The roles of pivotal players in WTO

Four people who played pivotal roles in the WTO protests reflect on what happened then and what it means now.

The protest leader

John Sellers, director of the Ruckus Society, had one mission in mind: to shut down WTO. He achieved success on the ground but lost control of the message.

He realized he had the upper hand a couple of days before the summit. It was a Seattle moment: He and another Ruckus leader, Han Shan, were sharing a meal at the Honey Court restaurant with Capt. Jim Pugel and Lt. Daniel Whelan, the top Seattle cops they would face on the streets.

Pugel asked if two school buses would be sufficient to accommodate all the protesters, should police need to make mass arrests.

"We were kicking each other under the table," Sellers recalls. "We realized they just had no idea of the scale, the immensity. Of how many people were pouring into the city."

Sellers had spent six months preparing for WTO. He'd helped organize an activist-training camp at a farm near Arlington and rented a warehouse in Lynnwood. "WTO was this perfect, galvanizing villain," Sellers says.

On Day One, he and thousands of protesters blockaded the Paramount Theatre. "There were Teamsters and turtles dancing in the streets of Seattle," he says. "It was one of the most profound moments of my life, and it felt unbelievably empowering."

But WTO soon turned ugly. The images went around the world: black-clad anarchists (who were not part of Ruckus) smashing in store windows, police firing tear gas and marching on protesters. "We lost so much of the spin and narrative," says Sellers. "We lost the goodwill of a lot of people."

Sellers now lives on Vashon Island with his wife and their 5-year-old twins, and helps run a progressive advertising agency.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 temporarily ended most direct action, he says. Just disagreeing with the government became unacceptable. Breaking the law to make a point? Forget about it. But things are changing. "It feels to me that our toolbox is being called upon again," he says. "I know it is."

The police commander

Capt. Jim Pugel, who was the WTO incident commander, gained the type of expertise nobody wants on their résumé. It's summed up in the monthly talks he later gave to the Department of Homeland Security: "It's about what to do when everything goes wrong," he says.

While Seattle police prepared and trained for WTO, Pugel says, they simply weren't expecting the numbers.

"We just had no idea. Nor should we have," he says. "Who knew what the World Trade Organization was? ... No one had experienced that level of civil unrest in 20, 25 years."

While Seattle police were criticized for overreacting, Pugel defends tactics like firing tear gas into the crowds. It may make for shocking television, he says, but it reduced physical confrontation.

"There is no clear, scientific way to control human beings in huge numbers when it's very emotional," he says.

He does acknowledge mistakes, saying his biggest was making mass arrests on Day Two. Given a do-over, he would have simply contained the protesters where they were and let them sit it out. He also wishes he'd done more to identify and arrest ringleaders early on and that authorities had set a wider perimeter around WTO venues such as the Paramount.

"Although locally it will always be known as the Battle in Seattle, when I get calls from outside agencies, especially other countries, they look at it as a success, in that no one died and there were no real serious injuries," he says, although noting that one person did lose an eye.

Now assistant chief, Pugel says that more than anything, he's proud his officers showed restraint. Some even sympathized with protesters — one officer chose to wear an anti-WTO shirt under his riot gear.

The WTO leader

Mike Moore, who was WTO director-general, says the summit was surreal and contradictory.

Surreal because just three months into his job, the former New Zealand prime minister felt like he'd landed in the middle of a "Star Wars" episode, complete with stormtroopers. And contradictory in terms of who stood for what.

Moore recalls meeting a group of Seattle longshoremen just before the summit and thinking: "How can wharfies be against trade? That's like teachers being against education."

Day One at the Paramount is a time he says he'd like to erase from his memory. He stood there for hours. There was no one to hand the gavel. Eventually he gave up, declaring the opening ceremony indefinitely suspended.

He found it strange watching "middle-class white Americans" screaming and shoving African delegates, telling them they were wrong on trade. Yet he agreed with the protesters about the enormous injustices in the world.

"In many ways, I'd have liked to join them," Moore says. "But I think the way to solve injustice is by negotiating — by meeting and talking."

And when the Seattle summit fell apart? "I was enormously disappointed. I was in tears," Moore says. "Seattle wasn't the only failure, it was just the most spectacular."

Moore, who these days travels and writes books promoting globalization, says the subsequent round of trade talks in Doha, Qatar, was helped by the riots in Seattle.

"No one had heard of the WTO until then. After that, its profile was huge, even though its image was rat shit," Moore says. "Doha was successful and it may not have been successful without Seattle. The overconfidence of rich countries and the condescension to poor countries was rebalanced a bit."

The mayor

Paul Schell was the fall guy for the WTO mess. After all, he'd lobbied for the summit as a marquee city event. Right afterward, The Seattle Times wrote an editorial that summed up the feelings of many. It began: "The mayor blew it."

Ten years later, Schell remains unapologetic. He says he is proud of the police force, proud of his staff, proud of a city that allowed free speech.

"I'm at peace with everything," he says. "Democracy can be messy sometimes."

Schell says it's important not to give up freedoms due to fear — something people understand more now in the aftermath of 9/11. He always understood the protesters were driven by concern for the world. After all, his niece Amy was out there, dressed as a turtle.

Many, including City Council members, ducked for cover or pointed fingers in the aftermath, Schell says. King County Sheriff (now Congressman) Dave Reichert? "The worst," he says. "A hot dog." The Seattle Times? Don't even start.

"It was very lonely for a while," says Schell, who was rejected by voters in the next election. These days, he's semi-

retired on Whidbey Island, spending his winters in Palm Springs.

"WTO was an important event that ushered in the 21st century, both the good and the challenges. But nobody needs to wring their hands over the past," Schell says. "We stood for something. It was painful, but we stood for something. And I think it made a difference."

Nick Perry: 206-515-5639 or nperry@seattletimes.com