At this point, the protest had pretty much deteriorated into a game of cat and mouse with imaginary rules that changed whenever the cops wanted them to. Let’s face it, they had the clubs. And they could take us to jail. Those were the important rules, as far as I was concerned.
That said. I stuck around to see what would happen. I mean I really wanted to leave. So did Kevin. Neither of us wanted to get arrested. And we were getting bitchy with each other and arguing about what we should do, until we realized it and took a couple deep breaths and decided what to do.
I decided that I felt like, if we left, I’d be letting you guys down or something. Kevin felt the same way. So we decided to stick around for a little longer.
At first, it seemed that the only behavior that the police had a problem with was people blocking the intersections when cars were trying to drive by. However, soon it wasn’t okay to stand on certain sidewalks either. The cops obviously wanted us to just go home, which, of course, didn’t make any sense to us, since many of us had just gotten there.
But soon, the sidewalks weren’t OK either. Then, depending on your timing, some sidewalks were OK, but only until they weren’t, and the cops started systematically crowding us off of them.
(I’ll include a complete instance of this later on video for those of you who are interested and link to it from here.)
In the first shot, Kevin climbs up on the outside of the BART entrance and grabs a long shot and some close ups for me (I was afraid of falling). It was pretty incredible the number of people there at that time. Wow.
Next is a shot of some graffiti: “The Best Vacation Is Revolution.” You can see me and Kevin in the reflection.
Followed by a clip of a tap dancer tapping for peace.
Then the cops start building up again. The crowd starts chanting “Whose streets? Our streets!” and acting a bit defiant.
The cops form a line across a third or so of the intersection at 4th and Market, so that cars can go by. Which is fine by the crowd. And that goes on for a while.
Then someone starts playing an awesome beat-driven soundtrack. And the horses arrive…
Day After/Day Of Adventure – Part 7 of ? (Small – 11 MB)
Day After/Day Of Adventure – Part 7 of ? (Hi-res – 94 MB)