Protest Recap

So I went to a bit of a protest yesterday.

I keep trying to describe my experience in New York and the word that I find myself using and reusing is amazing. The endless crowds of people, the singing and shouting and chanting, the surge of people breaking past the barriers they’d put up to try to hold us back… it was just amazing. When they denied a permit to march, more than 70 feeder marches occured and we flooded the streets.

There were police officers who just seemed to give up sometimes, laughing and watching. There were those of course who waved nightsticks in people’s faces, who screamed at me and threatened us with arrest, but they seemed to be in the few. We saw a few people arrested for simply climbing over a barrier to try to get out of the pens they’d put us into.

Granted, I didn’t take part in any major acts of civil disobedience - for the most part (besides taking over marching in the streets) they weren’t needed. Erin, Hanna, Ashley and I did run past police officers a few times where according to them, we oughtn’t have, and we did scramble under some barriers they’d set up, but there wasn’t anything they could really do to stop us or the hundreds of other people doing the same thing we were. Hanna spent the day taking pictures and Erin took some too, so hopefully I’ll be able to scan some and put them up. If for no other reason than to share my “Who Would Jesus Bomb?” sign.

An interesting article on the day (which was a world-wide protest) here
and some photos here.