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CounterPunch
February
17, 2003
The Liberation of
Midtown Manhattan's East Side
The Streets
Belong to the People
by RON JACOBS
Gee, I certainly felt free. Two days before the
big antiwar rally in NewYork City, I received an email from a
contact in Brooklyn telling me that the mayor of that fair city
was banning all buses carrying protestors from entering the city.
Of course, the reason provided had nothing to do with the truth.
That reason was that this was for our own security--the same
reason given for the denial of the permit to march. Anybody but
the most naive knows the real reason. The warmongers in Washington
do not want anyone who opposes their plans to have a forum that
might encourage quieter citizens to join them. In short, the
democratic process is still on hold. It's a good thing that the
Iraqis are going to get this democracy delivered to them via
cruise missile express. Otherwise, they would have no idea what
freedom they are missing.
The freedom to be denied the right to
march. The freedom to not carry a megaphone. The freedom to not
be allowed access to what is arguably the United States' most
recognizable city to speak out against a foolish and bloodthirsty
policy. The freedom to be terrorized by one's own government.
The freedom to be searched at will at air, rail, and bus stations.
What's next? Gassing their own people? Roundup of government
opponents? Gee, tell me again how this is so different from Iraq?
At least Saddam Hussein actually won the popular vote in his
country. Sure, perhaps he stuffed the ballot boxes, but at least
he had the numbers. Dubya needed electoral "irregularities"
and the nation's highest court to pull of his electoral scam.
With these concerns in mind, I woke up
early on the morning of the 15th and got dressed. The northeast
has been in a cold snap for the past few weeks, with temperatures
barely reaching 10 degrees Fahrenheit most days. Saturday was
no exception. My outside thermometer read 20 degrees below zero
Fahrenheit. As I quietly layered on clothing my friend's 8 year-old
daughter came out to say goodbye and wish me luck. For a moment,
I thought of staying right where I was, but then I reminded myself
that a big reason this war must be stopped was so that the children
of the world might have a future. I gave her a hug, sent her
back to bed and finished my coffee. Then, I headed into the frozen
night.
By the time I actually boarded the bus
Saturday morning before dawn, the city had opened back up to
out-of-town charter buses. There was no permit for a march yet,
though. After helping the local organizers make certain that
everyone who had signed up for a bus ride to New York was on
a bus, we gave the drivers the go ahead and headed south from
Burlington. Not certain of what might happen once we got there,
I wrote the phone numbers of a lawyer, the indymedia services,
and a local contact person on my arm--just in case I got busted.
This time around, Burlington had sent nine buses to the protest.
A pretty good showing for a town with fewer than 50,000 people.
It had been decided the night before
that the buses would park in Queens at Shea Stadium. Just in
case the Mayor and Police department did decide to prevent charter
bus traffic in Manhattan. When our bus arrived at the stadium
around 10:45 AM, the lot was beginning to fill up with protestors
from many points north and west of New York. There was a line
to get on the subway that was several thousand people long. By
the time I actually made it to the fare booth to buy a token,
the subway officials had decided to let us all on for free. This
expedited the process and actually raised out hopes that the
city might back off in its refusal to let us march, also. Spirits
amongst the protestors were high. This thing already looked like
it was going to be big.
The Streets
Belong to the People
Our destination was the Grand Central
Station subway stop. When we disembarked all we could see were
people opposed to the war. Young and old and of every skin tone
known to humanity. Punks, longhairs, families, nuns, rastas,
frat boys--you name it and they were there. This was the United
States saying no to this war. There were so many people it was
almost impossible to move. After making it out to 42nd Street,
the foot traffic was even more crowded. A large group of puppeteers
were slowly proceeding east towards First Avenue. This was the
street where the stage was located. One of the puppeteers had
a sound system that was blaring "Picking Up the Pieces"--a
funk classic from the 1970s. Protestors and street people alike
were dancing to the beat as they moved along. Cops on the corners
were attempting to control the crowds and were asking those carrying
signs to remove the sticks that were attached. New York is one
of those cities where carrying signs on sticks is illegal. The
police department considers those sticks as potential weapons.
After making it to the corner of 42nd
and 3rd Avenue, the crowd I was part of were instructed to turn
left onto 3rd Avenue. We were further instructed to stay on the
sidewalk. That instruction was not to be. There were just too
many people. Despite Bloomberg and Bush's intentions, there was
a march and it was huge! Cops were attempting to force people
onto the sidewalks but were overwhelmed. After hastily retreating
from intersection after intersection, I overheard one patrolman
tell another, "We lost this one. We might as well go sit
in the vans and stay warm." I snuck past police lines to
get over to 2nd Avenue where a similar scenario was taking place.
As for the actual rally site- -1st Avenue--there was no access
to that street at all. Cops were not even allowing residents
of apartments on that avenue to go home.
I spent the next couple hours slowly
making my way uptown to a cross street where I could gain access
to 1st Avenue and catch some of the rally. There were tens of
thousands of other protestors doing the same. Cops on horses
were alternately charging people and clearing various intersections
which were then held by members of the tactical unit only to
be relinquished moments later to the people that just kept coming.
