DESPITE SCARE CAMPAIGN AND POLICE OBSTRUCTION: HALF A MILLION IN NYC DEMAND PEACE
By Deirdre Griswold New York
Feb. 20, 2003--Half a million people demonstrated in this city on Feb. 15. There's never been anything like it.
The huge protest, coinciding with even more massive demonstrations around the world, came in spite of frigid weather and a weeklong government and media campaign to scare people away from the metropolis with a "Code Orange" terrorism alert.
The whole East Side in the area around the United Nations was awash with anti-war protesters. Because the city, reportedly on orders from Washington, had denied the organizers a permit to march, the protesters clogged the avenues and connecting streets.
They were trying to get to the area of a rally at 51st Street and First Avenue. But only a few tens of thousands of the im mense crowd got to hear any of the speeches or even see the speakers' platform.
The vast majority were stopped by police as they tried to move east from subways and train stations and were then herded into sidewalk pens on each block. They soon overflowed into the avenues, however.
First Avenue was eventually packed from 51st all the way to 80th--one and a half miles. Second, Third and Lexington avenues in the 40s and 50s were soon full, too. Eventually, crowds of demonstrators could be found all the way down to 40th and Fifth, and west to Times Square.
The demonstration was peaceful. Everyone has seen that phrase dozens of times. It means the people on the demonstration tried to keep their cool, tried not to be provoked, tried to act in an orderly way.
But it doesn't mean the cops were peaceful.
The National Lawyers Guild reported 320 arrests of demonstrators that day, most for "disorderly conduct." They were handcuffed tightly behind their backs and made to wait in buses for hours without toilet facilities or water.
Workers World got first-hand accounts of what happened from many participants in different areas.
THOUSANDS MARCH IN LABOR CONTINGENTS
About 2,000 union members gathered at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue to march with the New York Labor Against the War contingent. Members of the state university system's Professional Staff Congress were there, along with librarians, teachers, railroad workers, members of Communication Workers District 1, legal aid attorneys, public workers from Albany and Troy, N.Y., and many members of Transport Workers Local 100.
Their lead banner read, "Labor's enemy is in the White House and boardrooms, not Iraq."
Another big union delegation from Service Employees Union 1199, including 300 health and hospital workers from Syracuse, N.Y., marched from 54th Street and Third Avenue.
After marching east on 59th Street, the NYCLAW contingent ran into police barricades but the unionists were able to take the streets. On Second Avenue, two marchers were shoved to the ground and arrested by cops because they couldn't get on the sidewalks, which were packed with people.
People distributing Workers World newspaper in the morning on Third Avenue were told to stop by police, who then chased them from corner to corner as they tried to exercise their First Amendment rights. But the crowds got so big the cops couldn't handle them and the distributions resumed.
"Around 3:30, the police decided to drive out the protesters," reported Heather Cottin. She described how a phalanx of police on foot with clubs cleared the sidewalks and street from 50th to 51st, "and cops on horseback attacked people from 49th to 50th. People were yelling: 'Whose streets? Our streets!'"
A contingent from Al-Awda waved a large flag and chanted, "Free Palestine."
The police sealed off the block in front of the Mid-Manhattan Library on Fifth Avenue and 40th Street by mid-afternoon, penning hundreds of people behind metal barricades, but about 60 were still in the street. Mounted police moved in and arrested many just for being there. Police threw an artist's puppet into the street and cuffed him as the crowd chanted, "Get the animals off those horses."
One woman who had stepped up on the base of a lamppost to see better was dragged down and cuffed. Her young daughter was yelling, "Mommy!" as police took the woman away.
Bruce Burleson, who came to the protest from Massachusetts with Dorchester People for Peace, said: "The police had locked down virtually all of midtown Manhattan, using helmeted police and mounted troops to cordon off marchers. It was the closest thing to martial law that I've ever seen. Police checkpoints were everywhere.
"Despite the huge crowds trying to get to First Avenue, the police kept trying to force everyone back onto the sidewalks. They used cops mounted on horses to intimidate the marchers. I was nearly trampled by a horse myself.
"I witnessed at least 10 people arrested, ostensibly for 'disorderly conduct."
Meanwhile, over at the rally organized by United for Peace and Justice near the UN, speakers like South African Bishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu were urging the U.S. government to heed world public opinion and refrain from launching a war against Iraq.
Derrill Bodley of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows spoke for a delegation of people who had lost loved ones in the attack on the World Trade Center. Their message: no war in their name.
The Rev. Al Sharpton spoke, as did Richie Perez of the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights. Many religious figures as well as celebrities participated.
The ANSWER coalition supported the protest, and its signs and banners were to be seen everywhere. ANSWER steering committee member Larry Holmes spoke at the rally, calling for a demonstration in Washington to "bring the troops home" and also raising the case of the Cuban 5 prisoners held in U.S. jails.
Meanwhile, back in the streets, the police were trying to break up the crowds with pepper spray and mass arrests. A reporter for the Daily News was beaten when cops waded into a large group of protesters at 39th Street and Seventh Avenue.
"Does killing Iraqi children make you feel safer?" people in the crowd yelled at the police. "Yes, it definitely does," replied one, whose badge identified him as Officer Plunkett.
International Action Center
39 West 14th Street, Room 206
New York, NY 10011
email: mailto:iacenter@action-mail.org
En Espanol: iac-cai@action-mail.org
Web: http://www.iacenter.org
Support Mumia Abu-Jamal: http://www.millions4mumia.org/
phone: 212 633-6646
fax: 212 633-2889
Make a donation to the IAC and its projects
The International Action Center
Home ActionAlerts Press
Share this page with a friend