Dear Editor:
If New York is as prepared for a terrorist attack as they were for today’s peace demonstration, then we’re in deep trouble. Maybe if our government actually listens to what people are saying, there won’t be another terrorist attack. If they continue down the war path, rather than the path of international cooperation, there surely will.
I went to attend the rally at Dag Hammerskjold Plaza on First Avenue and 49th Street, but the streets were closed off because the plaza was already full, so we were forced to walk up Third Avenue over 20 blocks trying to get around police barricades. The crowd was so dense that it spilled out into the street and bought traffic to a complete standstill. Eventually the roads had to be closed to traffic. So there ended up being a peace march after all.
When I was able to get over to Second Avenue at around 72nd Street, I could see that it was densely packed all the way to the 59th Street bridge and beyond. I walked down Second Avenue as far as I could, somewhere in the upper 60s, but the crowd got too dense. It didn’t help that police had the sidewalks barricaded off. But eventually, people knocked over some of the barriers to make more space.
I then walked over to First Avenue to see if I could get through that way, but that too was blocked. The police were blocking many of the side streets, they said for security reasons, which made no sense at all. People were being barricaded into restricted spaces and the crowd was being dispersed through intimidation by armed officers. In one place there were mounted police riding through the crowd and taking up defensive positions in case anyone tried to get past the barricades. We were being treated like criminals, blocked from our own streets and photographed by police for exercising our first amendment rights. Trying to stop our government from committing a serious international crime at our expense.
The excuse for this unconstitutional behavior on the part of New York City was some kind of vague “orange alert” which I suppose will go on forever. We’re told to buy duct tape and plastic, but behave as if everything is normal. I think we’re supposed to put the duct tape over our own mouths to save the government the trouble.
From what I saw, there had to be at least a few hundred thousand people. But as I walked away from the rally in the day, never having arrived at the blocked off destination, I realized that the mainstream press would probably downplay the story if they reported it at all.
At first I thought my sign might be a bit off the point; it read “Patriotism Is Confronting Fascism Here In America,” but that’s exactly what we ended up doing.
Greg Ribot