:: Music As Social Agitation Records::

:: Saturday, September 04, 2004 ::

"oh me, what have i done..." serene covers a song with a chorus that begins with that line. i forgot whose song it is, but serene does it so beautifully. during our eight days in new york city, i had few songs stuck in my head. one line, "times square hit without warning" from some gibbard song that neither me or tim can figure out right now (i sang it to the melody in lowell, MA and subsequently, and fittingly for this weeks events, got "theres a look in the faces tonight thats untrustable as the hope that you'll never return in awhile, but your always on time..."). that last line was pretty much stuck in my head the whole week and felt right in NYC. where to start.... well, after an hour of pretentious, snotty gabbing from two 10-12 year old indian sisters behind us on the bus to syracuse, the unofficial first name for the second half of the tour has been named "Dammit, that sucks." (make your suck start loud and trail off into a lower keyed whisper for proper pronounciation). so yeah, i got arrested. i was one of 80 persons left as part of a solemn march from the WTC to madison square garden. we knew we would be stopped before then, and sure enough, the cops (though we were walking quietly in two by formation down the sidewalk) wouldn't let us past 28th and Broadway. it was tuesday night, the night of 1500 (police total) arrests and we laid down in the road wearing white, holding hands. NYC lifer Mary Round (44 years young) was on my right, and John Stewbridge (25 years old) from jacksonville, florida was on my left. i would see him in various pens and concreted rooms for the next 44 hours. but that is not the beginning of the story. i guess i will start with tuesday, the preset day of creative, non-violent direct action. i woke up late and missed both the direct action refresher "courses" (one at st marks at nine am and one at another church put on by the WRL at 11am). there were many things happening that day and i made a rough plan to go to union square to check in with how the day had gone so far, then travel to the fox news "shut up" protest at four pm, than travel down to union square again and see if the WRL solemn march was on time to pass by at 5:30 on their way from the WTC to madison square garden and also to see which of the two convergence points (NYPublic Library or Madisan Square Park) was better suited for a non-affiliated or affinitated solo protester to join up with people, then to travel to that location to make the massive trek to madison square garden. if things went all right i was going to travel to st marks afterwards for updates and then to the bowery cafe (open 24 hours a day that week as a santuary) and then possible call it a night, though i had arranged to be a part of the pink slip, unemployment line that was set to snake a single file line through miles of downtown manhattan. there were dozens and dozens of smaller actions planned for tuesday by various, small affinity groups aimed at disrupting the daytime and nighttime activities of the delegates and various RNC related entertainment and business plans. because i had not planned well enough before arriving, a problem i had all week was finding out about and trying to join up in such actions. these groups were designed to be small and enclosed, as to prevent infiltration and to keep actions efficient and more easily consensus-based. for the most part, i felt on the outside of a lot of the protesting and demonstrating, though i was in the thick of a lot of it. while in jail that changed, but i still wished i had planned ahead more and connected more with a/some groups before arriving. anyways. so i checked in at union square and already people were being arrested and the police, who up to this point had been pretty accommodating, had been cracking down pretty hard. at the WTC, the word came up that the solemn march had already been broken up and 100 people or so arrested. i had wanted to march with them from union square to madison square, but it looked like that was not gonna happen. murmurings abounded that any large group of people making their way towards the garden were gonna be confronted and stopped by the police. which was contrary to their reaction to both permitted and unpermitted actions earlier in the convention. so people were arranging to move in small groups and to converge later. i decided to head up to the fox news "shut up" shouting and their was a good crowd of people taking up the block of the sidewalk in front of the fox building, as well as the sidewalk across the street and some of the the other nearby sidewalks. my estimate was about 500 people or so. (i have not had a chance to read all the indy -and mainstream news- about the convention yet, i will try to and get back to this with their numbers and words... for now i want to try to get down my story their without losing it to time or to other takes on events). plenty of fun chants to be had, anti-o'reilly and anti-fox. the police decided to give us some of the street, a bit more than a NYC sidewalks width, but people were hesitant to be penned in with their little metal fences, and it took about 10 minutes for 4/5 of the crowd to move into and feel comfortable that it was not a concession for them to rally there. the other 1/5 remained on the sidewalk. the rules for the week were that you could stand on the sidewalk if you were up against the inside of the sidewalk and not blocking traffic. it didn't take long, especially in a few of the more colorful, smaller actions against delegates for the cops to decide (illegally) that no one could just stand on the sidewalk, you had to keep moving. we weren't to that point yet at the fox rally. one person was arrested, i could not see what for, but once she was put into the police van, it appeared that she was scantily clad, or possibly topless. i stayed yelling at the highrisers for about an hour and then decided to walk to the library, as i was told that would be an easier place to affilate with marchers for the night. i got there a half hour before the gathering was supposed to start. i am not sure if this one was a permitted rally, but the actions of the cops were as if it wasn't. it didn't take long for the crowd to swell to probably 500 and the geography of the front entrance was difficult. i will probably half to draw it out, but essentially there was a big main walk/stairway up to the entrance from the front and then two side stairways that fed into a small plaza about halfway to he front doors. the architecture was awesome. anyways, people took to the vaulted plaza area and there were many banners and a guy handing out dozen of flags. people were taking his flags and then taking to the steps to display them, it looked like there was gonna be a nice wall of banners and flags to look at and inspire before we headed to march on the garden. cops were awkwardly dispersed throughout the crowd and there was no set, us on this side them on that dynamic, which can be a recipe for disaster. on the sidewalk in front of the building and stairs the cops began antagonizing lingerers and telling people to move along, so i made my way up onto the plaza area. apparently someone had already been arrested for trying to hang a banner from the the stone pillars at the entrance. people were just mulling around and their was little organization to the crowd. out of no were, the cops surged into the crowd and attacked a kid (probably for "illegally" wearing a mask or something) and chaos broke out. more cops surged in to support the arresting cops and used their clubs to violently push people away from the kid, in a circle form. tons of boos and "shame" and "let him go" chants were had (the standard for isolated arrests like this). and the cops stayed on the plaza and begin pushing people, in a very unorganized and hostel way, away from the middle of the plaza. many people were being pushed and directed right into the clubs of cops coming from the otherway. eventually, after five minutes of this, the cops had cleared to people of the plateau of the plaza and everyone was pretty much caught between the plaza and the sidewalk, on the front stairs and the two side stairs. this efficiently isolated us into three different groups. the cops on the sidewalks stepped up there keep moving get away rhetoric and in five minutes the white shirts decided to cut of the middle section of the sidewalk, isolating the protesters even more. no one, even non-demonstrators could walk along the block now. a few more arrests had taken place in this scuffle and soon the group began to reorganize on the right side stairway and corner of the block. the geography hindered this effort again and the group was now probably down to 300 people. leading the group (keep in mind the most efficient and accepted form for these rallies is to have them be anonymous, group-led, non-individualistic efforts) was this shirtless, 29 year old blonde fellow with a megaphone (illegal) who had stumbled into my portion of the poor peoples march the night before and assumed control of leading the chants. i hated the fucker. he was alone and he never stopped with his loud noise and assumed power and never passed it off. i am pretty sure he was a cop. i had been the night before and was even more so now. anyways, after having to listen to his conducting (the crowd -which felt pretty inexperienced in general- for the most part was into it, possible just out of a "something is better than nothing/we just got fucked with and need some kind of order" way) for 15 minutes HE decided that it was time for the procession to the garden. people, in a very spread out/nonchalant/disorganized way started to make its way west on the sidewalk. after two nights of massive, tight processions through the streets of manhattan, this was not doing it for me. there was hardly any chanting or few signs and it was like i was walking down a normal sidewalk with the sole bonus of hippie-stank. i cut out at the first subway station we passed and decided to head to the madison square park location in hopes of meeting up with a larger march. i was depressed to come up out of the station and find a small group of many 50 people. i did bump into kris jorgenson from provo, though and it was nice to see him. i mulled around trying to overhear where everybody was and apparently across the city, various groups were being met with aggressive police resistance. the colorful parading at union square was getting attacked over the course of the hours, in harold square people were beginning to converge and the cop presence was as well. there were two "organizers" there and they were advising people to not travel in groups bigger then ten or so. they then launched into a quick training course on direct action and decided to walk up to harold square. cops and media were all over the city and most extremely on tuesday. just as a was getting ready to set out, the lady said that across the street a march was traveling by, but she advised us it was unpermitted. she was a wuss.

