-------- Original Message -------- Subject: NYC\'s \"Unpermitted\" March Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 15:28:26 -0800 (PST) From: theatrekabbal at hotmail.com To: chuck at mutualaid.org, chuck0 at infoshop.org
In New York City, many of us may remember F15 as the day the repressive Giuliani-era police control of demonstrations begin to crack and cave in.
The biggest mistake the city made was to ban its march. 250,000 to 500,000 people showed up to tell the mayor and the world that no one has the right to stop people from marching and to proove it we turned the entire grid of Manhattan into a single chaotic march site.
The unpermitted march broke down into two groups. One marching up 3rd Avenue from Grand Central Station and the New York Public Library. And the other one marching down from Harlem on 2nd Avenue that was composed of more racially diverse groups including the Palestinian solidarity contingent.
I was with the crowd on 3rd Avenue. The police attempted to pen us off into blocks using interlocking metal barricades but succeeded only in penning off the side streets along 3rd Avenue. Tens of thousands of us were pushed up 3rd Ave. in a suffocating mush at an excruciatingly slow pace.
At around 54th St. and 3rd Avenue we had had enough. Activists began to join hands and to push at the barricades. I saw one exquisitely dressed Euro-model type on the other side of the barricades openly defy the police by pulling at the barricades in an attempt to release an older woman who was begging her for help. This brave fashionista set off a spark of solidarity and many of us began to dismantle the barricades from both within and outside of the pen. The police responded by spraying mace into the crowd. I saw a group of young women get hit in the face by the spray and they took it heroically. The washed out their eyes with bottles of water and kept on pushing at the barricades.
I was able to get out of the pen and ran over to 2nd Ave to see what was happening with the Harlem contingent. The march on 2nd Avenue had an entirely different police atmosphere to it. The cops were in riot gear and many were mounted on horses and were taunting and baiting the group. Surprise, surprise - the more racially diverse demonstrators on 3rd Avenue were catching ten times the amount of heat we caught on 2nd Ave.
As people struggled to escape the barricades the police were knocking them to the ground or shoving them up against the wall either by hand or with their horses. I didn’t see any injuries but the radio (WBAI) later reported many hospitalisations.
Over 300 arrests of demonstrators were reported for the day. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly went on WNBC-TV and complained that a number of his horses’ hooves had been injured by the colliding heads of demonstators. Kelly estimated the cost to the city at 5 million. Gabe Pressman, the interviewer, did not ask Kelly the obvious question: "Wouldn't it have been cheaper to have just let the people march?"
After the skirmishes near the UN (no one I know went to the rally on 1st Avenue) some of the crowds moved over to Times Square. They were met by hundreds of police who attempted to scatter them but enough of the crowd continued to march downtown via 5th Avenue and finally made it to the East Village where they performed a Snake March across St. Mark's Avenue.
The war may continue as planned but one thing is clear, New York City is open again for civil disobedience. There's not enough money and too many pissed off people for the old Giuliani police machine to function properly. Let's hope resistance builds until it and Bush's war is dismantled and forgotten.
wee willie