With the black blocks providing security from the provocateurs, and cordoning off the first 10 meters in front of the wire walls, more than a hundred women went forward with bolt cutters and began dismantling the walls, bit by bit. What a diversity of women it was! Indigenous women, punks, students, old women, young women, Mexican women, American and European women, African women. Once the wall was weakened, the Koreans supervised the attachment of 50 meter long, 4 inch circumference ropes to the top of the walls. Then thousands of people of all nations, races and cultures, punks, black blocks, peasants, etc., together pulled the walls down. Quite literally, the power of the people, united, pulled down the walls of the WTO.
When the walls finally fell, there stood thousands of riot police clearly spoiling for a fight, big time. Just when they thought we would attack them, however, the Koreans who were on the front line turned their backs on them, everyone else sat down, hundreds of flowers appeared, and we had a mass memorial service for Mr. Lee. Marcial of the MST then sang John Lennon’s Imagine for the crowd, the WTO was burned in effigy, and we got up and marched away. The police were left with their mouths hanging open in shock, with nobody to fight with. The hundreds of journalists who were present marveled at our collective ability to do the unexpected, to turn promised violence into moving peace, and to make a statement so powerful that the WTO could not hope to resist.
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