during her talk i chimed in asking about if she or anyone new the route of any of the marches heading to the garden and she didnt want to answer that. as if i was a cop, the crowd was happy she didnt either. i was out of the loop. i was getting really frustrated about all the sissyness and disunity that day which was heavily augmented by the fact that i was alone. on the one hand their was these people, not willing to front-line it, scared of the cops scared of pushing the limits. on the other side were the people i wanted to be affiliated with, small groups that got up at 7am to go piss off some delegates at a breakfast, anarchists that were shouting in the faces of delegate families as they came out from watching the lion king. these people were organized and ready to push the limits. some had been in the city for a month preparing, most were staying together at various hostels and squats around the city. regardless, i was not on eof them because i had not prepared to be one. thus, i found myself with a desire to take it to the next level, but unable to without breaking one of the first rules about such actions. that of having a small group, or at least a partner, around you.

the group across the street happened to be the white shirt wearing, quietly marching solemn WRLers that i had wanted to march with for a bit earlier in the day. i ran to join up with them and was excited that there route took them to harold square were the shit was going down. i quickly learned from them (at least the three people around me, since it was a double-file line) that they were not the ones that got mass arrested earlier near the WTC site, it was a different group (i think some critical mass kids and more colorful types). i found partner to march with. mary had been arrest twice before in marches (both in new york, the first in 82 or so in an anti-nuke march, the second in 99 when the cops shot a civilian (for got his name) and riots almost broke out). and was nervously excited, anxious about the cops response to us. the cops, in a walking bike line were guiding the march down broadway. we marched like that for about 15 minutes and in that time i learned that their plan was the plan of all groups. march as close to the garden as possible and then stop and rally. at 28th street, and in about ten seconds, we knew this was as far as it would go and we all took to the street and laid down. i was not to worried about the police response as there is a formula and game plan for both parties in these die-in situations. out of nowhere it seemed, and within 10 minutes time, there was a crowd of probably a couple hundred around us (i did not see any of them marching with or around us). they began chanting in solidarity and at one point chanted the bill of rights. there was way too many fucking cameras. it was annoying. and, of course, presspassers could walk freely in the street. everyone else was quickly pushed to the sidewalks and we were told that we would be arrested if we stayed there. we were on the ground there for a bit over an hours time. lots of chatting with mary and john and this other young woman. everyone was on there cell-phones calling home and friends to let them know they were to be arrested, even mary who laughed at the idea first, being that it was a die-in. the folks on the sidewalk were eventually pushed off of the block we laid in (probably to keep them mostly out of eye-sight of us, to reduce the amount of witnesses). there were a few scuffles on the corners but most of the people stayed for a bit, and about 50 saw us till we were on the busses. there were legal observers taking our names. by the time the cops got around, finally, to plastic cuffing us and packing us up and in and on the road, it had taken about 2 hours at least. we got to pier 57 around 10:30 or so. the cops were nice at the die-in, got our first hints of how much they were being overworked (some i met had worked upwards of 40 hours straight by the end of the fiasco).... -matt

:: brs 2:27 AM [+] ::
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