![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Home Again!
Feb. 16th, 2003 04:55 amI'm home safe, and still processing the day...
On a personal note, I got to meet RobynK and Eireann11, although too briefly in hectic circumstances... An as yet unknown series of problems kept me from finding Forestfire, Leyloken, Prysmflux, and the rest...
In terms of the rally, though... Wow. I was stuck in the overflow crowd on 3rd Ave, and it was a lot of confusion. I heard bits of the rally and updates over the radio, once I finally had a chance to pull it out and get it tuned to the right station. I often wasn't listening to it, though, because things were so chaotic where I was. I started from Grand Central at probably around noon or so, on 42nd. There was a feeder march moving from there, and I followed that down to third, and then up toward 49th. For a while it was actually following the required guidelines about people staying on the sidewalks (feeder marches couldn't march in the road), then it started to sort of spontaneously balloon out into a full-street thing. Cars in traffic were just caught whereever they were. I got the sense there was some confusion about whether we'd actually reached the rally, or what was going on. The roads toward 1st were all closed off with police guard, and it seemed at first that they were trying to funnel everyone toward one cross-street or something. As we passed 49th, though, and it too was blocked off (the rally's official location was 49th and 1st)... People sort of slowly got the idea that we were completely blocked off from the main area. The cops didn't seem to know what to do with us. Most areas seemed to stay pretty peaceful, but there was a huge police presence, and a decent amount of intimidation (especially with the mounted police). There really wasn't any one direction they could push us -- things were too packed, and there was momentum in the general movement of the crowd. Eventually, I found myself at 53rd and 3rd. I'm not sure what the police were trying to accomplish, but at one point they created a human wall a block or so behind us I took photos of a bunch of that, and the mounted police interacting with folks on my block. There were a few times I wasn't sure if things were going to get more intense or not... The big chant for a while was "Whose streets?", "Our streets". I saw parts of a few incidents, but not enough to say much coherent about them - some yelling near where a horse had been run into the crowd, and someone tackled to the ground by a group of cops and arrested. At one point someone set off some chinese firecrackers to spook the horses. I stayed back on the sidewalk, and took snapshots when I could, but I have no idea what will turn out. Eventually we all started moving back west? I'm really not sure of directional orientations there. Anyway, decided to make sure I didn't have any problems catching the subway back to Shea Stadium (where our bus was parked), and ended up heading back there at 4pm. That was about when I was hearing on the radio that the rally was over, and it seemed like there was traffic coming from the rally site, too, but I'm not sure. I got back to the bus early, but I'm not sure how early, since I dozed off for a bit to wake up and find the bus full, and that our trip organizer was arrested, apparently, so our bus was taking up a collection for a greyhound trip for him to get home when he was released.
I slept with varying success on the trip home, and got in here at about 4am.
I watched the news, and saw a few snippets about the various protests around the world. Really, there's nothing I would rather have been doing today, and despite not finding the folks I wanted to, it was wonderfully fulfilling.
On a personal note, I got to meet RobynK and Eireann11, although too briefly in hectic circumstances... An as yet unknown series of problems kept me from finding Forestfire, Leyloken, Prysmflux, and the rest...
In terms of the rally, though... Wow. I was stuck in the overflow crowd on 3rd Ave, and it was a lot of confusion. I heard bits of the rally and updates over the radio, once I finally had a chance to pull it out and get it tuned to the right station. I often wasn't listening to it, though, because things were so chaotic where I was. I started from Grand Central at probably around noon or so, on 42nd. There was a feeder march moving from there, and I followed that down to third, and then up toward 49th. For a while it was actually following the required guidelines about people staying on the sidewalks (feeder marches couldn't march in the road), then it started to sort of spontaneously balloon out into a full-street thing. Cars in traffic were just caught whereever they were. I got the sense there was some confusion about whether we'd actually reached the rally, or what was going on. The roads toward 1st were all closed off with police guard, and it seemed at first that they were trying to funnel everyone toward one cross-street or something. As we passed 49th, though, and it too was blocked off (the rally's official location was 49th and 1st)... People sort of slowly got the idea that we were completely blocked off from the main area. The cops didn't seem to know what to do with us. Most areas seemed to stay pretty peaceful, but there was a huge police presence, and a decent amount of intimidation (especially with the mounted police). There really wasn't any one direction they could push us -- things were too packed, and there was momentum in the general movement of the crowd. Eventually, I found myself at 53rd and 3rd. I'm not sure what the police were trying to accomplish, but at one point they created a human wall a block or so behind us I took photos of a bunch of that, and the mounted police interacting with folks on my block. There were a few times I wasn't sure if things were going to get more intense or not... The big chant for a while was "Whose streets?", "Our streets". I saw parts of a few incidents, but not enough to say much coherent about them - some yelling near where a horse had been run into the crowd, and someone tackled to the ground by a group of cops and arrested. At one point someone set off some chinese firecrackers to spook the horses. I stayed back on the sidewalk, and took snapshots when I could, but I have no idea what will turn out. Eventually we all started moving back west? I'm really not sure of directional orientations there. Anyway, decided to make sure I didn't have any problems catching the subway back to Shea Stadium (where our bus was parked), and ended up heading back there at 4pm. That was about when I was hearing on the radio that the rally was over, and it seemed like there was traffic coming from the rally site, too, but I'm not sure. I got back to the bus early, but I'm not sure how early, since I dozed off for a bit to wake up and find the bus full, and that our trip organizer was arrested, apparently, so our bus was taking up a collection for a greyhound trip for him to get home when he was released.
I slept with varying success on the trip home, and got in here at about 4am.
I watched the news, and saw a few snippets about the various protests around the world. Really, there's nothing I would rather have been doing today, and despite not finding the folks I wanted to, it was wonderfully fulfilling.
