Lamar Advertising Could Save St. Nicholas

It’s an old journalism axiom that when writing a story, a reporter should always get a second source. Another rule is that a journalist should work to confirm the veracity of information before going to press with it in a story. That fact alone is often what separates blogs from real journalism—publishing verified facts versus rumors.
Recently I acted like one of those jagoff bloggers out there and jumped to a conclusion in e-print, for the world to see. After catching a brief TV news story on St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in the North Side possibly being sold to Lamar Advertising, who supposedly would tear down the building, I went off half-cocked and wrote a piece for Barnestormin in which I said Lamar must hate Christians and Croatians.
I should’ve known the company wouldn’t be iconoclasts in this matter. I actually thought to myself that it made no sense that an advertising firm would invite such public ill will, since of course, advertisers know all about image-making. I thought of calling Lamar for an interview, but I was angry and hot to write my story, “A Multi-hued Capitalistic Glow.” I have since removed the piece, because I was embarrassed at the falseness of it and I didn’t want to continue to cast any pall on Lamar’s reputation.
I couldn’t have been more wrong with the now-yanked blog story. And though I had expected a reaction from the piece, I am embarrassed that I so wrongly depicted Lamar Advertising’s motivations in wanting to buy the church. It turns out that Lamar could be the savior of St. Nicholas, just in time for Christmas.
Stan Geier, vice- president and general manager of Lamar Advertising, sent me an email to let me know that I got it all wrong and to appeal to my sense of Christian brotherhood to do the right thing. He said he is meeting with members of the North Side Leadership Conference, the Croatian American Cultural and Economic Alliance and Preserve Croatian Heritage this week, with the goal of finding a way to preserve the church.
“All I need is a three-foot diameter area to relocate one of the forty nine billboards that PennDOT is taking. I have never intended to knock down the church, simply to find a home for one of the forty nine billboards impacted by the expansion of the state’s Rt. 28 project,” Geier said. “I have 70 employees that count on their jobs to feed their families. Losing 49 billboards could affect some jobs. Relocating just one billboard to a viable location like the St. Nicholas Church property could preserve a job for one of my employees. That’s why I bought the property.”
In explanation, but not as an excuse, I will say that I was quick to jump the gun about the church because I am emotionally vested in the issue and a little bit hurt by how it has been handled. I have been told by representatives of the Pittsburgh Diocese in the past that the Diocese would like to see the oldest Croatian church in the Western Hemisphere torn down, and that has clouded my perspective on this issue. The added hurt I feel at seeing some of the attitudes of the St. Nicholas Millvale church people, some of whom seem immune to their Croatian kin’s pain in having their old church and its sacred objects in limbo, also is disheartening.
But I am hopeful that Stan Geier, