I lived next door to one of the major protester coordination areas, which was at Denny and Summit, in what at that time was an empty restaurant building, was going to become Doggy Day Care a few years later. The building next to Faneuil Hall.

What was that week like? Chain link fences dividing the street and sidewalk. Cops by the truckload. Needing ID permission to enter and leave my apartment building.

Assloads of people I never saw before. Guys stealing shit from cop cars and proud of it. Teargas cannisters by the seeming hundreds. Cops and protesters throwing things back and forth all up and down Olive Way that one night.

Being held hostage in ones' own building. Tear gas in the air for hours if not days. Helecopters hovering all night, loud, and sirens going off all night, also loud. Flashbang grenades and shooting tear gas.

Posters ... Anarchists' Local 666 from Eugene. N30 GLOBAL DAY OF ACTION. CARNIVAL AGAINST CAPITAL.

Seattle got its first real taste of global riot politics. The protesters quite often outmaneuvered cops, using then-nascent technologies like cell phone text messages and scripted web site updates to keep informed all over town of cops movements, and to rapidly deploy 100s of protesters to the next attempted police skirmish line. WE ARE WINNING said the graffiti.

And lessons learned during WTO set the stage for our new modern policing -- where every protest is treated like it could be another violent attempt to destroy private property, rather than a peaceful First Amendment protected speech.