Riot in Pittsburgh

Riot in Pittsburgh
         
as quoted from Cindy Sheehan, and as shared by
David Rovics (Copyright 2009)

The following story is very disturbing but, even
more unsettling, a question remains: Why was
there no media coverage?

"On Friday night I went to a free concert a local community radio station
was hosting on the campus. It ended around 8 pm. Over the course of the
next two hours there were more and more riot cops arriving. Why? Because
they knew what I knew - that a few hundred young folks were gathering on
the green at 10 pm, many of whom came by bicycle, after having engaged
in a criminal, nonpermitted mass bike ride around the city. Around 9:30 I
had to leave to go to a different neighborhood, and I returned in my rental
car around 11 pm along with Cindy, Joshua and Sarah.

If the police had made announcements for everyone to disperse (as I'm sure they had at some point) we were too late for that. What we arrived in the midst of was a police riot. We parked on the street in front of the campus and walked on the sidewalk on the campus. Within seconds we saw a young man on a bicycle, a student at that very university, being violently tackled by two riot cops, thrown down to the ground with the police on top of him. All of the police all of the time were dressed in black armor head to toe, many of them driving armored vehicles. Earlier in the evening Cindy and Joshua and I were hanging around one of the armored vehicles while Cindy harassed the cops and soldiers strutting around there, telling them her son died in Iraq because he didn't have an armored vehicle like this one. (They studiously ignored her, of course.)

The young man with the two cops on top of him and his bicycle cried for help, perhaps not realizing that there wasn't much anyone could do other than take his name, which he was too freaked out to pronounce in a way that anybody could understand. Within seconds we found ourselves running from a group of cops, along with a bunch of young folks who had their hands in the air, hoping vainly that this might deter the police from attacking them. It didn't. Off the campus, a block away, police were running in groups in different directions, penning people in, throwing them to the ground, hitting them with clubs, handcuffing them and arresting them.

The four of us (an affinity group I suppose) got separated. Sarah and I were running and were about to be boxed in by police coming in different directions. After I was myself clubbed in the back by a cop with his truncheon, we ducked into the front of the lobby of the Holiday Inn and started talking with guests, other protesters, and various students who had also gone there because they were quite naturally afraid to be on the streets. Fifty feet away in either direction the police were assaulting and arresting people, individually and in small groups, picking them off the sidewalks.

Cindy and Joshua had ended up running in a different direction, through clouds of tear gas. They ducked around a corner just in time to watch dozens of young people, running away, being shot methodically with rubber-coated steel bullets in the back. One friend of mine there from Minneapolis said he saw someone who had ten welts on his back from being shot ten times. On both Thursday and Friday nights the authorities used their fancy new LRAD weapons, a sound-based weapon that causes people to flee because it hurts their eardrums so badly. (At future demos, look out for the noise-cancelling headphones accompanying the goggles...)

At every turn you could hear the sound of shocked students who had never seen or heard about this sort of thing happening, who were struggling to come to terms with what they were experiencing. They're just attacking anybody on or near the campus, they're not differentiating between us and the protesters! Some of them seemed to think that it might be OK to club protesters as long as you don't club the students, others had concluded that attacking people for hanging out on the grass was over the top regardless. (This is not an easy thing for a sorority girl from a wealthy suburb to come to terms with, so I was duly impressed at hearing these heretofore clueless youth having such epiphanies.) What was particularly entertaining was the first-hand realization that the local students could not themselves differentiate between "their" fellow students and the other ones who had come from out of town. How could they? It is, in fact, completely impossible to tell the difference between a college student from Pittsburgh and one from Toledo, even if they do have very different politics...

Eventually, by 1 am or so, Cindy and Joshua were able to move without being fired on, and they joined Sarah and I in the comfort of the patio at the Holiday Inn. The people who worked at the Inn, at least some of them, were trying to keep protesters out. The thing was, though, that if you could afford to buy a drink you were no longer a protester, but a guest of the bar, which is what we were. A little while before Cindy and Joshua arrived a convoy of limousines and other fancy cars pulled up in front of the hotel, and then security locked the doors. You could still go in or out, though, just not without security opening the doors for you.

We continued going in and out of the bar, passing by none other than Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister of Australia, and his entourage, who were all staying that night in the Holiday Inn (of all relatively downscale places to stay!) and watching some big Australian rugby match on TV. In our confusion at having just escaped the riot police only to find ourselves ten feet away from the Australian Prime Minister, Cindy, Joshua, Sarah and I were all at a complete loss as far as what we should say to the guy. We all talked a lot about what we could say, but by the time we were getting close to coming up with a plan he had gone to bed.

