Subversion in Seattle
Natasha from The Watch went to the Seattle protests:
I got there just at the beginning of a speech by the author of ‘Smoke Signals’, Sherman Alexie, who’s Native American. He was pretty good, and related a story about something that happened right after 9- 11. Shortly after that, he was walking downtown, stepping into a crosswalk, when the driver of a truck leaned out his window and told him to ‘go back to his country.’ Alexie described this as a crime of irony, and wasn’t sure if he had composed himself in time for the driver to hear his retort of ‘You first.’ He’d said that it had been the prayer of all brown people in the US that the terrorists would turn out to be Norwegian.
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The fountain court of the Seattle Center was jam packed from one end to the other with people, with many more spilling around the sides, and streaming in throughout the program. (My partner in crime guessed that there were maybe 100,000 there, which I’m adding to this commentary only because he’s done a lot of public speaking for work and is alright at estimating crowd sizes.) I hope that next time one of these things gets thrown, that they vet the speakers a little more carefully, do a dress rehearsal or something. But I was pleased at the turnout on what was a pretty gray day, threatening to rain.