Monday, September 28, 2009

Riots in Schenley Plaza

On friday night, my frinds and I took a bus to downtown without knowing where riots were happening. We simply predicted that there should be something going on in downtown. We got off the bus near Duquesne university but we realized that it was awfully quite. We could not even see that many cars and people, although it was friday night. We were disappointed and got on the bus to come back to CMU. When we got to the Schenley plaza, the bus suddenly stopped and the drived told us that the bus can't move anymore due to roadblocks. Through the window, we saw a large number of people and cops who were waiting forming perimeter around the Schenley Plaza. We were all excited and got off the bus. We joined the crowd and move toward a person who was trying to make speech. I had never been to riots before and I was personally expecting a great speech that motivates people to stay together againt cops, just like I used to see from movies. However, my fantasy couldn't be fulfilled. The speaker was talking against democracy and urged crowd to remember the fact that Hitler was elected based on democracy. Then he soon started to talk about 9/11 and re-investigation should be done to uncover Bush administration's plot. He insisted that 9/11 was schemed by Bush administration to simply start war against Iraq and Afghanistan. I was deeply disappointed about the fact that his speech had nothing to do with G-20 which was the biggest issue during the time. Moreover, I could not understand how he was trying to make analogy between Hitler and Bush. I believe that lot of people thought the way I did and crowd did not even seem to show any reaction. After a while, cops started to move into the Schenley plaza. The crowd did not resist at all, btu I was able to here some curse words against cops. I was too deeply disappointed by riots because there was no scene that I dreamed about for so long, amazing speech done by passionate anarchist, or heated argument among the crowd, etc. Also, overall the crowd was passive and followed easily cops' order. I was happy that I didn't see anyone who got hurt but I couldn't hide my dissatisfcation about my unfulfilled fantasy....

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