The crowds grew into the hundreds even before the event's scheduled 7 p.m. start. As people milled around in the park, and some gave speeches, many were preparing to march downtown. Organizers refused to disclose the destination even as the group went on the move and blocked traffic on Pine Street around 8:15 p.m. Above, a helicopter moved with the crowd.
But the group was heading, as everyone basically knew, to the Henry M. Jackson Federal Building. Once near the building, around 9 p.m., a few in the crowd dressed in black and masked, began to drag garbage cans into the road. Then chairs and tables from a terrace of a nearby building.
The crowd had been mellow, if determined at the beginning.
Whenever I go to an action I'll be checking the local news as soon as I can to see what they got wrong. Had I marched from the park with the rest going downtown I would not be home yet to post this. The destination was clearly announced before the march downtown started. It was said on the loudspeakers. Local news is always looking for something sneaky to happen at Seattle protests. Our media conveniently 'forgot' about the realistic drills that were common here when the war on terror was young. Cos-playing anarchists was a thing.
Lots of people were dressed in black, a few of the more buff and built no doubt were the Kings men. Ready to pretend to be antifa. I got a whiff of something nasty that was accidentally released by somebody as I walked through the crowd. Suddenly my right eye was in pain and I had a burning sensation in my throat. Somebody had bear spray, or pepper spray, or something, and some must have leaked.
Nothing was going on when this happened, it was accidental. The crowd, about 1000 people was mellow when it started marching. It is very relaxing to be in a crowd of hundreds of people when everyone is getting along.
The chopper loud as fuck showed up as the march downtown started. I am happy not to have had to deal with that shit. It would have got on my nerves.