The Rest of the Day

After having written the previous post, I felt like coming back and finishing the rest of the story. This may boarder on being self-indulgent (or I should say, more self-indulgent than this blog usually is), since this happened so long ago, and since many of you have heard me tell this story before. But, I’ve got a bit of free time at school today, and I think this is more interesting than the usual “What I did this week” crap that I usually throw up on this blog. Anyway…

After finding out our plans had been sabotaged, those of us remaining debated what to do, and ended up deciding to go and join up with some other groups.

We met up with a group that was planning on blocking an intersection. Unlike our elaborate plans, their idea was to simply walk across the cross walk when the light was green, and then sit down and refuse to stand up. We did this, but the police soon showed up.

Combined with the new group, there were maybe thirty of us now. But the police presence was overwhelming. Rows and rows of policemen, and all sorts of police cars and vans showed up. The head policeman announced, “Right, I’m giving you only one chance to get up and move by yourselves, because if we have to move you, you’re all going to spend the night in jail.” There was a brief discussion over what to do, but we all quickly agreed that the better plan was for the moment to stay out of jail so that we could continue direct actions.

We stood up and left, appeared to break into smaller groups, and then all met at another intersection a couple blocks away and repeated the same plan. The police again showed up quickly, and the same pattern repeated. We figured if we could keep the police busy and on their toes by constantly having to remove us from different intersections, it would be more productive than spending the rest of the day in jail.

We were repeating this pattern at I think the fourth intersection when “the black bloc” came swarming by. A huge group, in the hundreds, of mostly anarchists dressed in red and black with even their faces covered in black masks. They were too big a crowd for the police to stop them, and so they swarmed freely down the streets, smashing all sorts of things along the way.

Even if I didn’t agree with all the tactics of the black bloc, after having the police frustrate all our efforts that afternoon, it was a wonderful sight to see the protesters gain the upper hand and take control of the street. We all left the intersection and joined in with the black bloc.

It’s interesting how sometimes in a big city you keep running into the same people over and over again. I recognized many of the anarchists from the YMCA, even though their faces were covered now. I also saw a delegate to the Republican Convention that I had talked to earlier in the week.

During one of the earlier demonstrations I had been involved in a march concerning the rights of the homeless. Occasionally some of the republican delegates would try and attempt dialogue with us, and this man had approached and told me he was concerned about the homeless as well, and worked with “Habitat For Humanity.” I mentioned I also occasionally volunteered for that group, and we had seemed to come to some sort of mutual respect for each other. That now seemed to be shattered when he saw me marching with the anarchists. “Young man, little girl,” he called out to me and the girlfriend. “What are you doing? Don’t do this.” I just looked away from him and pretended I didn’t hear.

We came to another intersection, and there was another stream of marchers coming down from another street and meeting up with us and swelling our ranks even more. We seemed unstoppable now. I briefly paused and put my fist in the air to salute the incoming marchers, and they returned it. It was a great feeling.

I followed the crowd, not quite sure where we were going. We went down one street that was partly under construction (all the streets always seem to be partly under construction in a big city like Philadelphia.) Many of the black bloc were taking advantage of all the props to move all sorts of construction equipment into the street and further obstruct traffic.

I stuck close to the black bloc members I knew from the YMCA. There was a police Jeep on the street, and one of my friends from the YMCA, right in front of me, picked up a cement block and threw it through the back window of the police vehicle. There was the loud sound of shattering glass and the car alarm went off. I couldn’t believe he had done it. After seeing police arrest people all week for minor infractions, I was certain he wasn’t going to get away with it.

But there was nothing the police could do about it, he was in the middle of a huge crowd and his face was hidden from view with only a small slit for his eyes in the black mask. As we past the front of the police jeep I looked inside and, instead of seeing the big intimidating police officer I expected, the occupant was a petite, African-American policewoman, who didn’t look much older than me, and had a frightened expression on her face. And then, what had previously been an admiration of bravery, quickly turned into anger at my friend for his action.

Although I didn’t approve of everything the black bloc was doing, at this point I felt like I had no choice but to keep going forward. The police were lining the streets everywhere, and the only reason the black bloc was able to move freely was because of their numbers. I was sure the police would pounce on the opportunity to arrest anyone who strayed from the big group.

To their credit though the Black Bloc was not smashing randomly, but only carefully chosen and selected targets. Symbols of capitalism, such as banks and Mc. Donald’s, were attacked and had their windows smashed in, as well symbols of police authority (as seen above).

We came to the end of one street and flooded into another. This was a major, five-lane street, with the traffic already stopped dead because of a traffic jam. There were 3 or 4 limousines caught in the jam, probably carrying delegates to the convention, although we couldn’t see inside the tinted windows. These limousines were the only vehicles that were attacked by the black bloc. The limousines had their front and back windows smashed in, paint was thrown on them, people jumped on the hood, and lots of people pressing their middle fingers up against the glass and yelled, “Fuck you, fuck you.”