The next day, Saturday, I joined a couple dozen friends and acquaintances outside the county jail where people had spent the night, waiting to get out on bond. Most folks got out on bond, others were (and perhaps still are) being held on a higher bond, waiting for friends and relatives and comrades to come up with the money. Talking to people just out of jail I heard more horror stories. One man, Gabriel, told of being kept outside between 2 and 6 am in the rain, and then being held in a cell where he was handcuffed to a chair along with another man, not able to stand or lay down, for 13 hours.

I left Pittsburgh in the late afternoon from the jail, heading towards New England to continue this northeastern concert tour. In Connecticut this morning I got a call from Cindy Sheehan, who had just gone to the Emergency Room because she was having trouble breathing. People around her the night before had been vomiting profusely as a result of the tear gas. Having suffered injury in the past from getting gassed in Quebec City, I knew exactly why she was in the ER.

There will be lawsuits, and the lawsuits will be won. People like Cindy and Gabriel might make a bit of money from their suffering at the hands of the authorities. Not to worry, though - the authorities have a multi-million dollar slush fund to deal with these lawsuits. They expect them, and they don't care. This is democracy in the USA. It's always been like this, under Democrats or Republicans. If you doubt me, it's quite simply because you don't know your history.

Protest, however, matters. The end of slavery, the banning of child labor, the fact that most working class people live to be past 30 these days, is all a direct result of protest - of democracy happening in the streets. Marches, strikes, rebellions, and all manner of other extra-parliamentary activities. The authorities are well aware that democracy in the streets, no matter what they say - that's why dissent is criminalized. Because as soon as we are allowed to have a taste of our own power, everything can change. It has, and it will again, but the powers-that-be will continue to do what they do best - try hard to make sure we don't know how powerful we are. They require the consent of the governed, the consent of those students in Pittsburgh, and they have now lost it, at least for many of those who were in Oakland last Friday night. They would have lost it a lot more if they had done mass arrests or used live ammunition, which is why they didn't do that.

We don't have freedom of speech or assembly and we never have, but it is through all kinds of "unlawful assemblies," from Shays' Rebellion to the Civil Rights movement, that change happens. So here's to the next Pittsburgh, wherever it may be. I hope to see you there, on the streets, where our fate truly lies."

-- Cindy Sheehan, as quoted by David Rovics

"Love Now and Peace Soon."
-- Cindy Sheehan
www.CindySheehansSoapbox.com

Audio: About Cindy Sheehan...
http://media.eyeblast.org/newsbusters/static/2009/08/Charlie%20Gibson.wma

October 4-25: MIDWEST TOUR - David Rovics with Anne Feeney:

Sunday, October 4th, 7 pm
Gregory Hall Room 213
U/I Campus
Champaign, IL

Monday, October 5th, 6 pm
Brookens Auditorium
University of Illinois
Springfield, IL

Tuesday, October 6th, 7:30 pm
COFAC (College of Fine Arts and Communication) Auditorium
Western Illinois University
Macomb, IL
After party at The Cafe, 8 W. Side Sq., 9:30 pm!

Thursday, October 8th, 7 pm
St Mark's
1201 Locust
Dubuque, IA

Saturday, October 10th, 8 pm
The Art Center
228 East Fifth Street
Winona, MN

Sunday, October 11th, 5 pm
Minnesota Music Cafe
499 Payne Ave.
St. Paul, MN

Tuesday, October 13th, 7 pm
Goodman Community Center
149 Waubesa
Madison, WI

Thursday, October 15th, 7 pm
Northern Illinois University Music Building Room 173
DeKalb, IL

Saturday, October 17th
Wheeler Art Center
1035 Sanders St
Indianapolis, IN

Sunday, October 18th, 7 pm
Unitarian Universalist Church
333 Meridian Street
Lafayette, IN

Wednesday, October 21st
Cincinnati, OH -- details TBA

Thursday, October 22nd, 5 pm
Happy Hour at Natasha's Cafe
112 Esplanade
Lexington, KY

Friday, October 23rd, 7 pm
St John's Day Center
700 E. Muhammad Ali Blvd.
Louisville, KY

Saturday, October 24th, 8 pm
Unitarian Universalist Congregation
520 Kanawha Blvd. W.
Charleston, WV

Sunday, October 25th
Pittsburgh, PA -- details TBA

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