PETE DOLACK

THIS IS WHAT A POLICE STATE LOOKS LIKE

—

For anybody who continues to cling to the belief that we live in a democracy, the February 15 anti-war demonstration in New York City was a sobering reality check.

Having been in more rallies than I can count, I can say I was (a little) surprised at the level of obstruction put up by the New York Police Department in preventing, at a bare minimum, tens of thousands from entering the rally area, or even getting close to First Avenue. Not that preventing people from going into a demonstration is without precedent; a significant number of people were blocked from the first Million Youth March in Harlem five years ago and I personally have been charged by a baton-wielding cop for the "crime" of attempting to enter a demonstration. (I did eventually get into that one.) But I assumed the numbers would be so large that the police would have no choice but to let it happen. Perhaps that was the case for those who actually made it to First Avenue, but not for others.

There seem to be some sentiment, mentioned directly by the corporate media, that the police were "surprised" and "overwhelmed" at a turnout "far greater" than expected. I think this is quite incorrect. Even if we gave the benefit of the doubt that the police were genuinely surprised, that would have been a tiny or nonexistent factor. The real reason is the obvious one—the authorities did not want this demonstration to happen and decided to do what they could to sabotage it. But their tactics backfired—the heavy-handed tactics only made us angrier and bolder.

To look at the day from the point of view of City Hall and the police, just for a moment, the tactics were stupid. If the police had allowed a march to go with the rally, everything would have been smoother and there would have been just one march with disruptions along one pre-designated route. Instead, there were several marches and we managed to shut down the whole east side of Midtown, with a later blockage of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.

And, as usual, the corporate media vastly undercounted the size of a demonstration, reporting the police figure of "100,000," although channels 2 and 4 did mention the organizers' figure of 500,000. A channel 2 anchor then referred to "tens of thousands" or "possibly more," yet in the next breath mentioned that First Avenue (which is six lanes wide) was packed from 49th Street to 75th Street. How could that immense amount of space be filled other than by hundreds of thousands? I was among those trapped on Third Avenue, which represented only a couple or a handful of the many feeder marches, and I can state that there were tens of thousands there alone.

It didn't take long for us to decide to march, despite the lack of official sanction. Several contingents forming one feeder march headed east on 42nd Street, from Fifth Avenue, just past noon. The police initially confined us to the sidewalk, but within minutes we spilled out onto the street. We were forcibly pushed back onto the sidewalk, only to go back into the street as we chanted "Whose streets? Our streets!" This was repeated several times. Eventually this feeder march went up Lexington Avenue, and another large feeder march or marches reached Lexington from 50th Street. We were all forced east on 50th to the next avenue, Third, where the lockdown began. A postal service truck was hopelessly trapped in the crowd, but the mailman was cheerful about the situation.

I eventually made it up to 53rd Street and Third Avenue, where all exits were sealed off. We would be trapped here until about 3 p.m. A solid row of cops in full riot gear blocked progress up Third Avenue and barricades and an open-air police supply wagon blocked 53rd Street. The police wagon, interestingly, was completely filled with demonstrators, and demonstrators also occupied the top of a shuttered newsstand. The police eventually managed to re-occupy their wagon, but it cost them crucial personnel. The crowd was very restless, angrily demanding to be let through and the police insisted we turn back, although we were trapped. We began removing some barricades, causing the police to charge into the crowd and arrest a few people, in brutal fashion, slamming them to the ground and striking them. After considerable struggle, and perhaps helped by the load of cops diverted to occupying their own supply wagon, the crowd forced its way east on 53rd Street. We quickly spilled off the sidewalk onto the streets and a herd of cops angrily charged us from the rear, attempting to force us onto the sidewalk, screaming that we had to make way for traffic, although all streets in the area were blocked. We held our ground, and they were unable to get us off the street.

