IT WAS A LOT OF FUN UNTIL IT WASN'T a rough draft of my day at the anti-war rally by Whitney Pastorek all photographs c2003 by Whitney Pastorek. more photographs coming when I get the film from my real camera developed. I got to Columbus Circle at 10:30, after huge subway delays that the conspiracy theorist in my brain can't help but think had to do with the rally, since the N train was shut down right where I needed to go, but whatever. I was headed to the "Performing Arts March", one of something like 75 "feeder" marches that were being staged around the city by different groups, since we weren't allowed to march past the UN. The cops said so long as we stayed on the sidewalks, it was fine. When I got there, about 200 people milled around, mostly theater types. Some families were there to see Bread and Puppet, who were marching down from Lincoln Center. Their march arrived around 11, in true B&P fashion: a solitary bell being rung by a black-robed woman with a huge mask of pain and sorrow announced their arrival. She was followed by about 15 other "women," clearly meant to be the mothers of Iraq, who carried corpses in their arms. Behind them, a crowd of "men" with white masks and white gloves. The gloves were painted with blood and in unison, they pointed accusingly and then held their hands up, palms out, as they walked. Behind them, a group of drummers. Behind them, cardboard figures held on staffs, lumpy and chaotic. Behind them, a brass band. Behind them... well, we didn't see what was behind them, because my friend Morgan and I fell in line with the band and their festive rendition of "When the Saints Go Marching In." We walked east on 59th Street, and traffic pretty much stood still as the however-many-hundreds of us crossed 59th to the south side. Morgan and I decided that crossing the street was to get us away from the carriage horses standing along the edge of Central Park, who were pretty freaked out (we started our own chant: "Don't hurt the ponies! Don't hurt the ponies!" and though no one else joined us, we had a nice giggle). So all the way down 59th Street, we kept up with B&P, snapping photo after photo of disgruntled doormen, or the march passing in front of the Plaza Hotel. On the southeast corner of Central Park, we were joined by, I believe, the Transit Workers Against War. We went a couple more blocks, to Park Avenue, and Morgan and I looked back to see-- based on the police vehicles-- that our "feeder" march stretched all the way back to 7th Avenue, four crosstown blocks. When we hit Lexington (after taking pictures of the sad mothers in front of Bloomingdales), there were even more people waiting to join. Morgan and I were all the way up in the front of the march at this point, and darted across Lex with some of the B&P leaders, expecting the herd to follow. But just as we got across, the police permanently closed the barricades behind us, forcing B&P and the thousands that followed them to turn north. Morgan and I joked about our good fortune (we'd had enough of the drummers by then) and stood in the middle of the empty and barricaded street, taking pictures and giggling some more. At this point, I was on film roll number 2 of 4, and had taken a good number of digital shots. It was 11:35. So after horsing around in the middle of 59th Street for a bit, we started walking towards Second Ave... and just as we got there, barricades came down again. The police were sending everyone north of the Queensboro Bridge, to 61st and above, to get over to First. We did what they said and walked down 61st, but when we turned south on First and tried to cross under the bridge, the cops started to get a little annoyed, and tried to holler at the group to stop. A few people did, but most of us pressed on south. We reached the end of the road at 57th and First. The cops had set up people pens, silver barricaded squares on each block, and once you were in one, you were in one. They wouldn't even open an escape hole for a while, and were making folks climb over the four-foot metal barriers-- old, young, strollers, whoever, they had to climb-- but then they cracked down on the climbers and opened a little crack in the back of the pen for people to exit through. Morgan and I were in no hurry to get out, and we settled in for the rally. And a little after noon, you could hear the cheers down the road, indicating the organizers had taken the stage. The peple that spoke have pretty much all blended together in my mind. Many of them were representatives of specific groups like the National Puerto Rican Action Group or something, but of course Al Sharpton was there, and Rosie Perez, and Susan Sarandon, and the main event, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Most people were articulate and passionate, and even the poets were good. There were 65 speakers. Morgan and I fielded phone calls from friends on their way and kept our eyes open for their arrivals. Speaking of speakers, every other block had its own sound system up on a platform broadcasting the event, and a couple blocks south of us was a giant Jumbotron screen on a truck that, when not blocked by signs, gave a pretty good view of who was talking. Only problem was that the speakers on our block kept cutting out or going static-y, and for a lot of the beginning, we couldn't hear much. But then