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| SEATTLE MAYOR | |
 December 1, 1999 
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MARGARET WARNER: Joining me first from Seattle is the city's mayor, Paul Schell. MAYOR PAUL SCHELL, Seattle: Thank you. MARGARET WARNER: Tell us what you've done do restore order today after what happened yesterday. |
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| National Guard helps restore order | ||||||||||||||||||||
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MAYOR PAUL SCHELL: Yes. And we've arrested something like 300 today. And it's been peaceful, and they're making their point and we're having to devote a lot of resources to make this happen, but we're committed to do that. MARGARET WARNER: And so, just to be clear, even if they're not obstructing anyone now, if they're demonstrating inside this zone, they're out of there. MAYOR PAUL SCHELL: If they violate the law. And so that's a key part of this as well, and that, to the extent that they're occupying intersections and disobeying the law, then we're responding. MARGARET WARNER: Now, your governor called out the National Guard. What's their role?
In many ways, it's a triumph of free speech, because we allowed our citizens to make their case -- anybody who wanted to, even though we knew full well there were some people who had a different agenda, but I thought it was more important to let that happen as peaceably as we could, and make sure that nobody got hurt. And we've had very few injuries, none serious. The ministry opened, albeit a couple hours later. Sometimes democracy is a little messy, but in this case, I think that the people were heard, the message was sent, and the people had a chance to speak.
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| A city of free speech | ||||||||||||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: I think a lot of Americans, seeing those television pictures last night, or the pictures in the paper this morning, are wondering how it was so out of control. I mean, these demonstrations were anticipated, were they not? MAYOR PAUL SCHELL: Pardon? MARGARET WARNER: The demonstrations were fully anticipated, were they not?
But no, I think we never lost control, but we had streets that were blocked, and we had vandalism by just a few people, but enough to break windows. And in many ways, the protesters who were trying to make their message were the most offended by this -- labor, the environmentalists -- and those are the people helping us. I couldn't be doing what I'm doing today without the support of the larger community, without the support of those who made those early protests. And so, I think today, because of allowing people to have their say, and making sure that they were heard, we're able to take much more direct action to ensure that we have a safe city for everybody in the city. MARGARET WARNER: Now, some of the protesters who've been interviewed in the Seattle papers have been quoted as saying, "What we expected to have happen yesterday was, we would be -- if we were blocking an intersection, the police would come along and they'd pick us up, put us in a paddy wagon, arrest us --" kind of what you're doing today -- not to start immediately with tear gas and rubber bullets. Why were those tactics necessary?
Look, if I had closed the city and denied protests and had put all
sorts of forces in the large area that is really the core of our city
where this convention is being held, we'd have been severely criticized
for stopping free speech. We'd have been potentially accused of precipitating
an even worse demonstration because we were not letting people be heard.
And so we took perhaps a tougher course by allowing this to occur, as
MARGARET WARNER: Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor, for being with us, and good luck. MAYOR PAUL SCHELL: Thank you. |
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MAYOR
PAUL SCHELL: Well, we did a number of things yesterday afternoon. I
declared an emergency, which gave me authority to ask for help from
the National Guard. We had a curfew last night that started at 7:00
and extended until daybreak. And then we slowly moved the protesters
out. 
MARGARET
WARNER: So any demonstrators inside this security perimeter are being
arrested today? 
MAYOR
PAUL SCHELL: Well, I asked him to call out the National Guard. We're
using them primarily to back up. I've had a lot of officers out on the
street for 12, 14 hours. And we're using them for backup support. They're
not armed, but they are trained in crowd control, and so they're being
very helpful. We've also had help from the King County Sheriff's Department,
from other surrounding municipalities, and we're doing the best we can.
And
while I absolutely abhor the property damage, and it makes me sick to
my stomach to see what they did to the walls of the symphony hall, but
we're going to fix that. And now many of the protesters who marched
yesterday are helping us clean up the city. And again, it's a sign that
a civil society can work, and I think that's a very important message
to send as well, that free speech, engaging our citizens, and being
part of the process of making decisions is an issue that we need to
take very seriously as well. 
MAYOR
PAUL SCHELL: Oh, yes. We'd worked for months with all of the demonstrators,
including the Ruckus Society, those who had promised a peaceful, non-
violent (protest). And as I said, 99 percent of them were fine. There
were some self-proclaimed anarchists from other parts of the country
who infiltrated those marches and started throwing off M-80s inside.
MAYOR
PAUL SCHELL: They were because partly, there was a strategy that, if
we had to arrest 1,000 people with the 1,000 officers we had, we'd have
nobody to protect the rest of the people who were doing a peaceful demonstration.
It was -- it took a lot of discipline on the part of our officers, and
patience, to watch people vandalize buildings, knowing that the strategy
was to get them to leave their post, and to deal with the vandal people,
and that would have put at risk the children and the families from our
churches, our labor unions, our environmental community that were out
there making their peaceful protest. 
messy
as it was, no serious injuries, the ministerial began, and if the city
stands for anything that offsets the awful images of a city being vandalized,
we're also a city of free speech.