Once we made it to Second Avenue, however, we were blocked again. It was here that the police charged demonstrators with horses, but that had happened shortly before the Third Avenue lockdownees arrived. (The same group of horseback cops would attack demonstrators with the horses at Third Avenue and 53rd, shortly after a group of us got to Second Avenue.) The situation rapidly became tense as several of us engaged in running yelling matches with the police, who kept ordering us in directions that were closed, by the police. Then the police engaged in a common tactic to ordering everybody to go one way, only to have another group of cops order everyone in the other direction. Pointing out this contradiction did no good; logic does not work on police.

Eventually we were violently shoved with batons south on Second Avenue, to 52nd Street, where two cops on horseback continually drove their horses at us; I was within less than a foot of being side-swiped by a horse at one point. One of these cops was particularly vicious; violently turning the horse in one direction then another, he forced the horse into tight turns approaching 180 degrees again and again. I could plainly see the pain on the horse's face as the bit in its mouth was severely yanked repeatedly.

More standoffs ensued, but here I did get to experience the hostility of the corporate media first-hand. A Channel 2 reporter, a quite befuddled-looking woman, happened by and, from about 10 feet away, I said to her that I hoped she would tell the story of what was happening, that force and violence were used to break up a peaceful demonstration. I then couldn't help but add that I hoped she wouldn't only repeat police lies. I said this in an even tone. But the reporter's assistant, a man who probably outweighed me 2-to-1, then moved menacingly toward me, snarling "back off!" Holding my ground, I told him to back off. At this point, a woman who had courageously challenged the cops on several occasions, subjecting herself to violent shoving, then tried to intercede. The reporter's assistant snarled at her, too. The reporter had begun to move away and after another exchange with me, the assistant then followed the reporter. But this was a telling exchange—the mere suggestion that a corporate-media reporter should give an accurate and balanced presentation is enough to prompt threats of violence.

By now it was about 4 p.m., and people were steadily dispersing, understandable considering the harsh cold. There would be several more marches, however. Toward 5 p.m., one impromptu march, a group of several hundred, had taken over Fifth Avenue, and marched north before turning west on 42nd Street. In the middle of the block, a large group completely occupied the street. The march then went back, occupying all of Fifth Avenue until a line of cops sealed off the avenue at 39th Street. Many of us though the best tactic here would have been to turn down 40th Street, but instead most of the impromptu marchers decided to sit down in the middle of Fifth Avenue. Another large group of cops then sealed off the block behind us at 40th Street, trapping everybody. In full riot gear, with batons out, and with one cop brandishing his can of mace, the 39th Street line moved in. About 20 men and women held their ground and were arrested, with the rest forced onto the sidewalks. But since the cops continued to barricade Fifth Avenue at 40th Street, the disruption to traffic continued for some time.

One of the chants we shouted was "We're not violent. How about you?" One answer came when several cops walked about to a puppetista who had the beautifully done large green George Bush puppet, threw him to the ground, arrested and hauled him away, then dragged the puppet on the ground after doing some damage to it. After a further standoff, the situation began to become less tense following a couple of more baton charges and the mace-wielding cop hovering his weapon in people's face.

Someone from one of the buildings on the block, however, put a punctuation on the standoff by heaving a water balloon into the street. Not only were the remaining demonstrators caught completely by surprise, but the cops were, too, and they angrily looked up, searching for a clue. Fortunately, the balloon thrower had acted fast and there was no sign at all of where the water balloon had come from. The Mid-Manhattan Library is on the block and as I left, two cops were forcing their way into the library, screaming to be let in as a librarian hurriedly unlocked the door. Perhaps the cops though the balloon thrower was in the library; perhaps they just wanted to suppress some books. What if more people got ideas the Bush administration disapproves of?

In the end, one message was clear: The authorities are afraid of us. Let's make them more afraid; we have a moral obligation to the world, including to the hundreds of thousands of innocent people who will die in the Bush administration's war on Iraq if we can't stop it. And we have an obligation to ourselves and future Americans as well—if we let our civil liberties be taken away, it'll be extremely difficult getting them back. If we don't stand up now, when the next war drive comes, they'll be sending us to jail and camps instead of locking us down in the streets.