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Here's a look at a street protest from closeby
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March 21, 2003
Protests the day after war starts
In Austin, there were large protests at UT campus, which I missed, but I went down to the rally at the capitol which began at 4:30. Here's a long report.
The crowd grew larger and larger. There was a drum circle and chants, with Congress Avenue blocked off to accomodate the thousands of people that gathered. A plane flew overhead with a banner reading "If thy enemy is hungry, feed him." (Then in a moment of supreme bathos and trivialization, another plane flew overhead with a banner showing the tacky Hooters logo.) Then there were songs performed (including a fun song about how the US flag decal on your car won't get you into heaven, and the hymn Study War No More which got quite a crowd sing-along). I heard Rahul Mahajan (local activist, author and recent Green party governor candidate) for the first time and found him to be a good intelligent speaker. And various other good speeches. Around 5:30 or so we began to march down Congress toward the river. I was with several friends (Gaul, Shy, Jeremy) and the energy in the crowd was amazing as we went down Congress (which police had blocked off for the march). There were lots of creative signs and chants and music, of course. It was a really large number of people (I'd guess 3000 to 5000), more than I expected for a weekday afternoon event. Since a lot of people had jobs keeping them from showing up, the crowd was younger than the recent weekend protests, but there were still a lot of older and "establishment" people. (I liked one businessman in a suit and tie who held a sign saying "Suits for peace".)
Anyway, so far it felt similar to other recent antiwar marches, except a greater sense of urgency and frustration since the war has now begun. However after a while on the bridge, police started approaching to say we needed to get off the street soon. Some experienced activists were negotiating with police and keeping the crowd apprised of what was going on. They explained that in a little while, the police would arrest people on the street, and you should get on the sidewalk if you didn't want to be arrested. There were 20 or 30 cops on motorcycles and disembarked from cars at this point. Gaul and I both decided to get on the sidewalk with most of the remaining crowd (which I estimate was around 1000 to 1500). Civil disobedience is a murky issue indeed, and the police had been gracious enough to block off Congress for the march for a couple hours. On the other hand, the inconvenience of having the bridge blocked seems small given the strong feelings of the large crowd gathered to make a statement and oppose an unjust aggressive "pre-emptive" war which will cost many lives and billions of dollars that could be better spent. So I respect and admire those who chose to be arrested in protest of the war. It's murky.
So a lot of us stood on the sidewalk watching and those who chose to do civil disobedience stayed on the street — it was still peaceful. Lots of chanting, drumming, etc., but at no time did I see anyone in the crowd commit violence or vandalism. We could see police and activists negotiating and talking about how folks on the street willing to be arrested for civil disobedience would not resist and would have ID handy etc. I thought this should go smoothly and simply. I've seen this sort of thing in the past. The police would process the folks in the street and take them to jail peacefully, no big deal.
But instead we watched as a surreal miniature police state experience unfolded. The police bungled and escalated the situation.
For some reason the police changed their minds and a large contingent in riot gear showed up. The police then said we had to leave the sidewalks. Now we began to be nervous that they didn't want us close by to see the handling of the people being arrested. They said we could go north (back toward the capitol where most of us came from) or south. Then a while later they said no, we have to south; we can't go north. Since most people's cars, offices, etc were north, this foolishly ensured that many people would not disperse, but would hang around till the end so they could get back home more easily.
They then began advancing on us. You see it on tv and in movies, but it's still very strange in real life to see a line of about 30 cops in black riot gear with visors and big white sticks advancing at you, spanning the width of the bridge. Gaul and I were both boggled that riot gear cops were telling us we couldn't stand on a public sidewalk and would be arrested if we didn't move it.
Since this was a large crowd on the sidewalk (and trying not to step into the street lest we be arrested for being in the street) and people in back couldn't hear what was being said anyway, the crowd moved very slowly. Gaul and I were at the front where the cops were ordering us to move. I got nervous as a cop directly ordered me to move south off the bridge. There was a wall of people in front of me -- he shoved me into them. I couldn't move south. He kept telling me to move south. I said "How? There's people right here! Where do I go?" He said "Just go. You can't stay on the sidewalk. Move." My emotions were moving from bogglement to angry indignation at this idiocy, and I stepped over the guardrail to the other side and said "There. This is the only place I can move to." He said "That's not going to cut it." So I stepped back into the crowd and we slowly percolated down the bridge while several cops shoved me and others in the back repeatedly with their white sticks, not enough to cause me injury, but unjustifiably forcefully. Suddenly about 6 feet in front of me people began screaming "Stop! There's a bike! People are falling!" The cops kept pushing, but a little slower. People were getting tripped up and falling on a bicycle. An elderly woman next to me turned back to talk to the cops and they just pushed her back.
