are free to turn out with signs for labor, the environment, social justice, whatever the cause, he said.

In fact, Lilly thinks peaceful demonstrations at last year's WTO helped bring those issues to the world's attention. "The world sees Seattle as a place where those issues were given credibility," Lilly claimed.

But the specter of a police state raised in angry rhetoric simply ignores the fact that the worst aspects of last year's protest involved deliberate property damage and setting fires in the streets, Lilly said. Shoppers, store owners, and ordinary folks going to work and to entertainment venues need to know that the city won't let things boil over this time.

Seattle police legal adviser Leo Poort thinks that, this time, the smaller number of demonstrators will help maintain sanity. That and the fact that the city and the police learned hard lessons from WTO.

It's the Police Department's job to protect the right to be safe as well as the right to speak out, Poort said. The Founding Fathers didn't name any particular pecking order for which right is more important.

Yes, police must prepare for the worst, Poort said. Nov. 30 will be treated as what the department calls a "red dot day," meaning officers and other key personnel should not schedule vacations or time off.

But Poort does not expect the worst to happen. For one thing, there is no actual WTO meeting to protest this time. Hopefully, people will speak their piece peacefully.

And, if Nov. 30 does pass with speech protected and stores open, will it mean the clincher that Mayor Schell is off and running for re-election?

Ticking off a list of what he says are Schell's accomplishments -- libraries, community centers, improvements at the Seattle Center and the parks levy, to name a few -- Lilly asked rhetorically, "Why shouldn't he run?"

Susan Paynter's column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Call her at 206-448-8392 or send e-mail to: susanpaynter@seattle-pi.com