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Creating chaos, 101

BY CAMILLE DODERO

TUESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2004, NEW YORK -- When does chaos ensue at a protest? Usually when cops start making arrests. But during Monday evening's "March for Our Lives," a march organized sans city permit by the Poor Peoples' Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC), confusion began when the cops did something even more peculiar: they tossed metal barricades in front of marchers who were hurtling forward like a freight train.

On Monday afternoon, the PPEHRC held a rally, for which they had obtained a permit, at 4 p.m. on Hammarskjold Plaza in front of the United Nations. When they wanted to turn their rally into a march, they negotiated on site with law-enforcement officials for a parade route. Even though they didn't a permit, they had a major bargaining chip: 10 or so children and wheelchair-bound participants who would lead the procession. A mass arrest that ensnared disabled women and kids would be a very bad public-relations move for New York City. Especially on the first night of the Republican National Convention, when 9/11 savior Rudy Guiliani would be at the podium.

And so the cops let the "March for Our Lives" walk freely down Second Avenue from the United Nations building, West on 23rd Street, and then up Eighth Avenue towards Madison Square Garden. Leaving from the UN around 6 p.m., the 800-person throng was a feisty amalgam of progressive and revolutionary-minded activists like the hot-pink anarchist Cakalak Drum Core, Code Pink's blushing ladies, and the red-skirted Radical Cheerleaders. Also along for end-poverty call was a contingent of arm-raising, booty-shaking folks wearing red kerchiefs that read, "Radical Justice 9/11." Chanting "RNC go away!" they clapped faster and faster, increasing their claps-per-minute like a DJ trying to fire up the dance-floor. There were also a few Billionaires for Bush there, like Marcus from Cambridge, Massachusetts who'd remade himself as Pete Roleum, a Boston Brahmin Bush-supporter. He was the first Billionaire for Bush I've seen break character, likely because he didn't seem to be officially with the group: once he found out I was from Boston, he divulged his first name. "That way if it gets published, people will know it's me," he said eating cherry tomatoes on the sidewalk.

But since this street-walk wasn't technically allowed, there was the collective sense that patrolmen might snatch protestors at any minute. Especially since a paddy wagon drove slowly at the front of the march, back doors open -- kind of like a belt-whipping father pointing out his strap when his kids begin to misbehave. Police presence was heavy along the route: blue-and-white police vans, sirens whirling, pulled up along sidestreets abutting the demonstration; a single file of helmeted cops, nightsticks in hand and plastic handcuffs looped onto their pants, streamed along the 23rd Street sidewalk beside the march.

But what caused the chaos was when the throng came within a few blocks of Madison Square Garden on Eighth Avenue. The cops were going to allow the 800 or so protestors as far North as 30th Street, in a barricaded corral between 30th and 29th. But after about two-thirds of the mob poured into that cordoned-off block, the cops stopped the rest from entering -- by suddenly dragging heavy-metal barriers in front of them. Naturally, as soon as the barricades got pulled in front them like sliding glass doors, people freaked.

Me, I was standing there in the crossroads of 29th and Eighth Avenue, sandwiched between both contingents. Suddenly, there was a frantic commotion in the intersection as white-shirted police men tried to stop people in midstep from going further. Activists pushed, trying to shove through. Some leapt over the fence; others slipped through abutting barricades that hadn't been joined. Finally, the cops forced people back inside the second pen, but this just made things worse. I hopped onto a barricade to see inside the pen, but as I stood on it, it started to fall backwards since so many bodies were escaping over it.

Over on Seventh Avenue, Justine Pepicelli from Queens saw the press pass hanging around my neck and ran over. "I got shoved," she offered.

"We both got shoved," piped up her male companion, Brooklyn resident Ben Maura. Anti-RNC buttons covered his body like killer bee stings.

"At least four or five times," added Peppicelli.

As soon as I took down her name, she grabbed Maura by the elbow. "C'mon, let's reclaim our streets!" she coaxed. "Let's take them back! Let's go back to Eighth!"

He followed. Sort of. "I don't want to go back on the streets," he whined. "Not those ones, at least."

They scattered and police penned in as many of the rest as they could.


Issue Date: August 31, 2004
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