Many people were getting understandably angry and shouting "Shame! Shame!" and "What kind of America is this?" and such.
Around now we noticed our eyes and noses stinging and a strange smell. Several people saw cops spraying something (pepper spray or mace I assume). People really got angry now and shouted things like "You're using chemical weapons against your own people!" I began shouting "No chemical weapons!" and the crowd took up that chant for a while. Once we were 30 or 40 meters south of where we'd been, they stopped pushing us. We could see the crowd of civil disobedient people in the street back in the middle of the bridge getting arrested now. So the cops did indeed want to wait till were far away before they started arresting them. It was hard to tell, but I'd guess 30 or 40 people were arrested.
The cops in riot gear near us just stood there. Gaul observed most of them either looked stonily ahead like robots avoiding eye contact, or else looked nervously scanning back and forth over the crowd. A few people tried to talk reasonably with them usually without much response. A few people shouted hostile stuff (which I think is counter productive; it just lets the cops feel justified in manhandling troublesome *******s, instead of forcing them to realize they are manhandling ordinary peaceful civil citizens, as most of the crowd was.)
A common chant in the past has been "This is what democracy looks like!" After the riot gear cops began their action, a variation started: "This is what a police state looks like!" A few times also the Star Wars Imperial March (Darth Vader music) got chanted, which was pretty appropriate and welcome comic relief.
We were then ordered off the sidewalk again, which boggled us further since the situation had obviously wound down. At this point we were near the base of the bridge and stepped over the guardrail on the grass. Gaul and I began riffing on Martin Niemöller's famous text: "First they came for the street people; then they came for the sidewalk people; then they came for the people on the other side of the rail..." The whole situation was simultaneously infuriating and surreally comic.
Some upscale looking people in snazzy evening dress came walking down the bridge from downtown, looking puzzled what was going on. We told them "You better get off the sidewalk or they'll arrest you!" They said the cops at the north end were polite and said they could cross the bridge. After we told them what happened to us, they crossed the rail and walked on the grass. Except one of them went to talk to a cop on the street at the end of a row of a dozen cops on motorcyles. Interestingly, the cop was civil and polite to him instead of ordering him off the street and sidewalk.
After the crowds ultimately dispersed and the cops began dispersing, we began to walk north and cross back to downtown. There were lots of cops with their helmets off now, talking with each other and studiously ignoring us. I saw several of them handling shotguns and putting them away in cars. We kept wanting to talk to them and ask why this had justified riot control treatment when no one was acting violently, and why it was illegal to stand on a public sidewalk, and what did they think about all this, etc. But we felt afraid to, for fear of being arrested for hassling a cop or who knows what. It's really sad to feel afraid to even talk with another person due to their having a position of abusable power over you. And that lack of human connection just helps reinforce the antagonism and makes it easier for cops to dissociate and not recognize that we were real people peacefully gathered to protest the war, and that we could probably have pleasant conversation and be friendly.
I felt like riot gear was used unnecessarily just to discredit the peace protests and make it look like we were troublemakers.
I've done several peace marches lately, and they've all felt good and useful and important, but this one felt way more important. This felt like history being made in a darker way. At previous rallies, cops were friendly and helpful. Not this time. Now that we're actually at war, the authorities are being less tolerant of protests. There's this ridiculous magic aura of "you have to support the president in wartime and can't question the government" (even though the president started the damn war; it's not like we were attacked). I encourage everyone opposed to the war to go to the next peace rally in your city. It's important — even if Bush won't listen, we can at least show the rest of the world that not all Americans support the attack. And it's an empowering experience to be amid so many other pro-peace folks. (And if you're afraid of directly encountering police, it's easy to stay further back in the crowd if you want.
