I just read this blog post--http://ricksturningpoint.blogspot.com/2010/06/strong-enough-for-non-violent-protest.html--and it hit me right where it counts, bringing up a flood of memories about the 2000 DNC protest in Los Angeles. Truth be told, I went for the music: Rage Against the Machine and Ozomatli were playing and I love both bands. I'd never seen Rage live before (or since) and there's something inexplicably satisfying about screaming "F*@& YOU I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME" with a few thousand other people directly at the obvious symbols of authority immediately to our left: The Staples Center full of political delegates and surrounded by a police presence I'd never seen before. Rage finished playing without any incident, although there were a small group of anarchists camped out on top of the fence which defined the "free speech zone." (And here I'd thought the whole country was supposed to be a free speech zone...) Police were literally showering the anarchists with tear gas, but there was little sign this shower even phased the anarchists. This detente continued while the stage was being changed over from Rage to Ozo, although since the crowd had lost their distraction there was more attention being paid to the stand being made by the anarchists and the complete inability of the police to remove them. Well, inability isn't the right word, it's unwillingness. I gather the police, understandably, didn't want to get into a violent confrontation at that point. Occasionally a police spokesman would come out on stage and warn us that if those guys didn't get off the fence, we'd all have to leave. I can't speak for the whole crowd, but I don't remember a big rush to try to talk them into getting down.
Ozomatli started playing. For those of you who don't know their music, it's all about love and joy and the positive power within us. In many ways, it's just as revolutionary as Rage Against the Machine, but it's not violent and dark and brooding about it; it's happy and celebratory and uplifting. It's probably a coincidence based solely on timing and a perceived escalation of the protest, but the police choose this time to declare us an unlawful assembly and turn off the power to the stage. I say it's probably coincidence, but it provides an important symbol: the positive power of people is more threatening than the negative impulses of the violent and disaffected. Another important thing about Ozomatli: they all play (or can play) acoustic instruments and routinely end their concerts by parading an acoustic jam through the crowd. So when you turn off the power on an Ozomatli concert and call them and their fans "unlawful," it's not surprising they picked up their acoustic instruments and started the parade. The police officer who had declared us unlawful had told us which exit to use on our way out, and the parade started working in that direction. Before we could all get out through the designated exit, the police charged the crowd on horseback, tear gas and beanbags a-blazing. It was at this point I came closest to being tear gassed myself, although I escaped through the other exit--the one we were not suppose to use, but which was not being blocked by any police.
Today, looking at the protests surrounding the G20 & G8 conferences, the police reaction to those protests, and the media reporting on both, I wish I could get the real story. Rick's blog has provided me with the clearest picture of what it was like. NPR this morning sorely disappointed me by leading their story with the protests (if it bleeds, it leads) but not even talking about the protests or the police response at all in the body of their story. The media seems unwilling to report on the nature of these protests and the ways in which the protesters may be representing billions more people than the delegates inside. I'm pretty sure Rick has a point: if the protests were strictly nonviolent in nature, the media would have a harder time dismissing the protesters and the underlying message of their protest. It's sad for me to think, though, in remembering my DNC experience, that the anarchists started with a non-violent action and it was lost completely in the reporting of the event. The local news in LA practically bent over backwards to kiss the police department's collective behind in saving us from an obviously dangerous riot which was destined to start had the LAPD not been there. They clearly were not reporting on the same incident I witnessed.
