New York police harassed peaceful protests throughout Saturday's mobilizations against the World Economic Forum, in a display of police aggression many believe was designed to deny marchers legal access to their rally point at the WEF meetings -- and punish them for expressing dissent.
WEF Update: An Eyewitness Account of Police Aggression

In the past, whenever anyone says that police acted violently toward protesters there’s been some small part of me that thinks there must have been something that provoked them. After what I saw in New York City today, even that small skeptical part of me won’t be likely to doubt that cops instigate violence against protesters all on their own.

Things began completely peacefully. There were lots of cops around, but their presence didn’t dilute the celebratory atmosphere in Columbus Circle, where at least a thousand people gathered for the Reclaim the Streets march. In the middle of the plaza, street theater performers acted out parodies of billionaires, handing fake money to everyone to get them to go away. In one corner, members of Chicago DAN banged on pots and pans and sang in Spanish in a demonstration of solidarity with Argentina.

Across the plaza, a 20-piece Samba band calling itself Reclaim the Beats warmed up the crowd, preparing to lead the march through Central Park to join the Another World is Possible contingent that was gathering at 59th and 5th. A few protestors climbed the statues to festoon them with banners, while others just hung out and enjoyed the brilliant sunshine and the festive energy. A Palestinian solidarity group behind a row of kaffiyeh scarves, an anarchist Cub Scout troupe, a group dressed as television sets displaying slogans like “Dissent is American,” and a black bloc calmly walking hand in hand or arm in arm were among the many who marched through the park to meet up with the main, permitted AWIP march.

After rallying across from the Plaza Hotel for at least 1/2 an hour, the march began to move forward on to its permitted route, led by huge, colorful papier mache puppets including a dragon about 40 feet long, its slogan-covered body housing a couple dozen puppeteers.

As the march stepped off, police formed a solid line along the curb, not allowing the width of the march to extend off the sidewalk until it was across 5th Avenue. As the huge dragon and its accompanying fire birds went by, a line of protesters several deep was trapped between the puppet and the police, who did not budge. Several Chicago indymedia reporters were among this group, and we noticed two officers standing atop a paddywagon parked in the street, aiming a camera at the crowd. I had come out of the park amongst some of the black blocers, and it seemed to me the camera was aimed right at the spot where they had been standing, waiting to join the slow-moving march as were all the other people in the plaza.

Around this time, a CIMC reporter also overheard an NYPD sergeant telling his officers to arrest anyone with a mask or shield. As we watched the march kick off, we noted that more and more of the cops behind us had their batons out and their riot shields down.

The black bloc joined the march as all the other participating groups had, walking slowly forward and waiting to be allowed to cross 5th Avenue on to 59th Street. Most of the marchers had embarked by this point, but there were still several hundred people waiting to move, including many behind the black blocers—in other words, the black bloc did not appear to be bringing up the rear.

As we stood watching them pass, completely without warning the cops behind and immediately to the right of us charged into the crowd, batons raised, in a cone formation. Before we knew it we were being roughly pushed back out of the plaza and on to the sidewalk, shoved against those behind us who did not have anywhere to move. The scene was chaotic, but we could tell that the same was happening to people on the other side of the plaza. Several people shouted to the cops, asking why we were being pushed when no one had done anything, and a few people were knocked down by the nightsticks and had to be helped up by fellow protesters.

As we were being pushed up on to the sidewalk, practically immobilized between the line of nightsticks and the stone wall of the park behind us, an officer doused the crowd with pepper spray, hitting several people in the face at point-blank range. Meanwhile, in the now-cleared center of the plaza we could see several people being wrestled to the ground, face-down, and handcuffed by about 5 cops on each protester. While I only witnessed about a half dozen arrests, another observer later told me that he had seen a bus full of arrestees leaving this scene. Since New York 1 and CNN report 36 arrests with most occurring at this beginning point, it’s probable that I missed a lot of them while I was busy coughing the pepper spray out of my throat.

After a few minutes, the police allowed everyone remaining to freely cross the plaza and proceed on to 59th street. A middle aged, conservatively dressed woman beside me said that she had been knocked down by the police during the charge, and had to be helped up by 5 people. When she realized I was reporting for indymedia, she gave me a business card, identifying herself as a Cooper Union professor.