Occasionally confrontations broke out between the cops in riot
gear and various groups of demonstrators who were penned into
intersections or on street corners with no where to go but away
from the protest. I heard one older woman tell a cop she was
going to make it to the damn rally no matter what he did. She
hadn't come all the way from Ohio to stand on a street corner
because the cops' boss refused to give us a march. The cop muttered
back that a permit sure would have made his job easier. Finally,
around 3:00 PM, I made it over to 1st Avenue. The police had
finally opened access to the rally street at 71st Street. This
was 39 blocks north of where I began and 20 blocks north of the
rally stage. To get an idea of how many people there were at
this time, picture this: three avenues were virtually filled
with people for twenty blocks. That's 60 city blocks full of
people, not to mention the thousands of others who had decided
to hold mini-protests of their own on street corners all around
the east side of midtown Manhattan because they were frustrated
with the police efforts to keep them from attending the official
rally.
The scene on 1st Avenue was mixed. In
order to remain at the rally, one was forced into a protest pen.
For those readers who have not seen these, let me explain how
they work. The authorities place movable steel barriers on the
perimeters of each block of the street, creating an enclosed
rectangle of steel. When they decide to let people into the rectangle
(or pen), they open up one side of the rectangle. This allows
people to move into the pen, much like steers being corralled.
When the pen fills to what the police perceive to be a manageable
number, they close the pen up and repeat the process on the next
block. Once inside, one can leave but not return to his/her original
pen. I was not in the mood to be penned, so I went back over
to 3rd Avenue and headed back downtown. The cat-and-mouse game
was continuing at several intersections. Cops would clear the
streets and then relinquish them. There was one particularly
aggressive confrontation at 53rd and 3rd which resulted in the
arrests of a dozen protestors. The cops seemed rather brutal
in this instance and provoked a good deal of taunting and chanting
until even more police arrived and chased those chanting away.
It was possible to hear the speeches
and music from the rally via a live broadcast on WBAI. While
wandering around 2nd and 3rd Avenue, I caught bits and pieces
of their report. It was around 4:30 PM that I finally made my
way to the rally site. It was almost over. Despite this, there
were still thousands of people streaming onto 1st Avenue to catch
whatever remained of the music and speeches. The hip-hop group
Mos Def was playing when I arrived. Their horns and words sounded
great and people were dancing. A member of Veterans for Peace
called on people to heighten their resistance to the war and
get the soldiers who have been sent to fight this war home before
it begins. Other speakers urged people to converge on the White
House on March 1st and surround the place. Everyone who I heard
speak encouraged those listening to bring their message back
to their local communities and organize people to not go to school
and work on March 5th--no business as usual--to protest the madness
of this war. All these speakers were met with loud cheers that
one hopes translate into action.
As rally organizer Leslie Cagan thanked
everyone and urged us to continue our opposition, I headed towards
Times Square, where a militant protest was being called by a
number of radical organizations. On the way there, I stopped
for some pizza and a beer. There were protestors everywhere.
By the time I made it to Times Square, the police had closed
off two city blocks to traffic and were pushing people around.
I went into the subway station to catch a train back to Shea.
I got to talking with four college students on the train who
just happened to attend St. Michael's college--a small liberal
arts institution about six miles from where I live. It was their
first demonstration, but definitely not their last. Two things
struck them about the day, they told me: the diversity of the
protestors and the aggressiveness of the police in refusing to
allow people to protest.
After arriving at Shea and telling them
goodbye, I thought that those were pretty good lessons to learn
from your first exercise in dissent.
Ron Jacobs
lives in Burlington, VT. He can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu
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February 15
/ 16, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Colin
Powell and the Great "Intelligence Fraud"
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
The Whole World is Watching
Edward Said
A Monumental Hypocrisy
Wouter Hijink
Report from Amsterdam
"War: Do Not Feed!"
Linda Heard
At Last! Proud to be British
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Taking a Stand on Iraq
Robert Fisk
The Case Against War
Lev Grinberg
Lessons from Israel
A War Without Legitimacy
Chris Floyd
Cold Fronts:
Bush War Profits
Ahmad Faruqui
Stepping Back from the Brink of War
Norman Madarasz
French Kisses from the Citizens of France
Adam Lebowitz
Scott Ritter in Tokyo
Kurt Nimmo
Bring Us the Head of Osama bin Laden
Forrest Hylton
The Revolt in Bolivia
Col. Dan Smith
Irrelevance and Credibility:
Bush, NATO and the UN
Wayne Madsen
The Lies of Tom Lantos
Ranjit Hoskote
The Invisible Modernities of the Islamic World
Emily Zitter-Smith
Who's Safe Now?
An American in Cairo
Rich Procter
Anybody Remember the Powell Doctrine?
Poets Basement:
Eliot
Katz, Scott Handleman, and Bruce Tomczak
Website of the Weekend
Anti-War
Posters
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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