little by little, people in the crowd started turning up their transistor radios, and pretty soon (so long as no one was chanting anything) Morgan and I could hear fine. Around us were families, older couples, homeless people, hipsters, eco-freaks, and a number of completely normal looking individuals, but almost every single person had a sign either picked up at a march point or made at home. Pete Seeger had us all sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," which was kind of odd. Ruth Messinger reminded me that she should really run for mayor again. Tony Kushner used a lot of big words. There was an odd moment around 2pm when Morgan and I turned around to find that the pen we were in (between 57th and 58th) was almost completely empty. The one ahead of us seemed full, the one behind us seemed full, but everyone had left our block for some reason. We started to get really, really miserable from the cold (no one to block the wind!), but then I convinced a policeman to go buy us coffee. Seriously, Officer Something Or Other left his post and walked into a bakery on the corner and brought us back the best coffee ever in the history of the world. We were having a great time. Some good signs: "Want to wage war on oil? Start drafting SUV drivers!" "I survived 63rd and 2nd!" "Stop mad cowboy disease!" "Fuct Tape!" "Empty warhead found at the White House!" (with a picture of Bush's head tipped over and hollow) At around 3:30, we'd had enough. I was out of film, anyway, and my lips were so cold it was getting hard to talk. Word has it at this point the crowds stretched north to 81st Street. Our friends never made it to us-- most of them were stuck on Second or Third. My friend Aaron called from Third to say, "Ok, I'm here, where are you guys?" and when I said, we're on 57th and First, he said, "First? What's happening on First?" The crowds were so big on Third that he thought he was at the rally. On our way out of the barricades, we ran into my friend Rachel. She and her boyfriend had spent the last 2 hours fighting to get to the rally, and said they'd seen a little violence back west where one guy ran out into the street and was dragged away by cops. Sure enough, when we started heading back towards Second there were 20 people at every barrier yelling at the cops to let them through, to no avail. How strange, we thought, when the block we were just standing on was almost literally empty, 8 or 9 people milling around inside the giant pen like cattle too skinny to slaughter. So our little group chatted for a bit about what we'd seen, Morgan and I commenting on how wonderful and peaceful and communal the rally had been (we'd only seen one anti-anti-war protester the whole day), Rachel and Alex telling us of the chaos outside. At Lexington, we split up-- Rachel and Alex headed back to Columbus Circle and Morgan went down into the subway. The N not running forced me to head south to 42nd Street to catch the 7, but I didn't mind the walk, since my feet were completely numb and I wanted to get the blood flowing again. The cold made this whole thing like the Macy's Day Parade from Hell, by the way. Anyway, so I wandered south, noticing that almost every single person I passed STILL had a sign or something (and that the one or two shoppers stupid enough to try and hit the Banana Republic were trapped inside, ha-ha, suckas), and when I got to 53rd, I heard all this cheering and wondered if I was missing something back at the rally (since just as we were leaving, they'd announced Kofi Annan's statement about trying to rewrite the war resolution thing, for all the good that's gonna do). I thought about heading back to the stage area, but knew there was no way to get east at this point. So I just kept going south, until I came upon this huge, huge group of people in the middle of the street. At 51st and Lex, a crowd had spilled out into the avenue, completely blocking traffic. Looked like they'd been there for a while, since about 50 officers were assembled, staring at the crowd, some right in the middle of the group. I'd say there were probably 300 to 400 people in the street at this point, and more were arriving every minute from the north. Most of these people had clearly NOT been to the rally, because they were MAD. I climbed up a lamppost on the corner, first standing on a garbage can and then scrambling farther up when the guy who was already up there came down. I paid him $10 for an extra roll of film. Basically, it just looked like this was a bunch of people who had nowhere to go. The subway right there (E, F, and 6) was closed, no one could go east, no one wanted to go west, and so there were just way more people than the sidewalks could handle. On the other side of the street from me were two giant police buses and a news van (filming for our NBC affiliate), and those vehicles were making it impossible to get to the sidewalk on the other side. Everyone was crammed on the east side and overcame the barricade at 52nd and sort of spilled onto the side street a bit. No one was being violent, they were just being stupid, drumming and dancing in the middle of Lex, chanting stuff, basically just screwing around. The cops were standing stick still, some in riot gear but most just in regular uniforms, and they weren't saying or doing anything, not touching the