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G20/20 Vision: Day 2 gets the gas face
G20/20 Vision: Day 2 gets the gas face
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Matt Stroud is a Pittsburgh-based freelance writer. He's written for City Paper about porn star Stoya, subterranean Philadelphia, juvenile life sentences and anarchist newspaper The Defenestrator. He writes regularly at True/Slant (where this piece first appeared) and will be filing daily reports from the G20 Summit this week.
So perhaps I'll be the billionth newsperson to report I was tear gassed this afternoon, but maybe that's a good thing.
Interesting day.
Earlier this morning, as briefly discussed, I camped out at the New and Glimmering August Wilson Center. on Liberty Ave., about 300 feet from G20's host location, The David L. Lawrence Convention Center. Walk outside, into the empty corridor by the Convention Center — in the "red zone"; the second-to-highest security area in the city — and watch a group of Buddhist protesters, actual monks in robes, chanting and waving signs in an effort to Save Burma — or encourage G20 leaders to give a shit about Burma. Ethiopians show up next, file in across the street. They're here from Philadelphia to "free Africa from dictators!" "G20 stop assisting genocide in Africa!" I stop to talk with one of them and she tells me both of her brothers have been imprisoned by Meles Zenawi. There is a language barrier, but I'm gradually getting more of the story: her brother was imprisoned at a political protest in 2003... perhaps the Anuak Conflict? He remains incarcerated. I'm about to get more information but as this conversation is going on about 300 cops emerge out of nowhere, make a right off Smithfield and march down Liberty Ave. It's enough to make both of us stop and stare. The cops reach the giant metal fence that's been erected at Tenth St. and halt. They stand at attention in front of the monks, stay there for a full minute, threateningly, then turn around and leave.
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| Troopers march down Liberty Ave. in Pittsburgh |
"What is dis?" the Ethiopian woman asks me and I can do nothing but shrug. I have no idea. Where am I? Her colleagues begin yelling and I realize I've got tears in my eyes.
It was widely advertised that a major rally was being organized this afternoon at Arsenal Park in Lawrenceville. Much of the city has been shut down — the roads inaccessible and blocked by marines, state troopers, and metro police from as far away as Louisville — and I'm forced to bike a mile or so out of my way to get there. En route, I run into five kids standing around with those giant posters of bloody dead fetuses handing out pamphlets talking about the "shocking horror of abortion." They ask me if I've been saved and I tell them I have not been. I consider shadowing these kids but can't bring myself to focus all my coverage on the odd idiosyncrasies of the Faithful Soldier School of Evangelism. Maybe tomorrow. Onward.
The first things I notice biking up to the protest are that 1) Arsenal Park is encased in long stone walls, and 2) there are more journalists here than protesters; everyone seems to have either a camera or a notepad. Reverend Billy's Church of Stop Shopping is here and talking about the evils of capitalism — a topic so trite in this environment that it's comical. I meet up with some Colleagues and sit in the sun, waiting. Chants begin and die in all directions. The lamest of these is:
"Whose streets?
"Our Streets.
"Whose war?
"Their war!"
Another, perhaps misplaced, considering the protests economic bases, is this:
"One, two, three, for
"we dont want your racist war.
"Five, six, seven, eight,
"no more killing, no more hate."
An anarchist himself, aged and wise, perhaps a bit jaded, one of my colleagues begins his own chant:
"One, two,
"Three, four
"Five, six,
"Seven, eight!"
This one dies the fastest.
The actual protest begins around 2:30pm and my abortion friends have shown up with some of their elder friends and a megaphone. They battle for airspace with anarchists who have also brought megaphones. There's literal anarchy for a moment — made even worse when the Birthers I met earlier show up with their own goddamn megaphone — but regardless, marchers begin moving toward the exits chanting whatever.
The march has begun! And it's immediately stopped. Cops barricade the entrances with dogs and batons. The aforementioned colleague yells, extremely sarcastically, "Somebody call the police!" There's this weird twenty minutes or so where a couple hundred marchers ping pong from exit to exit, cops toying with them, until they're finally allowed to leave toward Liberty Ave.
Within two blocks of their Liberty entry point, police set up massive barriers with speakers atop giant military-style SWAT wagons and a recording blares out a notice that everyone — "regardless of your purposes here" — is part of an "unlawful assembly." The recording threatens that everyone will be forcefully detained or dealt with using "other police action" if they don't leave. Like now.
But the police have only blocked one street: Liberty Ave. So the crowd largely marches downhill toward Butler Street, and various arms of the march begin branching off onto other side streets. At one point, there's a kind of mutual gasp in the crowd (which is blocking several streets at this point) and everyone looks behind them to see a group of black clad protesters rolling a ten-foot-wide steel dumpster down a fairly steep hill. I bike behind them and follow down a side street where they're eventually stopped. The police recording blares once more, this time with a screeching warning tone. A few people around me say "Oh, shit" and then a cloud of smoke plumes upward from the street by the Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church. The smell is like a charred house after a fire — strongly sour and filled with ammonia and ash. My eyes begin to well up with tears and my nose begins to tingle — initially a twinge, then a pain, heat attacking my nostrils and throat. I begin coughing and so does everyone around me. "Take your contacts out of your eye," someone yells, and we flee, head back up Penn Ave. To avoid various police blockades, most in attendance shoot off into different directions. Penn Ave. is clear within ten minutes.
We notice people have begun sticking their heads out of windows. A colleague points out it's much like the Civil War — everyone coming outside to watch the battle go down.
We receive word that the protest has amped up again at 34th and Liberty. At least 200 cops gather. There's a stalemate for at least an hour. I leave to file this report. As far as I know the stalemate is still going on. It'll go on all week if today's security measures are any indication.
Related
- Tear gas flies in Pittsburgh at the G20 conference (Digital Journal)
- Teargas used on protesters at G20 summit in Pittsburgh (Guardian UK)
- For Pittsburgh, G-20 Meeting Is a Mixed Blessing (New York Times)
- Raw Video: An Up-Close View of the G20 Protests (The Associated Press)
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