As many of you probably heard, there were a number of protests around the world against prop 8 and other ballot measures passed in Arizona, Florida and Arkansas that were anti-gay. I decided to join about 15 or 20 other GW Law students at the protest in front of the reflecting pool by the Capitol. I got off to a little bit of a late start with my girlfriend (fellow Sua Sponte blogger and pollster extraordinaire Katie Taylor), and headed over to the protest at around 1:30. We got off at Archives to walk over to the Capitol, hoping to get there before the group started its march to the White House. We walked briskly up Pennsylvania Avenue and noticed some protesters. At first I thought, ‘hey, why are the prop 8 protesters coming up Penn and why are they carrying Chinese flags?’ It was obvious at that point that it was not the Prop 8 protest.
It turned out that the corner of 6th and Penn was the epicenter of two protests- one by Tibetan people protesting Chinese membership in the G20, and one about ten feet away by Chinese people apparently protesting the Tibetans protesting (or, I guess you could say supporting China). As you can probably imagine, it was a little bit heated and the police hadn’t set up any barrier separating the two sides. I stepped onto the street as I approached the corner, looking for a way to get around the protests. I was immediately yelled at and lunged toward by a police officer. “Get back on the side walk!! On the sidewalk!! Right now!! Get on the sidewalk!! On the sidewalk!!” I was bewildered and unsure why I was being yelled at. I got back on the sidewalk and approached a police officer on the corner and asked her what was going on. “Ma’am step back onto the sidewalk!! Right now! On the sidewalk.” I looked down at my feet, which were one step off of the sidewalk, stepped back on to the sidewalk and asked her why we couldn’t cross the street. She replied that the motorcades for the G20 were passing through here. G20=20 nations=20 separate motorcades. I’m pretty sure we got there at motorcade 1 or 2. Crap.
So we waited on the corner as a woman yelled repeatedly in Katie’s ear that China is a liar. The police everywhere looked tense, whether they were in a motorcade or on the corner. At some point the Chinese and Pro-Tibet protestors got very close to each other and a small scuffle started. A policeman whose nickname must be bruiser or the enforcer or some other tough, violent sounding name rushed out of a police car, hand on his gun, baton in his hand to break it up. He started pushing everyone in sight out of his way, many of them people like me, who simply wanted to cross the street (the Newseum was also across the street). To say the least, it was stressful to be there, and slightly disturbing to watch police officers push everyone in their sight as hard as they felt like. Perhaps I’m naive and I definitely don’t know anything about crowd control, but watching the way the police behave made me feel uncomfortable. Aren’t the police here to serve me? Don’t my taxes pay their salary?
We walked away from the protests to try to find someway to get from 6th and Penn to the Capitol without having to cross 6th or Penn. In case you’re curious, there is only one way, and that is underground, via metro. So we headed back to the metro station as the sky opened up and sent rain from all different directions into our faces, soaking my pants, and down my rain coat. The wind made umbrellas useless and I resigned myself to being wet. I was still determined to get to the protest.
We finally made it to the metro, and took off toward metro center to meet the protesters at Lafayette Square in front of the White House. While waiting for the train I saw a number of people fold up their soaked pro gay, anti prop 8 signs and resign themselves to going home.
The thirty minutes we spent at the protest was marked by more rain, short speeches I couldn’t hear, and lots of chanting. We also sang the national anthem, which was probably my favorite part. In the end, it was great to see that so many people-gay, straight, young, old, and all colors and nationalities- braved the downpour, and came out to send a peaceful message. In contrast with the police officers at the first protest, the police officers at this protest were calm and occasionally distracted.
While I would say that my experience was certainly disappointing, I found a lot of comfort in reading about all of the other protests, which took place all over the world, from Little Rock, Arkansas to Grand Forks, North Dakota to Amsterdam to San Francisco. The biggest of which took place in San Diego. To read more about them, go to the Daily Dish, a blog written by Andrew Sullivan. You can start with this post and go backwards in time. I highly recommend Santa Fe’s posting. I liked that people weren’t protesting against anyone who didn’t vote the way we wanted them to, but rather were protesting in support of equality. There were a lot of signs about love and equality and inalienable rights, which was uniquely satisfying. Feel free to share your story about going to a protest in the comments.
In fairness to the police in the first one, they might have been trying to protect you. I think motorcade drivers are supposed to run over people if they are in the streets.
If I was an officer assigned to control the crowds at a Chinese/Tibetan protest face-off, I’d be a little tense too. Peaceful and non-violent protests aren’t exactly a forte of either group.
Interesting Steve, I didn’t realize that. That brings up a whole host of other questions in my mind, starting with why that would be. But I guess that’s a topic for another time.
I want to clarify and say that I don’t think the police did anything actually illegal, just things that made me, a totally uninvolved bystander with no knowledge of these groups’ protesting history, uncomfortable. Just wanted to make sure that was clear.
First, i am not 100% on the rule but i am pretty sure.
If you think about it, it sort of makes sense, considering people in motorcades could be targets for assassination. If they didn’t have that rule people might throw kids out in front of motorcades to get them to stop, or jump in front of them, etc…
There were signs in the metro that Judiciary Square Metro would be closed over the weekend in anticipation of the G20 and there were stories in the Washington Post and TV news about increased security around the meetings. Apparently you missed those notices.
Obviously MPD has a right to be tense at the confluence of two hostile demonstration groups. Going into the crowd with your hand on your gun (in holster) is probably a good way to make sure that the gun doesn’t get yanked out by someone else. During demonstrations MPD strictly enforces traffic laws like jaywalking (i.e. “Get back on the sidewalk”) as a way to prevent a heated demonstration from turning into a riot and as a proxy for determining when law and order has broken down to the point where it is a riot. You are right that it’s not illegal, it’s just annoying to someone caught up in the thick of things.
