Private security guards stood outside cafes restaurants and shops

Private security guards stood outside cafes, restaurants and shops.Seattle, which hosted a famous general strike in 1919, was once again in a state of virtual shutdown. The port was closed and several groups of workers were on strike for the day, including taxi-drivers hoping to deprive WTO delegates of a means of transport.During the late morning and early afternoon, tens of thousands of workers were to march from Memorial Stadium through the streets of downtown to demonstrate against an erosion of their rights and benefits. An older man in an Uncle Sam outfit had dollar bills pinned to his coat tails and symbolically swung at a football-sized globe with a baseball bat.Speeches over the loudspeakers denounced the capitalist system and accused the WTO of putting corporate profits before people and the planet. Several banners played with the WTO acronym, suggesting “World Takeover Organisation” and “Way Too Orwellian”. Groups of protesters, typically sporting body piercing and coffee flasks, emerged with their banners all over Capitol Hill, a student area above downtown. Clusters came together and converged at a small park on the waterfront of Elliott Bay, near Seattle’s harbour, before marching through the Pike Place farmers’ market – a noted tourist attraction – and heading back uphill towards the convention centre.”Whose streets? Our streets!” they chanted. But they climbed down after riot police threatened to remove them.The protest, organised by the so-called Direct Action Network, began before dawn.

Seattle’s mayor, Paul Schell, arrived at the besieged Paramount Theater, venue for the opening ceremony, and said simply: “You can be firm with your message, but be gentle with your city.”Protesters jumped on to the roofs of a ring of city buses set up by police as a barricade outside the theatre. Go to your room.” As the morning wore on, the numbers of protesters kept rising. A separate demonstration that started at the University of Washington a few miles away turned into a march through the city linking up with the main protest.City officials did not appear over-anxious to clear the blockades and allow the WTO meeting to proceed. Others resorted to teasing slogans broadcast over a loudspeaker system: “WTO – You’ve been very naughty delegates.

Some made a show of brandishing shotguns, but generally they kept a surprisingly low profile.It was the largest public demonstration in Seattle since the Vietnam War. With a whole cluster of issues at stake, from genetically modified foods to the rights of Zapatista rebels in the Chiapas region of Mexico, the slogans on display represented a kind of alternative globalism to that being pushed by the WTO itself.”Fair trade, not free trade,” said the banners, interspersed with whale balloons, large animal skeletons representing the threat to endangered species and big photographs of corporate leaders adorned with hate slogans.Some protesters urged police and WTO delegates to join their protest. They were thwarted by two Caterpillar tractors that sealed off the street and soon backed off. Two early arrests were reported, but there were no indications of serious trouble.Phalanxes of heavily armed officers, backed by squad cars and mounted police, milled in the streets next to the protests. A few dozen young people dressed in black clothing and black balaclavas appeared to act as a kind of praetorian guard, sprinting from protest point to protest point with gas masks, but they too appeared to shy from direct confrontation with riot police.Uphill from the convention centre, a small group of protesters rolled rubbish bins and rocks towards a line of riot police.