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News :: Protest Activity |
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DC Police use pepper spray against the dreaded Bush dissenters |
Current rating: 0 |
by Meg
Email: blue2 (nospam) net66.com (unverified!) |
24 Jan 2005
Modified: 06:59:19 AM |
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We had a GAS at the Freedom Celebration after Bush's installation last week. (Okay, it was really a liquid, but you get the idea.) Read on! |
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After being in two rallies and marches in "permitted" areas during the morning, I and one other Urbana-Champaign person made it to one of the tents used for security checkpoints at 14th and PA Ave by sometime after 1.
The line for the pat down was a block long and hardly moving (other friends of ours from C-U who made it in at another checkpoint told us they'd been in a line for over an hour). I saw that the 8 foot metal fence at the side of the tent was partly within sight of the parade route and decided it wasn't worth it to go through security since the parade would be done soon.
I had done what I wanted to do (walk through the streets of DC with a bed sheet stenciled with the word "indict") without getting arrested. I knew I could do a little of my usual form of protest (challenging people about their support for this regime one-on-one) from the outside of the secure area as well as the inside.
So I stood at these thick metal fences with my sign pressed to it in front of me and asked passers-by things like "who's your favorite war criminal" and "how much did you pay for your Freedom Celebration today?" (You would not believe the number of women in fur coats.) I was having a fine time, sincerely glad to be there.
The crowd around me got bigger as more protesters came to the fence line in frustration at the slow-moving security line. When someone got mouthy near the tent, police in riot gear lined the other side of the fence. A classic case of escalating tensions followed.
After a bit, someone further down from us (away from the checkpoint) managed to get one of the interlocked sections of fence loose and it clanged to the ground. The riot cops rushed into the gap, closely followed by TV cameras, and it was just impossible to move.
I saw the top of a second part of the fence start to move and then a line of liquid coming toward us. It looked like someone was using a super-soaker water sprayer. The person I drove there with yelled that it was pepper spray and found a path through the crowd away from the police line. This link shows what happened next <http://dc.indymedia.org/feature/display/115897/index.php>
One person who we'd met earlier and hooked up with because she was alone got a bit in her eye. The ironic thing is she's from the Ukraine(!), a freshman in college and interning for a Congressman.
We stayed up the street a bit and had a chance to boo a few times as the president and other VIPs rode by. We moved to the sidewalk of 14th St as more riot police were moved into the area. More protesters with peper sprayed faces came from the fence line periodically. An Army soldier (returned Iraq vet) chatted with use for a bit while he filmed the street scene.
At about 3:30, we agreed we'd done what we wanted to do and left. More blocks of cops were waiting as we walked to a subway station several blocks away and made it out of the city to where we'd parked the van.
When you look at the images at that link, the area we were in was 8 feet to the left of the action. I can't help thinking of how many people were sprayed who had nothing to do with what was going on at the downed fence section. Seemed a bit of an over reaction to me considering how well the cops were armed & dressed vs. the protestors.
And don't even get me started on the snipers on the rooftops or the helicopters swirling above! What a day for a freedom parade and a speech about standing up to oppression from the prez of the so-called free world, eh? |
This work is in the public domain |
