January 21, 2005
A can of organic soy whupass
This WaPo article misses some of the what happened during the protests yesterday. I sholuld know, I was there.
"At Eighth and E streets NW, about 1:20 p.m., a bunch of kids come running around the corner by the Ginger Cove restaurant, past the Penn Camera store. The protesters are wearing black hooded sweatshirts, and red leotards, and gas masks, ski masks, goggles, and for a second you don't know if they're running toward something or away from it until you see cops chasing them, too, and weapons being drawn and arms flailing. Everyone has a camera or a picture phone or a digital recorder. Bystanders scramble out of the way. The crowd flows down toward the FBI building. Snipers watch from above. "
To understand how this moment of chaos came to be, back up a little bit to 7th and D a few minutes prior. Hotel-bound conventioneers met up with protestors here, all packed in next to one another about as tightly as possible outside of the Tokyo subway system. As rude as ever, I tried to push through en route to I-don't-know-what when I start to see pieces of wood flying about 50 feet from where I was stuck in a seemingly unpenetrable wall of fur and flannel. I don't know what the wood was, although pickets from signs would make sense. Then came the sirens from all directions, the cops running through the crowd like linebackers to make way for the motorcycles, the funny smell and the shortness of breath.
A block up and over at 8th and E, I saw the beginnings of yet another mess. Unsatisfied with the reaction they were getting from the police (hearts and minds are apparently a secondary concern, behind the self-satisfaction of getting arrested) the protesters started yelling at the cops. First, it was the usual "your boss is a war criminal" stuff -- the sort of thing that leads cops in riot gear to join the resistance during revolutions (another problem with these guys: they think they're in 1970s Pretoria, Kiev in 2004 or Montgomery in 1955 when they're only a few miles from the malls where they buy their Anti-Flag CDs).
Then some shaggy-haired dude (really specific, I know) holds up a Dunkin Donuts bag and says "Hey cops, is this what you came for? Who ordered jelly?"
If you've deluded yourself into thinking that you represent a repressed popular movement in an oppressed country seeking to cause a great uprising, stick with the theme and don't break charachter into your usual self, i.e. the kind of person who will taunt the police into whupping them for a small infraction just so that you can claim police brutality. I'm not a trained law enforcement officer, but enough being yelled at, on the job or not, and I'll show you the instruments of repression.
The little "charge" mentioned in the article took place after the protesters started throwing things, striking a blow for ... their own self-satisfaction.
Posted by rj3 at January 21, 2005 11:21 AM
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Comments
I was distressed to find that a good 75% of the demonstrators I encountered Thursday were the generic sub-collegiate 'anarchist' blend, intent on breaking things and being generally nasty without clear reasoning as to why, unaware of what syndicalism even is, etc. However, I do appreciate their dumb roughness for the simple (me-serving) reason, in this context only, that it does the work of provoking forceful reciprocation from the police in front of many nicely-dressed guests at the gilded hotels lining the parade route. It's scary to see people breaking down control measures before your eyes, especially when security is *the* hot topic and everyone in range gets a few good dosings of indiscriminantly aimed oleoresin irritants.
Posted by: JK at January 21, 2005 10:54 PM