I was able to attend this week's protest of the G20, the one that took place Sept 25th and began in Arsenal Park.
My friends and I arrived by bike around noon and hung around until things kicked off at 2:30. We weren't interested in protesting so much as we were interested in watching it all go down.
I went armed with 2 disposable camera's and I'd like to share the developed contents below with anyone who cares to see what the media missed or isn't reporting at all.
Approximately 12:00 PM in Arsenal Park, small crowd at this point.
Cops began busing in close to 2:00 PM,
Also, the park began to fill with more protestors:
At 2:30 they began their march, cops had blocked one entrance to the park so for a while the group stood their ground.
Complete with ACLU/NLG observers
That is, until they figured out the cops had left the other side of the park unblocked.
So everyone turned around.
Once they hit the street the cops tried to mobilize on 32nd. The march was soon declared an unlawful assembly and were warned about being put down. This lasted about as long as it took them to find an alley, which they quickly marched down and continued on. Unfortunately, for those who have been watching/reading the news this is where the big story takes places.
Enter: The Jerkasses
It was at this point my friends and I figured it was going off. So we road our bikes a few blocks down and over to be behind the cops.
There's the dumpster, this time without the kids. After they pushed it down the street the cops let loose with the OC gas and a few shots of rubber bullets.
Of course, as soon as the OC went out the wind changed direction:
And I still got hit.
After the gas was deployed it seemed like the crowd dispersed or had broken into small segments and continued onward.
I took some time to help clean up some garbage from another dumpster they'd overturned and later, while taking a short break from trying to catch up I ran into a small of people and asked if the had any hand sanitizer. One lady spoke up and offered to share:
It was Cindy Sheehan, who for a brief time was on the phone with Alex Jones, I believe.
Finally we'd caught up with a group who was stuck at another police barrier. And who shows up? None other than Daily Shows John Oliver.
In my opinion, that gas they used still isn't shit compared to what the British did to us (yuck yuck)
From behind the cops a small group came out from a building, one man carrying a life size replica of the Stanley Cup, others holding a "Let's Go Pens" sign.
Soon, the crowd was chanting "Back to Back" and "Let's go Pens". Frankly, most of the cops looked confused at this point.
This was about the time we took our leave, we ended up biking around the city into Oakland where a group had gathered behind the Carnegie Museum, this was around the time the G20ers were going to Phipps Conservatory. We decided that after a full day of running around and not getting into trouble we should leave before 1 dumb jock throws a rock and ruins it for everyone. Strangely, that seems to be how it went down, as we found out later, after we'd left to grab some dinner.
I hope you enjoyed my pictures, with the exception of the dumpsters and mild vandalism all in all I have to say what I saw I was impressed by both sides.