Several other people around me, clearly not anarchists or black blocers, expressed amazement that the cops had charged a completely peaceful march. It was well-publicized that this permitted march was to be a green zone; many participants came expecting that they would not be exposed to arrest risk, and even direct action groups had willingly agreed to abide by this guideline. As I and countless other observers noted, the black bloc were doing nothing besides walking in the march when the police charged into their midst. The majority of them were unmasked, as well; a few wearing scarves over their faces and two or three carrying plastic shields against their bodies presented the only conceivable motivation for the cops’ strike. At a televised press conference later, an NYPD spokesman said some protesters had hit cops with their shields. All I observed were police snatching the shields away from a few protesters who were trying to use them for protection.

A few blocks later, at Park Avenue and 60th Street, the group of a few hundred marchers who had been divided from the others during the police charge caught up with the rest of the march, which had stopped to wait. Things were relatively peaceful for a while as we proceeded east on 60th and then south on Lexington. However, at each intersection cops in riot gear would amass in lines on either side of the march, concentrated heavily at the back near the black bloc, and followed block-to-block by a small fleet of paddywagons and a jail bus.

Marchers repeatedly strategized to not allow the march to be broken up, stopping when necessary and even moving backward at some points. During this time, a few more arrests were made -- according to one observer I talked to, when a police barricade fell over and some protesters stepped on it. The march moved at a snail’s pace, stopping several times as we moved down Lexington Avenue and West on to 46th Street. As the front of the march neared Park Avenue and the site of the Waldorf Astoria, the back of the march was repeatedly divided off by the police and prevented from moving for long stretches of time.

It took us a good 3-4 hours to reach the permitted rally site caddy-corner to the Waldorf at 49th and Park, and when we got there -- or rather, as close to there as the cops would let us -- we found ourselves penned in by metal barricades, unable to move. Confusion mounted among protesters who did not know why they were being immobilized, and a CIMC colleague rang my mobile phone from the back of the march (I had moved forward by this time, attempting to find out what was happening) to say that people were giving up and leaving. It turned out that 3 “pens” had been set up along the West side of Park Avenue, with the cross streets separating them. The march had been divided between these pens and protesters were not allowed to move from one to the other. We were packed too dense to move freely, and police were letting people out only at a small opening at the front, and only if they agreed to leave the site.

After holding us this way for what seemed like at least an hour, the cops began allowing people through to the next pen in a small corridor. I wormed my way to the front of our pen to see two crowds of fenced-in protesters separated by a sea of helmeted police. The National Lawyers’ Guild legal observer standing beside me began to explain that the heads of the legal team had all this time been negotiating with the police to allow protesters through. She went on to say that the reason the march had gone so slowly was that these negotiations had to occur at every intersection because the police had changed the parade route at the last minute. As people moved forward across 48th street, an AWIP “stage manager” made people aware that they were moving into another enclosed pen, and that the planned rally could not take place because the police had taken the sound equipment.

We never made it into the third area closest to the Waldorf, despite that this was the space in which the rally was supposed to have been held. A friend told me that initially one section of the march had been in this area, but the police had told them they could leave and all but 8 people did. Stage managers began calling for an impromptu spokescouncil, and after a long stretch of dancing in place to the tireless samba band, the word came down that we were going to about-face and leave the area calmly as a united group. The 800-1000 people remaining at this point put their hands on one another’s shoulders and moved slowly back toward 46th street in single-file lines. The police moved the fences toward the sidewalk so that we were now penned in a space about 10-15 feet wide between them and the barricaded sidewalk.

As we waited what seemed like at least another hour to be let out, protesters sang, gave one another back rubs, and raised chants such as “This is illegal detention!” and “We all have to pee!” Rumors circulated that people were being allowed to leave one at a time, and that arrests were then being made a block away from the site (upon exiting we did find out from another IMC reporter that several more people had been arrested as they attempted to leave the protest). We finally made it to the front, and were allowed to exit in groups of ten. As we did so, a legal observer shouted not to block the sidewalks or we’d be arrested. Free at last, we proceeded out into what looked like a battlezone, with riot-outfitted police and blaring sirens all around us.

Seemingly under orders to keep the protest away from the Waldorf Astoria for as long as possible, the police turned what was supposed to have been a peaceful demonstration against the World Economic Forum into a tense and at times violent stand-off between protesters and the NYPD. Never allowed to approach the object of the demonstration and held for hours inside police lines, the protesters nonetheless remained calm and attempted to sustain the carnival atmosphere that had inaugurated the march earlier in the day. The only interaction with police that I saw initiated by protesters were requests and chanted demands to be allowed to go to our planned and permitted rally site, and a few requests for information about why we were being held (made mostly by me and other press). All “contact-heavy” protester-police encounters I saw were unambiguously initiated by the police.