I went to jail for disbanding peacefully from protesting in front of the NY PUBLIC Library. That's nothing. 2 men were arrested in front of the library for playing their guitars.
A young woman (she was either 19 or 21), was arrested because she heard cool music and walked in its direction. She wasn't intending to protest, but she turned the street, walked into a police sweep, and got arrested.
An aside here... because Pier 57 and "downtown" were filled to maximum capacity, this girl had to sit in the paddy wagon for over 3 hours with very tight handcuffs. Plastic handcuffs are brutal. They have tiny little ridges (like the teeth in combs) that prevent the cuffs from sliding. The problem is that the teeth are on the inside, so they dig into your skin. This young woman's wrists got so swollen that she had no more wrists. Later on, when we were cuffed in metal daisy chains, she could easily slide off her cuff because she had no wrists. When officers came to uncuff her (we were on and off cuffs the entire time), she would joke "Don't bother!" and would slip off the cuffs. Most officers smiled, but one @sshole made her cuff tighter (she could still slide it off, though). The only medical treatment she got was an ice pack. That was either 12 or 16 hours into the ordeal (I can't remember).
Another aside, a long link of metal cuffs where 5 or more prisoners can be chained together is called a daisy chain. Cute, huh? Makes me think of daisy cutters.
Back to reasons for being arrested. One young man nearly got arrested. He was across the street from a demonstration in front of the FOX News building (we shouted, "Get the FOX out of here!" It was fun) and he started clapping. A police officer stormed up to him and told him he had to get in with the other protesters behind the barricade. The guy told me he rode off on his bike. He nearly got arrested for clapping.
A woman was on the sidewalk in front of her apartment spray painting a design on a T-shirt. The police arrested her. When she asked if she could retrieve her shoes and driver's license, the police said no. They took her away.
But this is the craziest story in my opinion: a man got arrested for climbing a tree. The police shouted at him to climb down. He followed orders, and he got arrested. When I told this to David, David joked that next, the man will be incarcerated for planting a flower. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised.
I just clicked on refresh. IndySteve, no, the police did not have the temerity to fine me. Had they done so, then I would have plead not guilty. Instead, I went for an ACD. I was charged with 2 counts of disorderly conduct (#$%!@#!!!), but the ACD pretty much states I did nothing, they did nothing, and if I?m a good little girl, in 6 months, all will be forgotten. Golly gee, they?ll even expunge my fingerprints from the record! If I believed that, I would have to suck on my thumb fingerprint.
*********************************************
The Repulsive Convention is correct. And, I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars (probably in the millions) the city wasted incarcerating people who did not welcome the delegates and their cronies with hugs and kisses. Sections of midtown Manhattan were shut off so that the delegates could feel "safe" from us "crazies."
The NYPD set up Pier 57, a spiffy, brand new, temporary holding tank just for us protesters and innocent bystanders who got in the way. Here are pictures of Pier 57:
http://nyc.indymedia.org/feature/display/114761
Check out the man in the green cap. I remember him. When I saw him, I cried out, "lawyer!" He's a member of the Lawyers' Guild. I don't know what any of us would have done without them, and they are continuing to do amazing work for free. And yes, the NYPD is incarcerating them as well.
Too bad there are no pictures of the floor. The building used to house buses, so the floor is covered with soot. Think of all the nasty black stuff that comes out of buses' exhaust pipes. That's what we had to sit on. But, by the time I got there, the police wiped off the corrosive oil. How kind of them.
Nonetheless, I have heard of people's skins breaking into rashes and blisters. I saw a woman asleep with her right cheek pressed to the floor. I wonder what happened to her.
We tried to make the best of it. My pen is now known as the "duck duck goose" pen (someone later asked me, where you in the "duck duck goose" pen?). A bunch of girls (teens, early twenties) decided to play duck duck goose. Only, they played:
anarchist, anarchist... cop!
democrat, green... republican!
I smiled looking at them, and then I thought about them playing in bus soot and looked at the fence and the razor wire behind them. I guess this is what the Republicans have in mind when they talk about loving children so much. I guess this is their vision of children being safe and happy, that is, the children who do not belong to them.
******************************************
What happened in NYC is thankfully far, far, far away from say China's prisons (I saw a very informative and saddening Falun Gong demonstration this week... go to www.fofg.org for info.), or even America's own Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, but the NYPD behaved reprehensibly and illegally, and the country has taken a step in a very bad direction.
In fact, the US started to do so earlier this year. I was waiting to get my stuff back from NYPD with Ed Tant, a columnist in the Athens Banner-Herald Georgia newspaper (everyone Google him; I read 3 great articles by him). He was arrested this week simply because he was doing his job taking pictures. Anyways, he covered the G-8 summit in GA earlier this year, and the police used intimidating tactics then as well.
We both agreed that the reason the RNC was in NYC was to run a dry run test to see how the police can handle suppression in case there is an October surprise and Bush establishes martial law. I used to think the RNC just came here to milk September 11 (and it did do so, and it was disgusting), but I think it goes much deeper than that. This was an experiment. If they can round up hundreds and hundreds of innocent, peaceful civilians in NYC, bastion of liberalism and dissent, they can do it anywhere in this country.
As Ed and I were leaving, we saw the feds walking around. Now _they_ are scary! They were dressed all in black, and whereas the police carry "boom boom" guns, the feds were carrying huge "tatatata" guns (sorry for my unsophisticated analysis of weaponry... I should visit the NRA site some time).
Posted by Hannah at September 4, 2004 09:57 AM