Last night the police broke bones. They
surrounded and arrested hundreds in Critical Mass,
the giant mass bicycle ride, that took off from
Union Square with five thousand bicycles. I
wish I’d seen them leave—I was at
a book party and teach-in for David Solnit’s
book Globalize Resistance, in which I have a piece
on feminism and globalization. The book
is an anthology of writings about the movement,
and many of us who wrote for it were there to
speak about our pieces.
The book party took place in a community garden
in the Lower East Side that was an idyllic little
spot among the brownstones and refurbished tenements.
It was full of winding paths and raised
beds of small trees and flowers blooming in purples
and lavenders and pale yellow. We all crowded
onto a small lawn and spoke as loudly as we could
after the police turned off the sound system.
There was a good crowd there in spite of
half a dozen competing events, and I would have
liked to stay but I had to dash off to a Pagan
Cluster meeting.
This was the end of a long day of long subway
rides, snatched sandwiches, meetings and trainings
that began with dashing off to Brooklyn early
in the morning for a nine-AM meeting with the
rest of True Security cluster, most of whom didn’t
show up. We turned the meeting into a Pagan
Cluster art party. Then I did two trainings
on the Upper West Side at the 4th UU church, which
went well and actually had good numbers of people
attending. The hardest part of training
people is getting them to come to trainings, to
know when they are amidst this overwhelming wealth
of actions and events, to understand why they
might be valuable, and to make time for them.
The first training was for the Legion of Crones—our
older women’s (and men’s) affinity
group which has volunteered to do security for
some of the spaces. The second was Street
Magic, our basic training in using a knowledge
of energy working and expanded states of awareness
on the street. The UU space is a big, beautiful
sanctuary with a high, arched ceiling and stained
glass windows, and Deborah who does full moon
circles there has organized a full roster of healers
to be available there and on alternate days at
the Community Church on 35th St. as well as at
St. Mark’s. I would have liked to
stay and get some massage but I had to dash off
to the book party, and so it goes.
I rode downtown with Nadine, an old friend and
organizer from Washington DC, and with Bowen and
Lyra, two of my Goddess-kids who are now just
grown up enough to come to this action. They
are the children of my friends Ross and Anne Hill,
the kids mentioned often in the book Ann and I
wrote together with Diane Baker, Circle Round:
Raising Children in Goddess Tradition. Now
Bowen is eighteen, Lyra seventeen, and they do
credit to their upbringing. They are having a
great time running around New York together, not
at all intimidated by the city and the subways
and the general level of tension. Some part
of me is terrified at the thought of them being
on the streets in the midst of an action. I
want to protect them, and surely they are far
too young for this. I have to remind myself
that Bowen is old enough to be sent to Iraq to
sit on top of an armored personnel carrier and
kill people and get shot himself. And at
Lyra’s age, I was hitchhiking alone up and
down the coast of California, and living with
my boyfriend.
By the time I get to the Cluster Meeting, I ‘m
tired. We have a good meeting. More
people have come, and some of them are old friends
I’m delighted to see. But every few moments
I’ get a beep from our new text messaging
system, telling what ‘s happening with the
Critical Mass. Riots cops forming up on 7th ave.
Surrounded at 7th and 13th. Arrests
have begun. Safe place at St. Mark’s,
at 10th and 2nd Ave. Arrests at 14th and
2nd Ave. Streets blocked off very close to St.
Mark’s.
We try sending some energy to our friends getting
arrested, but finally a group of us can’t
ignore the tension any longer, so we close the
meeting quickly and head down to St. Mark’s.
The streets around are lined with vans and
cops, but they are walking away, helmets off,
chilling out. The park in front of the church
is packed with people, the street is lined with
cops. Apparently the mass arrests began
when the police just appeared out of nowhere and
formed a line in front of one group of cyclists.
Then another line of cops appeared behind.
There is another group trapped up at 35th
and Park. Here at St Mark’s, one activist
got his bike pushed up against a police moped
and the wheels got caught. The cop started beating
him pretty brutally and a group moved in to protect
him—then the cops let loose and began beating
them badly. We’re hearing reports
of compound fractures, bones sticking out of the
skin.
The crowd around the church is energized, but
neither panicked nor frenzied. Things have
cooled down, and mostly people are walking around
and greeting old friends and sharing information.
