This is the fourth of a series of G-20 Summit posts. Here are the first, second, and third.
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Here is some original footage of the police and protesters in Pittsburgh. Please decide for yourselves what the atmosphere was like.
1. The police video was taken in one stretch on Friday, the day police were more centered in the downtown area. They were congregated more heavily in the intersections because of the parade of protesters going through town that day. The leaders of the protest (from the Thomas Merton Center) estimated the protesters counted 10,000. Our own estimate was much smaller, and a random nonscientific sample of estimates from police and protesters themselves ranged from 2,000 to 6,000.
2. The young man on a bike who spoke at length to me had just completed the parade/protest. He is wearing a Greenpeace T-shirt but said he was not necessarily representing their views and did not take part in the bridge protest. It was ironic that at the moment I asked him if he felt the police presence was excessive, I had to get out of the way because there was a row of police motorcycles coming up behind me on the sidewalk, sirens blaring. On the other hand, you should know that during the entire interview, we were standing immediately next to a contingent of at-ease police officers who were listening to his view that the police presence was squelching free speech.
3. There were two groups of anarchists coming back over the bridge after their big march. They call themselves that and were the most reticent to speak on camera or get their pictures taken. They are the only protesters I saw who admitted to acts of violence--although it wasn't clear to me that the property destruction they spoke of was committed by themselves or others who call themselves anarchists. If my questions to the second group seem leading, it's because we had talked at length prior to this interview, and they agreed to talk with me on camera afterwards, so I was trying to recreate the scene. The first group agreed to talk with me only if I walked with them across the bridge.
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Comments
The police presence squelches free speech by acting as a threat of violence against people who might try to exercise their rights to speak out.
Sure, the police are comfortable, they have the privilege to lie, to commit battery, and to commit homicide. They can do all these things, and they'll not only get away scot-free, they'll get promoted.
If a citizen lies to a cop, it's a felony. It's jail time, big fines, bankruptcy. If a citizen brushes up against a cop or touches a cop in what the cop thinks is a rude, harmful, or offensive manner, it's battery against a law enforcement officer. If the citizen is carrying a sign or anything that can be construed as a weapon, it's aggravated battery against a law enforcement officer - that's a felony. If a citizen is taken to the ground by a law enforcement officer in a protest, the citizen will likely also be charged with battery against a law enforcement officer.
Finally, if a citizen seriously injures or kills a law enforcement officer, that gets the death penalty, administered on the streets, without benefit of judge or jury.
In view of all of this, why would anyone in their right mind go anywhere near the G20 or anyplace with such a massive "security" presence? It's a lot easier just to stay home and watch TV, play videogames, mow the lawn, go to church, whatever. Just stay at home, don't protest, don't get into politics, just pay your taxes and shut the hell up.
The Constitution was written two hundred years ago, and in the words of our former President, "It's just a goddamn piece of paper." The Obama Administration pays for all of this "security", all of this intimidation, this destruction of liberty and crushing of dissent. It's official policy. The police and military present are all acting on orders... Obama's orders... and those orders are to crush and to ignore dissent, to make it futile to protest, to win a war without fighting a shot, by destroying the will of the population to resist.
What we'll see in the years to come is more of this. There won't be any real health care reform, because the corporations represented by the US Government oppose it. What will happen is a recapitalization of the insurance companies, partially by direct subsidy from the taxpayers (the AIG bailout) and partially from money coerced from taxpayers by mandatory health insurance coverage to be bought from private insurance companies. Taxes will go up to pay for the $4 trillion (so far) in bailouts to the financial industry; Medicare will go bankrupt and will be privatized (see mandatory health insurance from private insurers...); Social Security will one day soon declare itself insolvent. It's a class war, the war by the haves on the have nots. At some point, it will become impossible to just sit at home and try to ignore what's going on, but by that time, it'll be too late to do anything about it.
So those "anarchists" you talked to, they're absolutely right... Their analysis of the situation is dead-on correct. The Steelworkers should be in the streets right beside them - that's where the money is going to come from to fund further bailouts and transfers of wealth.
Incidentally, did you catch the youtube of the kid being abducted by 4 beefy guys in camouflage in a nondescript sedan? The police just standing by watching? It's outrageous the degree to which the system has eroded the right of assembly and protest--the foundations of American identity.