This past Thursday and Friday, the G-20 Summit was held in Pittsburgh. My city was on lockdown. It was strange, frightening, infuriating, intriguing, enlightening, and ultimately, despite all its bullshit (and because of it), inspiring.
Last week, the soundtrack of my normally quiet city was a relentless cacophony of wailing sirens and the low, fluttering drone of aircraft. Starting a couple days before the start of the summit, we began to notice huge packs of police officers roaming the city. For two nights preceding the convention, low flying police or military helicopters circled the Bloomfield, Lawrenceville, and Polish Hill neighborhoods, shining their searchlights around. It was eerie, intimidating, and the message was clear-- "We are watching you. Dissent will not be tolerated."
My experiences are below.
Day #1
Thursday was the first day of the summit, and there was a march of about a thousand people, starting at Arsenal Park in Lawrencevilleseveral miles from downtown, where the G20 was taking place. I believe the march was approved, but when confronted (and harassed) by police, the protesters took to streets off the planed route. Basically the cops forced them off the approved route and then, since they were not on said route, they deployed a sonic, declassified military weapon, which is known to cause hearing loss and nerve damage, as well as the usual tear gas, etc. Heres some video of the LRAD sonic weapon (thanks to DrHamburger for pointing me to this video):
and of the march from CNN:
and from an attendee:
Oh how the dumpster throwing warms my cold little heart!
Thursday evening I was on my way home from work and saw one of the most surreal and chilling sights Ive ever seen. The G20 attendees were wining and dining at Phipps Conservatory, near the University of Pittsburgh, in Oakland. Theres a grassy area between Pitts library, and the Carnegie public library. It used to be a parking lot; its massive. Standing in the middle of it, shoulder to shoulder, were hundreds of riot cops, stoic and ominous in the dark, like big black bugs. There were giant bags draped over all the statues around the library. These images are from another night, but its the closest I could find to what I saw:
The protesting had yet to really kick in at this point, but it got pretty intense. Several friends of mine were in attendance, but bailed when shit started to get really heated. Literallysomeone lit a dumpster on fire. But peaceful demonstrators were arrested, too. The cops came down with brute force. Like when they trapped students who were observing things from the skyway, an eclosed hallway over Forbes Ave that connects two Pitt buildings) and gassed them:
Thursday night is also the night of a super popular, weekly 80s themed dance party at Belvederes in Lawrenceville. When the bar closes, theres typically a mass exodus of people. That night was no exception, and as the large group of people walked down the sidewalk toward their homes and cars, they were tear gassed. I was there, but by strange luck, I left a little earlier than usual.
Day # 2
Friday was the final day of the summit, and also the Peoples March from Oakland to the North Side via downtown. I was off work, so my friends Corey, Eva, and I went.
It was a really amazing experience. There were so many peopleestimates range from about 5,000-8,000 people. It was the largest march in Pittsburgh since Vietnam. The crowd was really varied, too. Young people, old people, black people, white people, Burmese monks, college kids, crust punks. Lots of people even brought their kids. There were police and military EVERYWHERE, but few arrests were made. They were definitely still creepy and intimidating, however. People kept chanting You sexy! You cute! Take off that riot suit! There were also tons of bystanders watching from the sidewalk; it almost felt as if we were in a parade. Here are some pictures I took with my shitty iPhone camera:
Piggies.
One of many military vehicles.
Truth.
Crowd.
And here are some taken by Ashleys much nicer camera.
Corey and I,
Mark Paul and the po-po. Haha!
Brenna and her daughter, Lucy. Too cute!
The march ended in a park in the North Side, where people gathered to listen to speeches and eat a free meal courtesy of Seeds of Peace. After a while I got tired and decided to head home. I waited for a bus forever, and nothing came. The march had long been over by this point but traffic was still super out of wack just from so much of the city being blocked off due to the goings on at the convention center. So I decided to walk. At first, I was enjoying it. It was interesting to see the city alone and on foot. It was deafeningly silent. You could have heard a pin drop. The river was completely devoid of boats, except the circling police boats. The big white structure in the picture is the convention center, where the leaders were meeting:
There were police and military at every turn. They filled school buses, rental vans, and moving vans, and rode on the outside of giant, slow cruising SUVs.
I tried about six different routes to get out of downtown and toward my neighborhood, to no avail. I felt completely lost, like a stranger in my own city. Finally, I asked one of the many police officers if there was any way to get to Polish Hill or the Strip from downtown at that time. He had no idea what I was talking about, because he was an officer brought in from either Chicago or Miami-Dade. He wasnt helpful, but he wasnt a jerk either. I finally found a local cop who told me that I was indeed stuck downtown, indefinitely. I was alone, and my phone had died by this point. I couldnt even go sit in a cofeeshop or something, and wait it out, because nothing was open. Im not sure how much time elapsed, probably an hour or 2, and I happened upon a bus going to Oakland. I took that bus, and then walked my exhausted ass from Oakland to Polish Hill. While I was on the bus, I saw a bunch of Miami-Dade cops standing around, smoking cigars, and taking pictures of each other making sexyface in their riot gear. It was nauseating.