I’m buddying up with Delyla, a street
medic from Montana who is another old friend and
who likes to move through a crowd in the same
way I do, slowly, scanning the energy. We
each know too many people in this crowd, get pulled
into side conversations. I run into Tom
Hayden, who tells me the TV coverage of the ride
was great, great interviews and stories. “Why
don’t the police object when the street
gets too full of cars?” one of the riders
had asked.
And indeed, why don’t they? Why arrest
and beat people for riding bicycles?
The police had been threatening to shut down Critical
Mass. The arrests tonight aren’t a huge
surprise, but they are a disappointment after
last night’s beautiful march. It’s
hard to predict what this portends for our upcoming
actions, whether it will intimidate more people
from coming out to march today and Sunday and
Monday, or whether people will get tired of intimidation
and march anyway. We have a plan to do massive
nonviolent direct action trainings during the
forming up period and at the end of the march,
and in Central Park where many people will head
in defiance of the denial of a permit.
If you’re in or around New York, we need
you! We need you to come out and march
on Sunday with United for Peace and Justice, if
you do nothing else. Actually we need you to get
on the phone today and call up ten of your friends
who weren’t going to come and persuade them
to join you, to show that intimidation doesn’t
work, that instead of being paralyzed by fear,
people can be roused to action. You can join the
Pagan Cluster—we’ll be forming up
on 20th St. between 5th and 6th Avenue, at the
Green Dragon, at 10:30 AM on Sunday, August 29.
Look for the spiral banners.
And if you can’t come yourself, we need
you to be ready to make calls and send emails
and faxes and letters on our behalf, to apply
that political pressure that just might prevent
more broken bones.
Below is a list of useful numbers and emails;
you might start by calling Bloomberg and
the police and ask why they arrest bicyclists?
Thanks!
In preparation for the A31 action please distribute
these numbers widely.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
(212) 788 7418 or (212) 788 3000 or (212) 788-9711
FAX (212) 788-2460
E-MAIL: nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html
District Attorney Robert Morgenthau
(212) 335-9000
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly
www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mailnypd.html
or call
(646)610-5410 or (646) 610-5865
or
NYC Police Switchboard
(646)610-5000
Ask for Commissioners office
Governor George E. Pataki
518-474-8390
www.state.ny.us/governor/
Manhattan City Council Members:
Gale A. Brewer: www.nyccouncil.info/constituent/contact_member.cfm?con_id=28 brewer@council.nyc.ny.us
brewer@council.nyc.ny.us
Phone: (212) 873-0282 Fax: (212) 873-0279
Alan J. Gerson
www.nyccouncil.info/constituent/contact_member.cfm?con_id=7
gerson@council.nyc.ny.us
Phone: (212) 788-7722 Fax: (212) 788-7727
Robert Jackson
www.nyccouncil.info/constituent/contact_member.cfm?con_id=76
jackson@council.nyc.ny.us
Phone: (212) 234-0551 Fax: (212) 234-0552 or
Phone: (212) 928-1322 Fax: (212) 928-4177
Margarita Lopez
www.nyccouncil.info/constituent/contact_member.cfm?con_id=12
lopez@council.nyc.ny.us
Phone: (212) 614-8751 Fax: (212) 614-8813
Eva S. Moskowitz
www.nyccouncil.info/constituent/contact_member.cfm?con_id=40
moskowitz@council.nyc.ny.us
Phone:(917) 521-2616/2640
Fax: (917) 521-1293
Gifford Miller
www.nyccouncil.info/constituent/contact_member.cfm?con_id=39
miller@council.nyc.ny.us
Phone: (212) 535-5554 Fax: (212) 535-6098
Miguel Martinez
www.nyccouncil.info/constituent/contact_member.cfm?con_id=29
martinez@council.nyc.ny.us
Phone: (212) 818-0580 Fax: (212) 818-0706
Bill Perkins
www.nyccouncil.info/constituent/contact_member.cfm?con_id=42
perkins@council.nyc.ny.us
Phone: (212) 662-4440 Fax: (212) 932-1130
Christine C. Quinn
www.nyccouncil.info/constituent/contact_member.cfm?con_id=3
quinn@council.nyc.ny.us
Phone: (212) 564-7757 Fax: (212)564-7347
Philip Reed
www.nyccouncil.info/constituent/contact_member.cfm?con_id=41
reed@council.nyc.ny.us
Phone: (212) 828-9800 Fax: (212) 722-6378
Donations for the action can be sent to:
RANT
1405 Hillmount St.
Austin, Texas
78704
U.S.A.