There was a significant police presence blocking the next intersection, so we just turned down another street. The next road was blocked off as well, with the police closing in behind us as well, so the march flowed into a side street. The police followed behind us down this street also, and soon we found ourselves in a narrow street trapped between police lines on both sides. Although there was probably about 3 hundred of us, there were more police.

There was a fence on one side of us and some of the black bloc began climbing over this fence to escape, but then somebody noticed on the other side of the fence there was a hospital, and the general consensus seemed to be that it was inappropriate to bring the demonstration near to a hospital. A person standing near me yelled out (repeatedly), “That’s a hospital you fucking sheep, look where you are going!” About 15 or so people escaped by climbing over the fence and running through the hospital parking lot, but the rest seemed to agree that it was wrong to bring the conflict near the hospital, and stopped and came back.

I fully expected to be arrested at this point, and told the girlfriend to stay calm when the police arrested us. But to my amazement, the line of police opened up, and we were allowed to pass through. Perhaps the police also decided they didn’t want trouble near a hospital, or perhaps the plan all along had been simply to contain the march rather than arrest everyone. I became aware at this point that the police were videotaping and photographing everyone, but we were allowed to pass through.

Eventually the black bloc, being somewhat corralled by the police, emerged into the Philadelphia square area, where another large demonstration was already taking place. For a while the two groups mingled, and then the black bloc left to march down another street. I took this opportunity to leave the black bloc, and join the other demonstration.

This demonstration consisted mostly of people standing in the square and staying off the streets. (The “square area”, I’m not sure what the real name of it is, was a space in the middle of down town. The famous sculpture of the word “love” is located here. I guess maybe it should be called a park, except there was more concrete there than trees.)

At any rate, the demonstration at the square was a lot safer, and mostly consisted of people holding signs and listening to speakers. The police eventually surrounded the area, stopping new demonstrators from arriving and keeping the rest of us trapped there.

From this perspective we were able to see the police crack down on the demonstrators on the street, but were prevented from offering assistance. I’m not sure where the black bloc went. They ended up wandering off somewhere else, and the people left were people peacefully blocking intersections, like we had been doing earlier.

When the demonstrators refused to leave the intersection, the police began arresting them and dragging them away. At this point several of the demonstrators went limp, and some of the police lost control a bit and started hitting or kicking them. Because we were all trapped on the square, there was nothing we could do, but several people began chanting, “The whole world is watching.”

At the time I thought the whole world really was watching. There were television cameras everywhere, and I thought this would be broadcast all over the world just like the protests in Seattle had been that previous December. Because the local media did a good job of covering the event, it was not until I returned home to Grand Rapids that I realized what a non-story these protests had been nation wide.

If I may digress slightly: When discussing “Fahrenheit 911” with other Americans, I have several times heard people say something like, “I thought the most amazing part of the film was the footage in the beginning about the inauguration protests against Bush. I had never heard anything about that before, but based on the footage shown in the film it seemed like it was a pretty big protest.”

I was at the inauguration protests as well and, although this is not the time to go into detail about that event, the short version is that it was a lot of the same stuff as the Republican Convention. Large crowds of demonstrators, anarchists and black blocs fighting street battles with the police, lots of stuff getting smashed up, it seemed like a big deal at the time being in the middle of it. I was again surprised when I returned home to learn how little media coverage that protest had gotten.

The lessons for this I suppose are two-fold. On one hand it makes me wonder how many large demonstrations go on all the time that we have no idea about. On the other, it gives me an appreciation for how huge an event like Seattle must have been to receive the amount of media attention that it did.

Anyway, back to the story at hand: we stayed at the square for the rest of the afternoon, listening to various speakers on various topics. We didn’t really have much choice. Occasionally someone in a leadership position would say that they were currently negotiating with the police to allow everyone to leave, but it was another couple hours before we were allowed free movement again, and even then I was afraid about just venturing out by myself into the crowd of police. I waited until a large group was leaving, and then left with them.

Epilogue: The Following Day
The next day was Friday, and there were no direct actions planned as far as I knew, but simply organized marches. I showed up at the bus station in the morning for a march for woman’s rights.

While we were assembling, I was approached by someone who I’m pretty sure was a cop. I never found this out for sure, but all the right bells were going off. For one thing he was much older, probably in his early forties. He had relatively short hair, a bit longer than the crew cuts worn by the previous under-cover cops, but it looked like it was in the awkward stages between being a relatively conservative hair cut, and growing it out. Two days ago I might have given him the benefit of the doubt, but today everyone who looked like a cop, was a cop.

He said he had just arrived for the protest. That in itself seemed very silly, because this was the last day of a week of planned demonstrations. Why would he just be arriving now? And he asked me all sorts of questions about where he could go to get involved in something a little more radical, or some direct action.

He seemed to hate Bush a lot, but it almost seemed to be a little bit too much, as if he was putting it on a bit. And he was very friendly, but again, almost overly friendly. He even went as far as to treat my girlfriend and I to ice cream later in the day. “You guys want some ice cream?” he asked. “No, no, it’s on me,” he said, waving away our attempts to pay. At times I almost felt like I was hanging around with my dad (um, except for all the anti-Bush rhetoric, that is).

