Front pages and nightly news broadcasts around the world all led with a common graphic Wednesday — helmeted and masked police doing battle with unarmed civilians amid clouds of tear gas and a mist of pepper spray. Not in Jakarta, Seoul or Belgrade, but in Seattle, Washington, USA.

If the events of Tuesday, the opening day of the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, weren’t so thoroughly documented, it would be hard to believe they actually occured. A city famous for its enlightened attitudes, a nation built upon the principles of freedom of expression, an organization that is all about removing barriers, and their only response to non-violent protest is violence.

The protests did, after all, start out as non-violent, with the commonly used civil-disobedience tactic of blocking streets and entrances to buildings. These actions may be unwise, annoying and inconvenient, but they are hardly cause for tear gas and pepper spray. But once violence was added to the mix, the downward spiral to vandalism and looting was inevitable.

The WTO has known for months that massive protests were planned. It knew Seattle, chosen to highlight Boeing and Microsoft as paragons of global trade, also is home to large and especially active labor, environmental and human-rights activists, all of whom have strong views about WTO free-trade-at-any-cost policies. For months, these activists, representing major, well-established and highly regarded groups, had asked for a forum to discuss their concerns with WTO delegates. For months, the WTO refused to allow such a forum. The WTO has long been criticized for arrogance. Clearly, that criticism is deserved.

For just as long, the city of Seattle knew it would be host to more than a gathering of government functionaries. Plans for protests were widely publicized, yet Seattle seemed taken utterly by surprise. Rather than simply let the protesters control a few city blocks for a few hours and then disperse, Seattle responded with brutality, as if it were the WTO’s hired muscle. And now, the image the world has of Seattle, Washington, USA, is not as a city on the cutting edge of the new economy, but as the city of Darth Vaderesque dragoons and terrorized citizens.