Document text
Locals say police started the trouble By WENDY SIPOREN Southern Oregon residents back from Seattle said demonstrators against the World Trade Organization gathering were peaceful until the police used pepper spray and tear gas Tuesday to disperse thousands of people blocking downtown streets. "A person didn't need to do anything remarkable to get gassed. You just had to be there," said Illinois Valley resident Annette Rasch, one of approximately 100 people from Southern Oregon at the WTO event. "This was not an angry mob with an ax to grind," said Rasch, who was tear-gassed two times while trying to leave the protest area. "But when that gas started coming down indiscriminately ... everybody got really angry. "There was no discrimination. Delegates got gassed; business owners got gassed; the media got gassed," she said. "I watched a mother with two little kids in a little red wagon overcome by teargas." Civil disobedience advocate and Ashland community activist Dot Fisher-Smith was at the front line with police Tuesday, on her way to the Kingdome to join in a march when she heard the police bullhorn telling people to disperse. "People who are demonstrating don't just get up and leave because the cops say to get up and leave. We didn't go to Seattle to get up and leave," she said. Fisher-Smith was shocked when instead of arresting people, police sprayed them with pepper spray. She got a small dose of the painful spray herself. "The protestors were not provoking the police. It's a dreadful thing ... an abridgement of our rights (to free speech)," she said. Grants Pass resident Lorraine Roach described the crowd of protestors as middle America and praised the restraint of both the protestors and police. "There were union people, religious people, nurses, doctors, lawyers," she said. "We met a couple in their 80s. There were mothers and fathers with strollers. "They wanted to sit down and allow the trade delegates to see how many of us there were," said Roach, who is reclaiming a horse farm outside of Grants Pass. She said she and her husband had business in the Seattle area and decided to go to the protest because of their concerns about environmental and labor issues in the trade talks. "There should be free trade with respect and dignity for everyone in this trade union," Roach said. Rasch, who describes herself as a 41-year-old professional community activist, also says the diverse crowd was incredibly well-behaved considering its size. She blames some of the vandalism on young Seattle ne'er-do-wells and a small number of protestors. "The people that were more violent were the young, far-left group that believe with every fiber in their being ... that this WTO platform is illegal and immoral," she said. Rasch herself takes a strong stand against free trade and the organization she describes as a "secretive international mafia." "It's no secret that the WTO values free trade above all else at the lowest price possible regardless of the cost in terms of lives and natural resources," she said. "Their goal is to have all the little people in the world to be dependent on the corporate power brokers," added Rasch, who favors minimal trade with other countries in favor of regional economies that are self-supportive. "We should be trading culture, technology, art, language and love, not raw materials." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA