The Pittsburgh G20 Protests: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

I continued to watch the events unfold on television, morbidly waiting for the abject horror of something happening.  Something that would rise out of ignorance on both sides of this protest.  Would it devolve into chaos, if so, when?  I started to wonder if I was safe in my new found haven. Police were shown to be going street by street, searching warehouses in the Strip for protesters suspected of hiding inside of them.  I started to wonder if they would then conduct a search like that of open places in Lawrenceville, bars, restaurants, or worse: people’s homes.

I wondered if I could be trapped and if so for how long and if I attempted to make my escape back to my apartment could I make it, how many detours would I have to take, if I was to take side streets, would I be a suspect or a person of interest? Would Police read my mind and discover my intent (would they then lie and say my intent was that of destruction or chaos?).  Would I appear as a blip on Ravenstahl’s “intelligence apparatus”?

Monster-man returned inside brandishing his anti-protester stick.  Which turned out to be a baseball bat with duct tape wrapped around the large end with the words “anti-protester stick” written in black marker.  I did not think that this man would actually take to the streets with this bat and attempt to deliver his version of justice, at least not unless provoked.  But I would never underestimate a potentially hazardous combination of ignorance, alcohol and mob mentality. It’s nearly as dangerous as a combination of ignorance, power and mob mentality. The latter is what the police bring to these situations.

On both sides many don’t know why they’re truly there, or perhaps they’re a bit misguided. Perhaps on the police side it’s a higher percentage. I don’t know.  They don’t have to know why they’re there, just that they’re needed.  It doesn’t have to be anything other than black and white for them; they have their orders and their chain of command.  There doesn’t need to be any questioning.  It’s what makes them effective, it’s what makes them very dangerous.

I decided it was time to attempt my escape back up to Bloomfield.  Penn Avenue looked clear all the way up to Main.  I once again thanked Asia for letting me keep my bike inside and left. There were people walking up Penn as well, away from the action of the Strip District.  I knew this wasn’t the end of it, but didn’t know what was next.  As I arrived at Penn and Main, the protesters were continuing their march and had come from Liberty on Main to Penn Avenue.  There were few police around and this was either going to invite more people to join them or the police would soon be on their way.  I biked along side them until they got to Friendship Avenue, I continued on Penn, they turned onto Friendship, most likely heading toward Friendship Park.

I raced home to get my camera battery and then continued on to Friendship Park.  There was not much happening in the park. I knew they were not going to stay there for very long. The protesters knew they couldn’t be there for very long or else they’d probably be surrounded by riot police who were surely on their way. I overheard a couple of them who said the plan was to head to Oakland / CMU; they were headed toward Phipps, no doubt, where the G20 dinner was to take place. I watched them leave the park just as riot police began to arrive on the scene, most likely up from Liberty Avenue and the Strip where they were previously amassed.  I planned to get a head of the march through the side streets of Bloomfield and get ahead of them on Millvale, but found it difficult to get through lines of riot police blocking off my planned route along Liberty Avenue.

The crowd on Liberty was bewildered.  All day they had heard the sirens of police movement; and a recent buzz of damage done to the local PNC branch at Liberty and Edmond flew through the crowd faster than the news of a Steelers win. I chose  to check out the damage at PNC instead of what turned into the Battle of Ritter’s on Baum Boulevard, during which a friend of mine was shot with a rubber bullet in the arm while she attempted to disperse when things went sideways.

I read more reports of the protesters heading directly into Oakland proper and decided it probably was best for my safety not to  venture there.  Something nagged at me that there would be the point at which things devolved and became ugly.  Unfortunately, I was right.