Supercuts was Closed So I Decided to Go Downtown and Check Out the G20…

Since we’ve been discussing globalization and the G20 in my history class, I decided to go downtown today and check it out. I wanted to see what was happening, who was being represented and what their grievances were. Luckily on the way down I met three Pitt students (Warren, JP and Tim) who knew which busses to take there and back. They were going for the same reasons, although I had to explain to them on the way there what the G20 was for and the possible reasons people would be upset by it. It was harder than we thought to find some action. There were police and roadblocks all over the place, and they never helped when questioned.
Finally we found some Ethiopans (they were protesting genocide in Ethiopia). Unfortunately they were going home instead of moving to a larger gathering, but we shortly found a group of Tibetans (Liberty and Smithfield) chanting “Free Tibet before Free Trade” “Killer Killer Chinese Government” “Go back Hu Jintao”. As that was the ONLY protest going on we stayed there for at least an hour and a half. A couple things to note about the proceedings from today from what I witnessed. There were more bystanders than protesters. Half of the bystanders were freelancing or amateur journalists (the image-capture technology ranging from cell phone cameras to bigger video cameras). Then there were the cops (about 80 of them in that cityblock, 10 on horses). Some just had regular cop uniforms on but most had half to full riot gear: boots, kneepads/greaves, body armor, face shield, helmet, nightstick, gas mask (none had theirs on their heads), sidearm, and plastic hand-ties. The cops had the protesters flanked on both ends of the street and all sidestreets were blocked off. We saw a bus pull in loaded with riot shields, but I don’t think those were ever distributed to the cops. The protesters were facing off with a line of cops facing the convention center which was two blocks away. At one point the mounted cops moved through a barricade and to the rear of the protesters, and then continued to sit for another hour. Nothing else ‘happened’ while we were there.
The real “action” I heard was in the march from Arsenal down to the convention center. About 500 marchers, mostly anarchists were harassed, tear gassed, and shot at with rubber bullets. Granted, I think to some extent they meant to meet hostile police resistance since they advertised the event as an unpermitted mass march. Oh there was ONE other “protest”: about 6 people who weren’t advocating legalization of marijuana, just that people smoke more of it, celebrating the G420, chanting “a little more weed is all we need”. I randomly met two HS friends at the fence today who are in town protesting coal mountaintop removal (there was a coal summit immediately before the G20 started).
There are obviously many valid reasons to be upset by the G20. I may march tomorrow with the permitted one starting at CMU at 11. The problem on the people’s side seems to be lack of knowledge of what the G20 is really about and the actions its delegates have taken. Democracy and the exercise of our rights would go so much farther if all of the bystanders that knew enough to be downtown also knew enough to join a cause.