crowd, not asking them to move back onto the sidewalks, just watching the impromptu festival. I was taking pictures of all the people and signs and whatever when the horses showed up. They'd been standing at the north intersection for a while, but then the cavalry basically rode in from the south to block that end of the street, too. I turned around and noticed a lot more riot gear than before. The people on the street noticed, too-- some moved back to the sides, causing the people around me to get pretty smushed and one guy to climb up my pole using my rear end for a handhold, which was not cool but whatever. I imagine this to be very much like what European soccer games turn into when the wrong team loses. So the people that hadn't gotten out of the way started getting pretty cocky when the horses assembled. A lot of "Whose streets? Our streets!" chanting and some very creative people yelling "Courtesy! Professionalism! Respect!" (the NYPD motto). Still, the cops do nothing. And then the horses on the south end started to walk in, and almost immediately, the 200 people still vehemently blocking Lex SAT DOWN. This is when I screamed down that I would pay anyone $20 for another roll of film, but I got one for free from a very nice girl (it was 100 speed so god knows how well the shots turned out). I also figured out how to change the batteries in my digital camera with one hand, and got ready for whatever was going to happen. So. People. Sitting. Horses and cops approaching but still very ambivalent about it all, not pushing, not yelling. And then the horses on the south side stopped advancing, turned around, and rode off down the avenue. And the crowd went WILD. Most people stood up and started chanting and dancing again, the people on the sidewalks started waving their signs, and everyone was looking south at the retreating horses... ...WHEN THE HORSE COPS ON THE NORTH SIDE GALLOPED INTO THE CROWD. 10 horses, at least, at full speed, plunged into these people, knocking them down, kicking and bucking, the horses totally freaked, the people totally unsuspecting because they were facing the other direction, and then all the cops that had been standing with their arms crossed a minute before had nightsticks and were literally beating the crowd back onto the sidewalks. An older man was lying face down on the ground with about 5 cops over him. A couple more people were still sitting there, stunned, until they were dragged away. The rest of the crowd was fighting with the police on foor, trampling each other to get away, or just trying to climb up my lamppost, which already held about 4 people. In the United for Peace and Justice rally preparation guide, they'd included the number for the National Lawyers Guild or something, which they advised us all to program into our phones and then to call if we saw anyone being arrested. I tried to get my cell phone out of my pocket, but then looked down and saw about 5 men and women in neon green hats that read "National Lawyers Guild" standing below me and talking very calmly to the cops or taking notes and talking oncell phones of their own. They reminded me of UN peacekeeping forces, those crazy platoons that really think the different colored hat is going to protect them when the natives get pissed. The crowd pretty much wasn't going anywhere even after the horses moved through, but they opened up enough space to let some cars start passing by again, and in a city bus that drove through soon after, onboard protesters held their signs up to the windows and got huge cheers from the people on the street who, by this time, were pretty much only chanting "SHAME ON YOU!" to the still-struggling cops. Were the people in the street being idiots? Yes. But they didn't need to get trampled by horses. Was the rally itself peaceful? Yes. But in my opinion, all the trouble that occurred around it was a direct result of the decisions of New York City to first of all not let us march, and secondly to barricade street after street, preventing protesters from getting to what was, essentially, a half-full rally. When you hear crowd estimations on the news, they're going to say 100,000, because that's what the cops are saying. If you ask me, 500,000 wouldn't be off the mark when you count the people trapped to the west, or the rally happening at the Port Authority, or if you actually look at the news footage from the helicopters that circled First Avenue and think about how many bodies it would take to fill up the pens that stretched from 49th Street to 81st. I left 51st and started walking in a bit of a coma, trying to get to 42nd Street, but now I was on Second Avenue for some reason (wait a minute, I got to move east! I thought, but didn't try to press my luck). All around me on the sidewalks were discarded signs, handbills, cigarette butts, and most obviously, horse droppings. Which means that there were horses on the sidewalk at Second Avenue between 42nd and 51st, and I'm sure there were people there at the same time, and the group I saw weren't the only people who went home with hoofmarks. Someone below my lamppost, right after the horses moved in, suggested that if we'd been allowed to rally in Central Park (like they did in 1982), none of this would have happened. Someone near him said, "Ugh, and stand in the snow this whole time? No way."