From a very funny Eric Lacitis of the Seattle Times, deadpan news coverage:
PROTEST AGAINST POLICE GETS PUSHY
An anti-police protest that started in downtown Seattle and went to Capitol Hill featured about 60 to 70 self-described anarchists, most looking to be in their 20s, and about 30 police officers on bicycles with an additional five on horse patrol. . . The demonstrators, many dressed anarchist style in black jeans and black hoodies with black bandannas covering their faces, shouted slogans such as, “Cops, pigs, murderers!” and kicked over a garbage can or two.
“Anarchist style.” Because you don’t want to dress like just anyone if you’re a free spirit.
[A] young woman, who had a metal pin through the bridge of her nose, was handing out little cardboard cards that read, handwritten in pink, “I am an anarchist & I care about you!” The card included a peace sign. “A lot of people see anarchists as angry and aggressive people,” she said. “That’s definitely not true. We’re not about violence.”
Unless you’re a garbage can. It’s also really hard to drink soda through a bandanna:
She was with a young man who was complaining that wearing a bandanna covering his face interfered with drinking his Mountain Dew.
Unlike most of the protestors, the reporter showed up on time, a seemingly unchallenging six in the evening:
The protest didn’t start out promisingly. It had a scheduled start time of 6 p.m. at Westlake Park, but by then only half a dozen people had shown up. . . By 6:30 p.m. the group of anarchists and supporters had grown to 70. Herded by the police, they went around the block. As happens in demonstrations, a couple of individuals who seem to relish attention did a lot of shouting.
Ha.
The anarchists stood by the edge of Cal Anderson Park that’s near the precinct station, waving black flags and signs with messages like, “What we want begins with a no.” They shouted slogans such as, “There ain’t no power like the power of the people, because the power of the people don’t stop.” There was some more shouting, the cops stood impassively blocking the protesters from going into the street, and then eventually the anarchists straggled off.
Don’t miss the video. The cops have much cooler, all-black outfits than the protestors. Is it just me, but if the power of the people doesn’t stop, how does it also begin with a no?
Well, I was recently in Belarus for the elections, where the cops beet the living crap out of little old grannies. Can we have a fundraiser to send these “anarchists” to Minsk to try out being anti-authority, anti-state blahblahblah?