That night, I was supposed to meet back up with Corey and Eva, for a second gathering in Oakland. I was incredibly exhausted though, from all my walking, so I stayed home. This night, shit really hit the fan. The police arrested and manhandled a completely benign group of people.
Thats Corey being shoved. Apparently there was video of it on CNN and local news, but nobody has been able to find it online yet. He said, They asked us to move and we did...then they just started pushing violently... ..but I guess this was before they totally overreacted.
And overreact they did. From a great article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
Jonathan LaTourelle, 26, junior at the University of Pittsburgh who lives in South Oakland, had participated in protests in Lawrenceville on Thursday and the permitted "People's March to the G-20" on Friday. He said he was not on campus to protest Friday night, but he went to the plaza "in solidarity with a lot of other kids who I knew were going there who were angry about what happened the night before."
At the park, he said, "People were playing duck-duck-goose and talking. Mostly, I think people were there because the events that had happened the night before ... " he said.
"We weren't doing anything. We weren't confronting them. We weren't even protesting." He said the police didn't give the order to disperse "until they had surrounded most of the park." Many people then left. He said a group was pushed across Forbes Avenue and into the Cathedral of Learning lawn. He said some were turned away by police on Fifth Avenue.
He said he was released from SCI Pittsburgh at 5:30 a.m. and met by members of the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project. He said they asked him about his physical and mental condition, fed him, and gave him a ride home.
He said he was not a member of the G-20 group, but belonged to a college group that had worked on education issues around G-20.
--------------
"No matter where you went, there was no way to leave," he said. "A lot of people were saying, 'I'm just trying to leave.'"
Drew Singer, editor of the student newspaper The Pitt News, watched the events from a window in the William Pitt Union, which has a view of Schenley Plaza. Two Pitt News photographers were among those arrested.
"There were way more police than there were civilians, nonpolice," he said.
He said the police gave a loud order to disperse. He said police usually arrest people who are especially unruly, but Friday night, "it seemed like anybody who didn't leave immediately was being arrested even if they were just kind of watching. Technically, they did not disperse."
He said some Pitt News reporters saw people passing out note cards earlier in the day at the permitted "People's March to the G-20," which announced a rally that night in Schenley Plaza.
While there may have been protesters, he said, "I personally didn't see a single protester. There was absolutely nothing like Thursday night. It was overwhelmingly spectators and people who just wanted to see what was going on. It seems like just after Thursday night, [police] just weren't taking anything. They just weren't up for any funny business. They gave the orders to disperse, and I guess anybody who didn't immediately disperse they were going after, it seemed like."
One hundred and ten people were arrested, mostly students, and even journalists and bystanders. People were asked to move and then beaten and pepper sprayed, before they even had a chance to move. Peoples cameras were broken and confiscated, photos deleted.
Aftermath and Afterthoughts
The amount of police was completely unprecedented and completely un-called-for. And for WHAT!? People cant assemble and voice their dissatisfaction with their government? In three days, there was a total of $50,000 in damage, mostly broken windows. This is roughly what happens after a Steelers superbowl win. Yet none of those idiots were teargassed or beaten. Also, they had the dude who allegedy single handedly did $20,000 of the damage in custody by the first night.
It kills me that so many reasonably intelligent, well-educated people are so apathetic, misinformed, and simply hate protesters so much. If I had a penny for every time I heard someone talk about "Smelly anarchists" who were "invading" their city, I'd be rich. Ummm...WHO was doing the invading!? Not to mention that Pittsburgh actually has its own very active radical community.
All of this cost the city of Pittsburgh about $20 million. They tried to say it would be good for business by bringing international attention to Pittsburgh. I dont know about that. But what I do know is how much it hurt it. The city was pretty much completely shut down for 2 days. People were afraid to leave their homes. Life as we knew it (and business) came to an abrupt halt. Businesses were boarded up, the streets were empty. Here's an excellent article in The Nation that touches on this.
Was THIS ,which was not an isolated incident, worth it?
In a way, though, I'm glad it was here. It certainly re-ignited my political activism. I was super involved when I was younger, but in the past few years I'd fallen off. I hope that it woke a lot of previously apathetic college students up to the reality of things. So, in that way I suppose it wasn't entirely bad.
Oh, and to answer the inevitable What were you protesting? question heres a link that summarizes it simply and to the point.
In completely unrelated news, my other blog was featured on Fleshbot today. Don't get too excited for me though; my friend works for them, haha. Still made me happy
