Oh. My. God.
I am shaking, my muscles still tense with the course of adrenaline that is only now subsiding.
I've been scared -- more like concerned deep down -- about the state of things.
I am now completely terrified.
This protest nearly turned into a lynching. I was there, took photos, am hurrying as fast as I can to upload to a Flickr account.
The local and state police, the Secret Service fucked up. In a BIG way.
A local ACLU rep was there, saw this whole thing, said he wouldn't have believed it if hadn't been there.
He said even the press people were shocked.
How much makes the news tonight? What will the peaceful protestors look like when the media is done with this?
YOU be the judge.
At least two people arrested, possibly a third (I only have anecdotal evidence on the third one - she did disappear, though, and you really couldn't miss her).
People pushing and shoving at me, screaming at me, trying to block my photos.
Oh. My. God.
This is a fascist state. We are under siege. Watch your back.
And MOSH THE VOTE.
Photos at Flickr Now
http://www.flickr.com/photos/raynetoday/
Not enough room on a freebie Flickr account to upload all my photos. Could only post 10MB and I've got 50MB.
If I can afford the time I'll try to resample/resize the photos to get them all up.
But there's simply no way to describe how fucking scary it was to have a thousand Bush supporters chanting and screaming at you, no way out, hemmed against a wall with 50 or 60 protesters.
I think if I hadn't been taking pictures, I might have gotten pushed harder.
And all I was doing was holding a sign, "Pollution is not a Family Value".
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I'll write more when I get my head together. I'm still rattled; cannot believe that a sleepy little manufacturing town like Saginaw MI could harbor such incredible ugliness that bordered on violence.
Update [2004-10-28 14:41:48 by Rayne]: 2:34pm EDT: Adding following from my comments below:
First, I couldn't get any closer to the arrests underway. If I did, I'd have been pulled in as well. The woman arrested had merely stepped into the street off the curbside; to take better pics I'd have to do the same. Also being a short woman, I can't photograph over people.
Secondly, the Bushies were right in my face - I had one older woman screaming at me so hard immediately next to me while I was trying to take pics that I thought she would lose her dentures. I didn't take any snaps of her because I thought she would do me bodily harm.
The Sierra Club folks I was with have been to many rallies; they were as shocked as I was. They'd told me before they came that they liked Saginaw, thought the union here was a big help compared to Oakland County (chockful of wingers).
I could only upload 10MB out of 50MB, have a resource that's offered to upload the rest. Will try to edit them to downsize. The worst ones aren't on Flickr, some are too blurry to make out. More later as time permits.
It looked like it was going to be a peaceful event. Most of the pics reflect that. The Cheney rally here in July and the Bush rally here in August were quiet as well, we expected nothing different. We were going to wave some signage, shout some chants, prepare for the next rally.
But the other events had nearly twice as many police and feds; it was extremely noticeable. In August there were even Coast Guard on patrol in the river armed with shotguns/rifles. This time not a single boat in the river. In August there were federal "police" -- white-shirted, black-gloved sunglassed types, probably Secret Service -- every few feet. This time they didn't appear until just before the motorcade arrived.
We were told to leave the position we had by the local police; it got nasty, with one officer shoving around a peace activist. Not five minutes later, the same local police tell us we have to leave the sidewalk to which they'd confined us and forced us back to where we were another block away. This time the feds showed up with them and started pushing us towards an even smaller area of confinement, up against a wall and restricting us to the sidewalk.
(While this is happening, a guy with a backpack meanders across the street and along the sidewalk directly in front of the center; no uniform officer of any kind stops him as he walks along within 25 feet of the Center. The police all have their backs to him. It's obvious the police are here not for the security of the POTUS but for crowd control...I have photos of this guy wandering by.)
Somewhere in all of this moving back and forth, two women were arrested. At least I know that one was confirmed as arrested; her sister spoke with me about being shocked that she'd been taken by the cops for little more than not moving to a restricted area fast enough. The other woman I have no confirmation about, she simply disappeared and others told me of her arrest for similar reason. The women were peace activists protesting the war.
The motorcade pulled out and left shortly thereafter; the crowds started to trickle out of the center. The federal cop-types disappeared, leaving only three local police in the street in front of us, between the Bushies and the protesters. A female peace activist, stepping on and off the curb into the street, was threatened with arrest for not staying on the curb. She stepped off and the cop who threatened her came across onto the sidewalk, dragged her into the street and arrested her. The other two cops visible came to help him because she was struggling. All the while the Bushies emerging from the Center mass into the street, leaving a scant 15 feet of space between protesters and them, the arrest tableau between us. The cops disappear and then it gets nasty. Hundreds of Bushies getting ugly, foamed up from their rally, more worked up at the sight of police arresting a protester, converging on the protestors.
And the cops up to this point have told everyone, Bushie or protestor, to stay in this same area because they cannot have too many people drifting towards the motorcade's path.
This hung very thinly on an edge; there was only one police officer in sight for nearly twenty minutes. I don't know how this didn't get worse, there was pushing and shoving at the periphery. The local police finally wised up and put police cars between the two sets of folks. At that point the Bushies started to leave in earnest. We could, too, no longer being backed up against the wall or confined to the sidewalk.
I think I still have spit on my black hoodie sweatshirt from the woman screaming at me.
(More photos still pending -- still working on reducing size of files. Won't be finished until late tonight with them.)