The protest began with four people on the sidewalk in front of the Federal Building last Friday. By Tuesday morning, 31 tents had amassed in Westlake Park—where camping is illegal—as the Occupy Seattle protests grew for their fourth consecutive day. By the time The Stranger went to press, 100 people had established a makeshift hamlet surrounded by chain stores.
How long do they intend to stay?
“As long as we can,” said Aliana Bazara, one of the organizers. (She says that the group will announce events for the week at www.OccupySeattle.org.) For now, the Seattle police patrolling the area seem tolerant, but city officials remain mum about how long they’ll let the occupation stand.
In solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City, the Seattle protesters’ signs, chants, and sentiments are a pastiche of liberal battle cries. They believe what many progressives believe: Runaway corporate greed has sacrificed too many workers, and the US government has deferred its regulatory authority to unscrupulous business interests.
“I’m unemployed and I shouldn’t be,” said Bazara. “I have a bachelor’s degree. I am strong, mentally and physically. I pay taxes and I love my country to death.” But she says she’s part of the 99 percent of Americans who take a backseat to the wealthiest 1 percent who benefit from proportionately lower taxes.
If you wanted the perfect metaphor for corporations harshing on the proletariat, you didn’t have to have to look far. About 15 feet past the tents, past the round-the-clock commissary, and beyond the quartermaster’s tent stocked with provisions—including wool socks, umbrellas, and Band-Aids for campers—on Sunday morning it arrived.
A enormous Las Vegas–like stage—sponsored by Target and topped with a banner that declared “Fresh Has Arrived” and the bull’s-eye Target logo—plopped down in the plaza surrounded by gigantic fake plastic fruit, gleaming stage lights, a fleet of uniformed Target staff handing out samples, and speakers blaring upbeat soul hits. You couldn’t even see the tents behind it.
“Just in time for our protests, they come set up this monstrosity,” said Jackson Morgan (holding a “Target Corp. Greed” sign). What’s his beef with Target? “It’s part of the massive conglomerate of corporations controlling our government and our lives,” he lamented. “And then there’s the immediate problem of them blocking our shit.” 
At least they’re being a little honest, it’s all about hating businesses.
Fuck Target. Their scared of unionization anyway.
If things keep going the way they are, we’ll have Hoovervilles, or maybe call them Reaganvilles. There will be more social unrest to come. The cows are coming home as the Reagan Revolution is slowly crumbling. Kind of reminds me of the Soviet Union crumbling, but at least we can assemble and occupy public places. And people voted for this shit. If we vote for more Republicanism teabag shit sandwiches, maybe we will see the unrest in the street that was going on during the Hoover years. The stupidity of the American voter never ceases to amaze me.
McGinnville has a nice ring to it.
thanks for all the Top Pot Donuts someone at the Stranger sent down to the OccupySeattle site, nothing like a little sugar and caffeine when you have a rasslin’ match with the SPD over your tent. 24 arrests today and the occupation goes on for another night with tarps and bivy bags.
@pdonahue, tell me something. What genius decided to start your protest campaign in Seattle in October? Are you people really that stupid?
it’s difficult to “plan” a protest in solidarity with a major movement already underway in NYC around the weather of the pacific northwest. it seems that waiting until the summer to stage a show of support with occupy wall street would lack the same impact don’t you think Mister G?
It seems to me that it’s difficult to plan a show of solidarity with a major movement already underway in NYC around the weather of the pacific northwest, unless of course Mister G feels that waiting until the summer weather hits to support occupy wall street would have a meaningful impact
@mmunro, do you realize how much everyone’s laughing at you?
@4, I like your sabocat:)
re: timing of the insurrection. I told everybody this spring when Egypt went rouge that now was the time to hit the streets, nobody listened to ME. Now it’s shaping up to be a really bitchy cold fall and a worse winter, and you’re all down for a street fight? Well, better late than never, except I have a raw throat from laying on the cold, wet bricks and breathing second hand smoke from the communards. The jail cell was dry and heated, decisions, decisions……
@10 That would just be too scary for them.
*this message paid for by Solyndra*
And the Tea Party is part of the 99%!!
And the Repigs call it “class warfare”!
Take the corporate billions away and
then they’re truly powerless.
Protesters, forget your cause. People might laugh at you! Oh noez! Don’t you want to feign apathy like all the miserable cogs here?
@14: I’m just stating facts.
Let’s see: $1.2 trillion a year on Big War, Big Med charging twice the price for half the product, massive wealth transfer via regressive taxation.
School and law enforcement systems as the new Jim Crow.
A massively expensive Drug War as a price support program for the drug cartels, which repay the favor by using our banks to launder hundreds of billions for them each year; some of which is used to buy the government. An Al Capone-style crime syndicate here.
Add it up, it costs us $1-2 trillion a year, and the very idea of America, and in return we get destitution and environmental catastrophe.
This country’s falling down. I’m glad these protesters will be there to pick up the pieces.
They are just looking for the Protest tax and when they find it? where ever it is buried they will tax your protesting and tax your tent camping and tax your park gathering.
@16; Frightening, isn’t it?
C’mon you fools… there are more important things to do:
Like helping out with the manhunt for Andrew Meyer!!!