Public Protest Ain't What She Used To Be

"Streetcar gongs ceased their clamor; newsboys cast their unsold papers into the street; from the doors of mill and factory, store and workshop, streamed 65,000 workingmen. School children with fear in their hearts hurried homeward. The life stream of a great city stopped."

That's how Mayor Ole Hanson described the beginning of the general strike that was held in Seattle February 1919, one of the few general strikes ever attempted in the U.S. The Bolsheviks had just won their revolution in Russia two years earlier and the Red Scare was coming into play in our country. Add 35,000 striking shipyard workers. Subtract the city's more moderate labor officials - They were in Chicago for a vote. Those left behind broached the subject of a general strike with other unions and the city was shut down on February, 6, while rumors of poisoned water, blasted dams and union heavies en route from Chicago kept everyone else either locked in their homes or fleeing for the country. In an effort to keep the peace, or kick a lot of union ass anyway if the peace got queered, the mayor brought in soldiers from Fort Lewis and deputized 2,400 frat guys and student organization members whom he armed with clubs and guns. The city teetered towards open war in the streets.

In February 2003 Seattlest and a friend put on our rain jackets and took the bus to Seattle Center. We went to the Center House and ate overpriced burgers while joking that maybe the corporate sandwiches weren't the best choice for a pre-protest meal. Outside we met up with thousands of other Seattleites who weren't much interested in a war in Iraq and continued our joking and laughing with them. We spotted Rick Steves wearing sensible shoes and an umbrella in his back pocket - He kind of seemed like he was on stage even though he was alone and just one of the crowd and then we started walking towards Belltown where we all felt like we were on stage - Here or there someone leaned out of a window or stood on the side of the street to cheer or jeer us on, but almost everyone we saw was a part of the parade - Estimates say somewhere around 50,000. The life stream of the city hardly stopped and we were far far away from open war in the streets, but there were a lot of people out there, as there were in lots of other cities, and we went home that night thinking that we'd done a good job giving the impression that we weren't much interested in a war in Iraq.

We weren't yet in Seattle when WTO occurred.

Fast forward to January, 27, 2007, this past weekend. We've invaded Iraq and everything that we were afraid of, everything that pulled us out into the streets in 2003, has occurred. There are no signs of things slowing down, in fact, the President is escalating. However, the Post Intelligencer's headline for the story of this weekend's protest was "More than 1,000 in Seattle protest war." More than one thousand. Seattlest takes that to mean definitely less than two thousand and probably less than fifteen hundred. Where did everybody go? Seattlest was doing odd jobs around the house on Saturday. We hung a door, crookedly, it turns out. We can't say we didn't hear there was a protest going on. We'd heard about it, but we never seriously considered going - We spent more time deciding not to go get ignored by sales guys at the boat show. Guess we just thought if it didn't work when there were fifty thousand of us (plus Rick Steves) it wasn't going to get exponentially more effective as the number of protesters exponentially diminished. More than 1,000+1 is hardly the life stream of the city. We stayed home and enjoyed the nice weather. Later, while we watched the news, we shook a tiny fist towards D.C.

Oh, and the general strike in 1919 eventually petered out without violence. They never had any clearly defined goals and the streetcar workers started trickling back to work on February, 8. Everyone else soon followed, thereby depriving us of the pleasure of reading on HistoryLink the tragic story of 2,400 members of UW's Greek system clashing with 65,000 Wobblies in the streets of Seattle in 1919. The shipyard workers continued alone for nine more weeks to no effect.