SEATTLE, December 10 — Protests began in Seattle immediately after the grand jury in Ferguson refused to indict killer cop Darren Wilson for the murder of Mike Brown. That night one hundred cops donning riot gear and brandishing assault rifles came out to meet over one hundred students, teachers and workers who were shutting down intersections in downtown Seattle.
When some demonstrators moved onto Interstate 5, police attacked with tear gas, pepper spray and flash-bang grenades. Protesters on the overhead bridges responded by throwing rocks and firecrackers at police below. The police made some arrests and beat some people, but the workers and students were not deterred. On the national day of action four days later, over 1,000 people took to the streets to oppose racist police violence.
Since this initial outpouring of antiracist rage, demonstrations of varying sizes have been held almost every night. The Seattle Times (ST) editorial board attacked antiracists as a “roaming gang of belligerent hostiles” out to ruin Christmas and scare children. They harshly criticized Mayor Ed Murray for saying he sympathized with those angered by the Brown decision — a statement he immediately rescinded (ST, 12/2). Still, antiracists were not deterred.
On Saturday, December 6th, over 1,200 demonstrators marched from Garfield High School — a predominantly Black school — into downtown where they again committed the great crime of “bringing Westlake Center and Pacific Place mall to a standstill on the busiest shopping days of the year”(ST).
Leaving downtown, protesters formed a human chain shutting down multiple intersections in the trendy Capitol Hill neighborhood. A series of bars and restaurants were targeted because their owners had asked for a greater police presence to attack “Somali gangs” last summer (ST, 12/4). Demonstrators denounced the racist call for police use of profiling that could only lead to violence.”
Every step of the way police have sought to intimidate protesters. On last Sunday’s Dec. 7 march police herded the crowd of one hundred into a dark, largely abandoned street. Once there, the police surrounded the group, creating bike barriers on either side of the street while riot cops holding their batons out sealed the ends.
Marchers were kept there for half an hour while police presumably debated rioting through the crowd as their counterparts in Oakland had the night before. On Monday night one protest leader was attacked, arrested and held overnight by a gang of cops as she walked home from the demonstration alone. Still, antiracists remain resolute.
These marches have made the priorities of the police and the media under capitalism crystal clear. To again quote the Times, to stand up and oppose racism and police brutality is not “building a better world,” but “destroying it.” And police throwing flash-bang grenades into crowds is being “otherwise restrained.” The police line up to protect the banks while the papers call upsetting holiday shopping “violence.” For those who have never seen fascism with its mask off, the last few weeks have been very enlightening.
Meanwhile, on December 5th, the county prosecutor announced that he will not press charges against cop who viciously punched a Black woman while she was handcuffed in the back of his squad car. The victim, Miyekko Durden-Bosley, had her right orbital socket shattered, while the racist cop got a six-month paid vacation (ST, 12/5). Right now workers and students in the streets are only calling for reform, but that won’t change capitalism’s racist nature and the violence it produces. As the face of brutal capitalism is revealed, antiracist protests must be turned into revolutionary action!