Mark Dent wrote:
> I know this is not Roadster Related but how are you guys holding up in
> Seattle? It looks like it is a mess out there.
I'm in Seattle. I live withing a couple of miles from downtown. One of
my hobbies is photography. I decided to go about a mile from my home to
take some pictures of the demonstrations. For those of you who know
Seattle, I was on Broadway on Capitol Hill, well outside the security
zones and well away from downtown.
One of my first observations was armored carriers with police officers in
Darth Vader outfits. I observed an entirely peaceful, but noisy
demonstration. There was NO vandalism and no violence. In fact, there
were no problems above a group of people less than a 50 yards long
parading down the street. Then the police moved in.
I tried to get some good pictures, but I got stuck in the middle of a
release of CS/OC chemical spray. I have no idea what prompted it. There
was no warning from the police, just concussion grenades and chemical
agents. My wife and I jumped in her 300ZX, windows up and ventilation
off. We had no choice but to drive through the cloud. We both held our
breathes and rolled the windows down after clearing the clouds, but still
got painful stinging in the eyes, nose, throat and lungs.
My take on this from first hand experience and watching this unfold on
live TV: The vast majority of the protesters are entirely peaceful and
law abiding. A handful of vandals triggered this situation. The police
made a big mistake on Tuesday. They chose to surround peaceful protesters
and gas them while they actually, believe it or not, stood by and watched
a group of about 30 people vandalize and loot. I kid you not, this was on
live TV and there were police observing it and doing NOTHING. This was
the start of the problem. After this, there was a decision to "get
tough," and all hell has broken out. As a result of the current police
state, people who never dreamed of protesting are taking to the streets
to protest the actions of the police!
The "protest" that I observed was NEIGHBORS coming out of their homes and
apartments yelling things to the police like "go home, we don't need you
here." The police responded by charging and gassing them.
I'm very ashamed of our law enforcement and the recent decisions by the
City of Seattle.
Jim Anable
Seattle? Belfast? Moscow? Beijing? I'm not sure anymore.
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