Protests the day after war starts
In Austin, there were large protests at UT campus, which I missed, but I went down to the rally at the capitol which began at 4:30. Here's a long report.
The crowd grew larger and larger. There was a drum circle and chants, with Congress Avenue blocked off to accomodate the thousands of people that gathered. A plane flew overhead with a banner reading "If thy enemy is hungry, feed him." (Then in a moment of supreme bathos and trivialization, another plane flew overhead with a banner showing the tacky Hooters logo.) Then there were songs performed (including a fun song about how the US flag decal on your car won't get you into heaven, and the hymn Study War No More which got quite a crowd sing-along). I heard Rahul Mahajan (local activist, author and recent Green party governor candidate) for the first time and found him to be a good intelligent speaker. And various other good speeches. Around 5:30 or so we began to march down Congress toward the river. I was with several friends (Gaul, Shy, Jeremy) and the energy in the crowd was amazing as we went down Congress (which police had blocked off for the march). There were lots of creative signs and chants and music, of course. It was a really large number of people (I'd guess 3000 to 5000), more than I expected for a weekday afternoon event. Since a lot of people had jobs keeping them from showing up, the crowd was younger than the recent weekend protests, but there were still a lot of older and "establishment" people. (I liked one businessman in a suit and tie who held a sign saying "Suits for peace".)
Anyway, so far it felt similar to other recent antiwar marches, except a greater sense of urgency and frustration since the war has now begun. However after a while on the bridge, police started approaching to say we needed to get off the street soon. Some experienced activists were negotiating with police and keeping the crowd apprised of what was going on. They explained that in a little while, the police would arrest people on the street, and you should get on the sidewalk if you didn't want to be arrested. There were 20 or 30 cops on motorcycles and disembarked from cars at this point. Gaul and I both decided to get on the sidewalk with most of the remaining crowd (which I estimate was around 1000 to 1500). Civil disobedience is a murky issue indeed, and the police had been gracious enough to block off Congress for the march for a couple hours. On the other hand, the inconvenience of having the bridge blocked seems small given the strong feelings of the large crowd gathered to make a statement and oppose an unjust aggressive "pre-emptive" war which will cost many lives and billions of dollars that could be better spent. So I respect and admire those who chose to be arrested in protest of the war. It's murky.
So a lot of us stood on the sidewalk watching and those who chose to do civil disobedience stayed on the street — it was still peaceful. Lots of chanting, drumming, etc., but at no time did I see anyone in the crowd commit violence or vandalism. We could see police and activists negotiating and talking about how folks on the street willing to be arrested for civil disobedience would not resist and would have ID handy etc. I thought this should go smoothly and simply. I've seen this sort of thing in the past. The police would process the folks in the street and take them to jail peacefully, no big deal.
But instead we watched as a surreal miniature police state experience unfolded. The police bungled and escalated the situation.
For some reason the police changed their minds and a large contingent in riot gear showed up. The police then said we had to leave the sidewalks. Now we began to be nervous that they didn't want us close by to see the handling of the people being arrested. They said we could go north (back toward the capitol where most of us came from) or south. Then a while later they said no, we have to south; we can't go north. Since most people's cars, offices, etc were north, this foolishly ensured that many people would not disperse, but would hang around till the end so they could get back home more easily.
They then began advancing on us. You see it on tv and in movies, but it's still very strange in real life to see a line of about 30 cops in black riot gear with visors and big white sticks advancing at you, spanning the width of the bridge. Gaul and I were both boggled that riot gear cops were telling us we couldn't stand on a public sidewalk and would be arrested if we didn't move it.
Since this was a large crowd on the sidewalk (and trying not to step into the street lest we be arrested for being in the street) and people in back couldn't hear what was being said anyway, the crowd moved very slowly. Gaul and I were at the front where the cops were ordering us to move. I got nervous as a cop directly ordered me to move south off the bridge. There was a wall of people in front of me -- he shoved me into them. I couldn't move south. He kept telling me to move south. I said "How? There's people right here! Where do I go?" He said "Just go. You can't stay on the sidewalk. Move." My emotions were moving from bogglement to angry indignation at this idiocy, and I stepped over the guardrail to the other side and said "There. This is the only place I can move to." He said "That's not going to cut it." So I stepped back into the crowd and we slowly percolated down the bridge while several cops shoved me and others in the back repeatedly with their white sticks, not enough to cause me injury, but unjustifiably forcefully. Suddenly about 6 feet in front of me people began screaming "Stop! There's a bike! People are falling!" The cops kept pushing, but a little slower. People were getting tripped up and falling on a bicycle. An elderly woman next to me turned back to talk to the cops and they just pushed her back.
