Report from Midtown

Two other IMCistas and I started out the march from the New York Public Library at 42nd and Fifth Avenue where many colorful groups had assembled, beating drums, carrying an array of creative, funny and angry signs. Like many people, there were community groups who were engaging in their first demonstration.

We walked north and west until we reached 3rd Avenue in the mid-40s and walked up the avenue. By the time we reached 53nd Street, the crowd had swelled large enough to take over the entire avenue—eventually overtaking both lanes and cutting off all traffic. The NYPD began to block marchers from going north on the block between 53rd and 54th. We could see others just a block north of us, but were not allowed to meet up with them. This was one way the cops divided and segmented the crowd.

As a critical mass approached the corner of 53rd and Third Avenue, we had begun to move to the east side of the street, to see if we could move east towards the rally/UN area. However, the police had double- and in some cases triple-barricaded 53rd Street. Meanwhile, the crowd continued to swell and there was no real place for anyone to go.

People began to get very angry and chanted, "Let us go! Let us go!" Some climbed on a large sort of dump truck where police had kept their barricades, and whatever vans or vehicles they could climb on.

I told a cop that the NYPD was threatening public health. It was very cold. Many people were beginning to need a place to warm up. Au Bon Pain, the nearest coffee shop, we were told, was closed off and only open to the people in the adjacent office building. Later, we found out this wasn't true. Just walk north, the cop said. Yeah, right.

At this point, a group of about 20–30 black-clad protesters linked arms and were able to get through the left side of the barricade, provoking the police to tighten up the pens on those still trapped. About 10 minutes later, a group of 15 protesters again linked arms and tried to break through the barricades, and we with about 50 others swarmed up behind them and pushed as hard as we could to get through. Scuffling and verbal scuttling continued, with the tension palpably rising. Ten to fifteen people were maced—we had just missed it, but the mace had hit quite a few young women in particular, as well as a middle-aged woman who I believe was beaten. The women were upset and crying.

From a vantage point atop some sort of vehicle, I could see that police were sending reinforcements; some particularly truculent fellows came to back up the other who had been pushing us back. A thin man in brown and a truculent cop got into an intense verbal argument at the edge of the barricade, and the cop started beating on the man. As the man moved backwards into the crowd to get away from the cop, three cops jumped the barricades with sticks at the ready to get this man. They knocked two or three people to the ground, who could have easily been trampled. Eventually, they got this guy, who appeared to be "guilty" of nothing more than I had been—getting up in the cops' face and expressing righteous anger—and arrested him, slamming him on the police cars they had parked on 53rd between Second and Third Avenues.

One photographer, during the earlier rush, had been arrested for taking photos of the cops' violent attacks. Yet not less than two minutes later, two NYPD cops very visibly scanned the crowd with video cameras. We flipped off the cameras, and I shouted that I'd smile for the camera. The recent Handschu agreement revocation passed through my mind and left stings of bitterness. Not like it mattered, though ... It was just an intimidation ploy.

But the immediate hypocrisy was maddening! The cops had instigated the violence by penning people in and then pushing them back when they had nowhere to go. Sending a message for the long-term, I'd say.

Five to 10 people by my count had been arrested—several beaten. We had been restricted in the one area for about a half-hour to an hour already.

Then about 20 cops on horses came down 53rd Street toward us and began butting up against the crowd. One man was arrested for getting in the way of the horses, though he had nowhere to go.

Cops streamed through and dragged people off the vehicles they had been standing on, while the crowd shouted, "Shame! Shame!" and "Let us through!" As the cops on horses, which numbered about 30 by this time—a cavalry?— moved through to the center of the intersection, the crowd shouted, "Seig Heil! Seig Heil!" It felt like something was going to give. But we knew that if it did, it wouldn't be just a scuttle this time.

But scuttle we did to the sidewalk, where finally, cops let us through the barricades into 53rd Street with about 100 people. But the rest remained penned in. And scuttles continued. It looked as if a lot of people were still in danger of being trampled by horses, or cops, or both. One man was pushed to the ground by a cop, while his foot was trapped in a sewer grate, and possibly sprained his ankle, or broke it. And so he got through the pens, too.

Meanwhile, I noticed a by all appearances well-to-do young woman get two friendly police escorts to her home on that block of 53rd Street. Diners inside an Balducci's, an Indian restaurant on that block, continued a quiet lunch as if nothing were happening outside. A woman indulged in feeding her baby as she, too, dined.

About 20 minutes later, a long caravan of empty public buses and a few private tour buses, also empty, broke up the crowds on Third Avenue. MTA unionized drivers, for whom we had expressed support in their recent strike negotiations, drove the buses. I'd like to know who volunteered to do that. Public buses aiding the publicly-funded NYPD to squelch a public assembly. But business as usual thereafter resumed and the taxis sped through as usually, carrying New Yorkers to their weekend shopping trips.

As we later made it to 53rd and Second Avenue, we had found the crowd dispersed mostly. We walked south on 2nd Ave, where I overheard a few people discussing their experience angrily. I overheard the name, "Officer Harloff ... 6802, Officer Harloff ... "

I stopped the people, two men and a woman of color. They told me that this officer, Harloff, along with an Officer Mosell, had been extremely violent towards the crowd and had launched obscenities. The woman, Delia, a NYU Law student, said that she had been pepper-sprayed (possibly by these officers) and lost her glasses. This had been her first protest.

"I came out here to protest war," she said, still visibly agitated. "But this turned very violent. It shocked me. My faith in the police system especially has ... I'm just really upset."

Her friend, Jose, had been choked with a bandana he had been wearing, and was punched in the face by police. "It's nauseating to see police officers start a riot, instigate and provoke."

Nor were the police very helpful to those who just wanted to know what was going on. A middle-aged woman who lived in the immediate area and had been at the rally point, said, "I asked the police if I would be able to return, if I could come down Second Avenue, back home because I was very cold. They just said, 'I don't know.' They want the crowd to thin out."

Mainstream news reports that Bush is "praising Americans' " free speech rights. CNN reports only 100,000 in New York, when we know there were at least half a million. Local reports show only the "patriotic" Americans who are doing this for their still-unabashed love of this country. No police violence is shown.

The first thing my mom says when I call her and tell her about the protests is, "You didn't do anything to get arrested, did you?" in her usual accusatory tone. God forbid.

So this is how protest in the police state is micro-managed, micro-controlled and micro-repressed. We've got to figure out a better way to fight this, to broaden the movement. As another Indymedia commentator reported hearing from one of the many incensed, chattel-driven demonstrators today, war is war.

I have a feeling, however, that the NYPD unwittingly did their part in opening up the eyes of those non-activist demonstrators to the police state. I have a feeling the next time those people see us on TV, if they're not with us, they'll question the needs of "police-enforced security" against "violent protesters."