The whole G20 meeting, associated protests and the Prop 8 march all apparently had a massive disruption on DC traffic. It seems like MPD did a good job in this case because there was a real potential for some violence and mayhem and yet there was none. And, really, how do you think the police could have handled it better (I mean other than saying please and thank you)? This kind of disruption is the price you pay for living in the most powerful city on earth.
For what it’s worth, MPD is so-so in general on crowd control at protests. The more troubling piece is that a couple of years ago MPD had a policy of mass arrest (later successfully challenged by GW Law students and now abandoned). At another International ANSWER demonstration, the protesters veered away from the scheduled route, MPD apparently issued an order to disperse (which no one heard) and then they surrounded the protesters and arrested everyone in the middle including journalists, random tourists, street crossers, etc. That, to me, is much more troubling than strict maintenance of a police line, yelling, breaking up fights and refusing to give directions to a taxpayer.
Thanks hrmmm.
We did realize that the Judiciary Square metro was closed, which is why we got off at Archives/Navy Memorial. But you are correct that we missed other news reports.
However, while we stood on the street corner in the middle of the protest, there were multiple periods of at least 2-3 minutes when no motorcades were driving through the area. During those times, all of the people and protestors were still forced to remain on the sidewalks. I am not up on the MPD processes, but it seemed that they were in contact which each other in different parts of the city. It strikes me that it might not have been excessively difficult to communicate at what point there would be a break in the motorcade traffic and to periodically allow pedestrians to cross the street.
I’ve been in similar situations and I get how it was annoying, but I think this is actually a pretty reasonable way for MPD to deal with crowds. There are two bigs problems with letting people cross in the 2-3 minutes between cars.
1. Once people start crossing, it’s hard to get them to stop. If a group of people wanted to be disruptive and took it upon themselves to form a human chain in the crosswalk, that puts MPD in a situation to start getting physical. Alternatively, you could have people who don’t overtly defy, but instead just cross the street reaaaaaaally slowly. Both methods achieve the goal of disrupting the motorcade. Those are pretty innocent activities for International ANSWER which also sometimes does things like: spray pepper spray into police lines, break windows on GW campus and oh, right, burn downtown Seattle. They’re an anarchist group, and some people at their protests have done violent things in the past. Which brings me to the next point.
2. The idea behind blocking off the street is security for the foreign dignitaries. Letting people cross in a short window between cars does not achieve that goal and might allow someone to stop the cars (or put the driver in position to have to decide whether to run them over or to stop, both of which are bad propositions from a security standpoint).
Just to be clear, I’m pretty sure that International ANSWER was sponsoring the Tibetan freedom demonstration.
International ANSWER was not sponsoring Tibetan protests. They were out protesting the G20 (http://answer.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ANS_homepage).
Students for a Free Tibet was protesting China’s occupation of Tibet.
I have to say that the protesters on both side weren’t particularly aggressive. The little scuffle that broke out seemed to be the result of there being no barrier between the two protests.
There were two things I thought should’ve been done better.
1. There should’ve been a barrier between the protests from the get go. If the police are really worried about things getting out of hand, the best way to prevent that is to draw a line with a barricade and get tough only with people who cross it in an aggressive way.
2. By not allowing people to cross the street, the protest went from being two very clear and easy to define groups to getting swallowed and mixed in with passersby. Let me paint the picture better. The Pro-Tibet protesters were on Penn and the Pro-China protesters were on 6th. There weren’t tons of protesters, and there were more protests further up 6th st, so they were pretty spread out. By forcing all pedestrians who had nothing to do with the protests to stay on the corner, and not allowing them to cross in short, 30 second intervals between motorcades, the police ended up creating an overcrowded corner with protests going on. I think people in DC are really familiar with timed street crossing. While that does open up the possibility of trouble in the street I think the 15 police officers in the area could’ve been pretty on guard about it, instead of creating these corner timber-box protests where people with nothing to do with the protests make it hard for the police to really monitor what’s going on.
But again, that was just how it seemed to me, and my uneducated opinion about the dangers (and uncomfortability) created from the methods the police used. I agree with hrmm that part of this is just the price we pay to live here, I guess I was just frustrated that it got in the way of my other protesting plans.
I got to join the over-20,000 marchers in San Diego this past weekend. It was a pretty amazing experience.
San Diego is not a very political place. It’s hard for non-Californians to understand, but we’re not all San Francisco, Berkeley and Santa Cruz. Personally, I think it stems from the same reason that San Diego is a bad football town: the weather is just too damn nice. When you are never limited in your activities, it’s hard to get a large group of people to rally around any one thing.
But it is because of this exact fact that I am ridiculously proud of “America’s finest city.” (Which means a lot because it really let me down, voting 54% for prop 8.)
As far as police presence goes, they kept us on the proper side of the street (the northbound lanes on 6th Avenue were still open to traffic), but that was about it. The only almost-skirmish I witnessed was resolved by a Join the Impact volunteer. There was one arrest made–that I did not see–but it was of an anti-protester. (Oh, those minutemen!)
Overall, I was really impressed by the whole thing. It was well organized (they got 20,000 people to form a rainbow at the end!) and the signs were almost all positive. The speakers encouraged optimism and told everyone to stay involved. It made me really hopeful. If San Diego can do it, surely the rest of the state can to! (Except Bakersfield. Bakersfield’s a lost cause.)