Fortunately for me, I didn’t know anything, so I didn’t even worry about trying to hide any information from him, but told him everything I knew, which was nothing. “I don’t think there’s any direct action planned today,” I said. “I think that’s all over yesterday. I think today we’re just doing legal marches.”

Indeed why he chose to attach himself to me and my girlfriend, despite the fact that we knew absolutely nothing, is a mystery to me. Maybe we just looked like friendly people he could attach to easily. Or, it has since occurred to me, out of all the people who were marching with the black bloc the previous day, I was one of few who had been marching with his face uncovered. Maybe we had been photographed and identified as targets. Or maybe that’s giving myself too much credit.

At any rate, since I had no information to hide from him, I had no problem with being friendly with him and we got along well. Halfway through the day he left us, presumably to try and infiltrate someone else.

Later in the day I saw my anarchist friends from the YMCA. I had been worried about them, but it appears that they had made it through yesterday’s demonstrations safely.

A Confession
If I may plead another digression: the previous month I had been at a demonstration in Windsor Canada. At one point in the demonstration, someone started handing out large “out-door” sized pieces of chalk, and we began writing messages on the ground. I wrote a message, and then someone asked to borrow my piece of chalk, and I gave it to him. He wrote something on the ground, and then hurled the rest of the chalk at the policemen standing nearby.

I glared at him angrily. Although the chalk was harmless enough, the gesture seemed to invoke violence, and I would never have given him the chalk if I had known it would have been used that way. He blushed slightly, as if he had not intended to do it, but got caught up in the excitement of the moment. “Oops, sorry,” he said to me apologetically.

During my previous brief encounters with this fellow, I had not been impressed. He seemed to me immature, and guilty of rhetorical excess. I thought he was only trying to impress others around him, and wondered if he even understood what he was saying.

Of course that’s just my first impression from a guy I met briefly, and I had no right to assume those things. Nevertheless, he was someone who rubbed me the wrong way.

Later in the day, when we had broken into small groups and left the main demonstration, I noticed that policemen were beginning to slowly close in around us. The others in the group were distracted by a discussion, and did not seem to notice. But I saw them come in and I could tell from the way their attention was focused that they were after the chalk thrower. They had been unable to grab him earlier in the day when we were in the crowd, but they were going to get him now.

I should have warned him what was going to happen, but I somewhat disliked him, and felt he sort of had it coming anyway because of what he had done, so instead of warning, I walked away from him so I wouldn’t be near him when the police made their move, and he wouldn’t have anyone nearby to grab onto for help.

The police darted in, grabbed him, and started to drag him off to the police car. The others in our group howled with rage and tried to block the path of the police so they couldn’t make off with him, but the police had the advantage of surprise, and by the time the others had realized what had happened, it was too late.

As you can imagine, I felt pretty guilty. I made a belated effort to redeem my self by trying to block the police car with the others, but we were a small number and the police moved us aside easily.

“What are the police doing?” someone asked later. “Why would they just come in and grab one of us at random like that?”

“It wasn’t random,” I said. “He had thrown a piece of chalk at the police earlier.”

“What?” someone said in disbelief. “All that for throwing a piece of chalk?”

(I later found out he was charged with assaulting a police officer, which seemed a bit excessive to me.)

Although the sins of the black bloc had greatly exceeded the sins of the chalk thrower, I did not desire their arrest and in fact was worried for their safety. Perhaps, as with before, the reasons for this were as much personal as political.

The anarchists I knew from the YMCA were people I really liked. They were suspicious of everyone, but somewhat friendly with me. They would tell me stories of their past protests, and at times we even talked about video games and movies. I never asked their age, but I got the feeling they were even younger than I was.

Although they had spent all week attending demonstrations with their faces covered, on Friday they were out walking around in broad daylight with their normal clothes on. It was a clever instance of “reverse disguise”, but I wondered if they weren’t being over-confident. After all, if the police would go to such efforts to track down someone who had thrown a piece of chalk, surely throwing a cement block threw a police car would not go unpunished.

We were in a park during the evening, and some of the anarchists started having imaginary sword fights with each other, and it struck me that they were just big kids who thought this whole thing was a game, and didn’t realize the serious consequences of their actions. After all, if throwing a piece of chalk was considered assaulting an officer, they would certainly be in a lot of trouble if they were caught, and that would ruin their game and their carefree attitude very quickly.

But I wanted them to stay happy and continue to enjoy themselves. I thought it was foolish of them to show themselves now after what they had done yesterday, and at one point even urged them to leave the demonstration. They didn’t seem to be worried about it. I left for home the next day, and as far as I knew, they were all able to return home safely as well.

In fact I would see some of them again at the protests on Bush’s inauguration day, and then again at Quebec. They still regarded me with their usual mixture of friendliness and suspicion, seeming glad to see me but being very careful how much information they shared with me. But it sounded like everyone was able to return safely.