The Whole World was Watching

I am appreciative of the brief documentary titled “The Whole World Was Watching” that KCTS broadcast last night. Certainly it put the event into a human and political context to a far greater extent than any televised coverage I viewed at the time or since. It seems to me however, that the violence remained the focal point even in this broadcast. In addition to excellent interviews and film clips, I think that further analysis could easily have expanded the program to an hour, offering more insight into who the protestors actually were, why (other than the brief mention of largely unspecified labor and environmental concerns) they protested, and some of exactly what the WTO attendees were proposing. In other words, what were the motives of these parties, and why were these objectives in conflict? History only begins to make sense when one sees not only what people did, but why they did it. If the whole world was watching the WTO protest in on their TV screens, nearly the only thing they saw was violence.

I was not present at the WTO protests but I watched the coverage extensively on the three largest commercial TV stations in Seattle, channels 4, 5, and 7. Of the coverage I was able to observe, the fisheye-lens of TV turned the whole affair into a story about vandalism and the police reaction to it. I have observed this pattern many times before, in which news reports, especially those prepared for television, exclusively focus on the emotionally evocative elements of a story to the point of gross distortion. During the late 60s and early 70s, there was a wave of student protest across America, and there was constant coverage of violent protest in the news. It was a shock for me in May of 1970, when four students were randomly shot and killed at Kent State University. I knew this campus intimately, having earlier received my high school diploma from a now-disbanded model school run by the university. If such events could come to pass at that verdant and sleepy Midwestern campus, they could have occurred anywhere. In protest of these events, several hundred University of Chicago students and I walked to a nearby National Guard Armory. Here sober speeches where delivered by local clergyman and others. We (at least my circle of friends) were delighted to see a TV camera present because at last we thought the public would see a televised example of peaceful protest, yet at the very edge of the crowd were about a dozen people repeatedly shouting "Power to the people –Off the pig" (in other words, "Kill the police"). Images of these people alone were broadcast to characterize the event.

While we tend to accept as inevitable such distortions by the media, they are fundamentally dishonest, as well as damaging to society. Again, I could give further examples. The urge to sensationalize the news strongly promotes polarization rather than understanding. In a barbershop in Kent, Ohio (my parents lived in nearby Brimfield and my mother worked for KSU) I heard for myself what others had reported; adults viscerally approving of the death of teenagers. How can that be anything but a symptom of a sick society?

I also think a question that is too seldom asked is, "what outcome do participants hope to gain through protest?" One obvious result is numerical demonstration of opposition to an event or policy, but inasmuch as such a demonstration of numbers is typically a tactic of a minority, the larger question becomes “By what means will this action persuade the majority?” Very effective protest movements have included Gandhi's work in India, the US women’s suffrage movement, and US protests for civil rights. In each of these cases so far as I am aware, the significant protests were very highly disciplined, and key instances of civil disobedience involved violating specific laws that were morally indefensible. Gandhi defied colonial control of salt. Suffragettes illegally registered to vote. Blacks occupied “whites only” seats at lunch counters, busses, and schools. Effective civil disobedience is something like a scientific experiment. Removal of the ordinary clutter surrounding a specific principle leaves that principle vividly revealed. In this respect I think that protest that primarily seeks to be disruptive is likely to be counter-productive. There may be a place in protest for strategic disruption, but the overarching question is logically, when the whole world is watching, what is it they are likely to see? In the Seattle WTO protest, the specific positions of thousands of demonstrators, and even those of the various WTO members themselves, were shoved to the sidelines and obscured, instead of being highlighted. The protest certainly truncated the meeting, but character and extent of this influence is debatable, as is the question of whether the protests could have been far more effective than they were. Violence at such an event should not tolerated by anyone, and yet years later, I still read opinion pieces from the left endorsing it. It is worth recalling a document on which H. R. Haldeman scribbled "good" and "great" predicting "violent protest" at a Nixon reelection rally. Haldeman evidently believed that violent protest would help Nixon’s bid for reelection, surely not the outcome the protestors would be expected to be aiming to secure. Clarity of the message becomes paramount.

Sure would be cool if this video actually played correctly...