I was in and out of downtown all day on tuesday. In the morning there was minimal activity downtown, a few intersections blocked but everything was pretty tame, so I headed to memorial stadium. The stadium was PACKED. Very impressive. I waited for the AFL-CIO march to start, and then followed it into downtown. Downtown was complete chaos. There was no organization whatsoever. The objective was simply to surround the places of meeting and the hotels to prevent entry and exit. All remained relatively peaceful. MANY MANY of the retail core shops were in bad shape. Anything on the ground floor was shattered. The insides of the shops were not looted, but there was glass and spraypaint everywhere. I saw this in the morning, and when I returned downtown with the protesters, it looked like no further damage had been caused, so it would appear that the violent demonstrations took place the day before. There were several people putting dumpsters in the middle of the road to form blockades, and anything loose (like the times/PI paper dispensers) was torn for the sidewalks. It wasn't clear if that had happened earlier or recently.
As you know there was a large dispensal of tear gas and pepper spray. For me, this came later. All day the police were trying to section of the crowd. They eventually contained most people to the pike pine corridor, and then to pine. I can't say this for sure because there was so much confusion, but I found no exit from pine street twords the end. The police then cut through the middle of pine street (don't know where), and then pushed half of the crowd twords the market and belltown, and the other half up the pine street overpass. The crowd (myself included) was sitting peacefully with some istance from the police when they decided to move us back. They wanted us out of downtown obviously from the looting (none of which I saw firsthand), but also because they initiated a 7PM curfew on downtown. NOBODY ever announced this to the crowds. I didn't find out about it until the 11 o'clock news. They never said "please withdraw" or leave or anything. Very suddenly the cops began to lob teargas into the crowds. They didn't aim twords the front to try to push the crowd ahead, they were simply filling the streets with it. I brought a gasmask, and promptly put it on. The crowd of course retreated up pine.
The teargas flowed, and the crowd retreated until we got to the I-5/Pine overpass. The crowd began to stop along with the gas. There was a 100 foot space in between the police and the crowd. There was a standoff for several minutes, until people started to throw bottles and empty tear gas cannisters at the police. Several people were also launching fireworks at them (smart move). In return the police started firing rubber bullets tipped with pepper spray. They also started firing MASSIVE rounds of CS gas (possibly pepper spray, I felt a burning on my skin, whereas what they used downtown only seemed to affect my lungs, minimally at that), again into the center of the crowd, not the front line. There was an all out stampede up pine street at this point. The police continued to fire until the crowd had (semi)dispersed. In the confusion I was hit with several of the rubber bullets, so if any media source has said they weren't firing them, they're LYING.
I went home and later went down to broadway (near seattle community college) where there was a scene of mindless desctruction FAR different from the almost entirely peaceful protests downtown. People were lighting dumpsters on fire, smashing up bus stops, throwing things, etc. The cops arrived, and not looking to get another whiff of tear gas, I decided to go home.
For the most part the crowd remained peaceful all day. There were a VERY SMALL minority of people throwing fireworks or bottles (mabey 10 out of 10,000). When the bottles were thrown, myself and others yelled out for them to stop (and they did). We as a whole remained peaceful, and our only crime was sitting. The fact that a few people decided to launch fireworks into the police probably set off the entire thing. I'm still trying to make sense of it all, as most of the night was filled with an air of complete chaos. -Ryan
Is it just me, or does it seem like every last one of the extrasolar planets discovered is jupiter-or-bigger sized? Is this simply because small planets are impossible to detect with current technology (my first guess), or is there some reasoning to the maddness? I've just never heard it stated that we couldn't detect the earth sized ones...
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I was in and out of downtown all day on tuesday. In the morning there was minimal activity downtown, a few intersections blocked but everything was pretty tame, so I headed to memorial stadium. The stadium was PACKED. Very impressive. I waited for the AFL-CIO march to start, and then followed it into downtown. Downtown was complete chaos. There was no organization whatsoever. The objective was simply to surround the places of meeting and the hotels to prevent entry and exit. All remained relatively peaceful. MANY MANY of the retail core shops were in bad shape. Anything on the ground floor was shattered. The insides of the shops were not looted, but there was glass and spraypaint everywhere. I saw this in the morning, and when I returned downtown with the protesters, it looked like no further damage had been caused, so it would appear that the violent demonstrations took place the day before. There were several people putting dumpsters in the middle of the road to form blockades, and anything loose (like the times/PI paper dispensers) was torn for the sidewalks. It wasn't clear if that had happened earlier or recently.
As you know there was a large dispensal of tear gas and pepper spray. For me, this came later. All day the police were trying to section of the crowd. They eventually contained most people to the pike pine corridor, and then to pine. I can't say this for sure because there was so much confusion, but I found no exit from pine street twords the end. The police then cut through the middle of pine street (don't know where), and then pushed half of the crowd twords the market and belltown, and the other half up the pine street overpass. The crowd (myself included) was sitting peacefully with some istance from the police when they decided to move us back. They wanted us out of downtown obviously from the looting (none of which I saw firsthand), but also because they initiated a 7PM curfew on downtown. NOBODY ever announced this to the crowds. I didn't find out about it until the 11 o'clock news. They never said "please withdraw" or leave or anything. Very suddenly the cops began to lob teargas into the crowds. They didn't aim twords the front to try to push the crowd ahead, they were simply filling the streets with it. I brought a gasmask, and promptly put it on. The crowd of course retreated up pine.
The teargas flowed, and the crowd retreated until we got to the I-5/Pine overpass. The crowd began to stop along with the gas. There was a 100 foot space in between the police and the crowd. There was a standoff for several minutes, until people started to throw bottles and empty tear gas cannisters at the police. Several people were also launching fireworks at them (smart move). In return the police started firing rubber bullets tipped with pepper spray. They also started firing MASSIVE rounds of CS gas (possibly pepper spray, I felt a burning on my skin, whereas what they used downtown only seemed to affect my lungs, minimally at that), again into the center of the crowd, not the front line. There was an all out stampede up pine street at this point. The police continued to fire until the crowd had (semi)dispersed. In the confusion I was hit with several of the rubber bullets, so if any media source has said they weren't firing them, they're LYING.
I went home and later went down to broadway (near seattle community college) where there was a scene of mindless desctruction FAR different from the almost entirely peaceful protests downtown. People were lighting dumpsters on fire, smashing up bus stops, throwing things, etc. The cops arrived, and not looking to get another whiff of tear gas, I decided to go home.
For the most part the crowd remained peaceful all day. There were a VERY SMALL minority of people throwing fireworks or bottles (mabey 10 out of 10,000). When the bottles were thrown, myself and others yelled out for them to stop (and they did). We as a whole remained peaceful, and our only crime was sitting. The fact that a few people decided to launch fireworks into the police probably set off the entire thing. I'm still trying to make sense of it all, as most of the night was filled with an air of complete chaos. -Ryan
Is it just me, or does it seem like every last one of the extrasolar planets discovered is jupiter-or-bigger sized? Is this simply because small planets are impossible to detect with current technology (my first guess), or is there some reasoning to the maddness? I've just never heard it stated that we couldn't detect the earth sized ones...