Many people were getting understandably angry and shouting "Shame! Shame!" and "What kind of America is this?" and such.
Around now we noticed our eyes and noses stinging and a strange smell. Several people saw cops spraying something (pepper spray or mace I assume). People really got angry now and shouted things like "You're using chemical weapons against your own people!" I began shouting "No chemical weapons!" and the crowd took up that chant for a while. Once we were 30 or 40 meters south of where we'd been, they stopped pushing us. We could see the crowd of civil disobedient people in the street back in the middle of the bridge getting arrested now. So the cops did indeed want to wait till were far away before they started arresting them. It was hard to tell, but I'd guess 30 or 40 people were arrested.
The cops in riot gear near us just stood there. Gaul observed most of them either looked stonily ahead like robots avoiding eye contact, or else looked nervously scanning back and forth over the crowd. A few people tried to talk reasonably with them usually without much response. A few people shouted hostile stuff (which I think is counter productive; it just lets the cops feel justified in manhandling troublesome *******s, instead of forcing them to realize they are manhandling ordinary peaceful civil citizens, as most of the crowd was.)
A common chant in the past has been "This is what democracy looks like!" After the riot gear cops began their action, a variation started: "This is what a police state looks like!" A few times also the Star Wars Imperial March (Darth Vader music) got chanted, which was pretty appropriate and welcome comic relief.
We were then ordered off the sidewalk again, which boggled us further since the situation had obviously wound down. At this point we were near the base of the bridge and stepped over the guardrail on the grass. Gaul and I began riffing on Martin Niemöller's famous text: "First they came for the street people; then they came for the sidewalk people; then they came for the people on the other side of the rail..." The whole situation was simultaneously infuriating and surreally comic.
Some upscale looking people in snazzy evening dress came walking down the bridge from downtown, looking puzzled what was going on. We told them "You better get off the sidewalk or they'll arrest you!" They said the cops at the north end were polite and said they could cross the bridge. After we told them what happened to us, they crossed the rail and walked on the grass. Except one of them went to talk to a cop on the street at the end of a row of a dozen cops on motorcyles. Interestingly, the cop was civil and polite to him instead of ordering him off the street and sidewalk.
After the crowds ultimately dispersed and the cops began dispersing, we began to walk north and cross back to downtown. There were lots of cops with their helmets off now, talking with each other and studiously ignoring us. I saw several of them handling shotguns and putting them away in cars. We kept wanting to talk to them and ask why this had justified riot control treatment when no one was acting violently, and why it was illegal to stand on a public sidewalk, and what did they think about all this, etc. But we felt afraid to, for fear of being arrested for hassling a cop or who knows what. It's really sad to feel afraid to even talk with another person due to their having a position of abusable power over you. And that lack of human connection just helps reinforce the antagonism and makes it easier for cops to dissociate and not recognize that we were real people peacefully gathered to protest the war, and that we could probably have pleasant conversation and be friendly.
I felt like riot gear was used unnecessarily just to discredit the peace protests and make it look like we were troublemakers.
I've done several peace marches lately, and they've all felt good and useful and important, but this one felt way more important. This felt like history being made in a darker way. At previous rallies, cops were friendly and helpful. Not this time. Now that we're actually at war, the authorities are being less tolerant of protests. There's this ridiculous magic aura of "you have to support the president in wartime and can't question the government" (even though the president started the damn war; it's not like we were attacked). I encourage everyone opposed to the war to go to the next peace rally in your city. It's important — even if Bush won't listen, we can at least show the rest of the world that not all Americans support the attack. And it's an empowering experience to be amid so many other pro-peace folks. (And if you're afraid of directly encountering police, it's easy to stay further back in the crowd if you want.
Source:
I present to you David Floyd as a counterarguement.
:
*blows smoke of the barrel of his 6-shooter*.
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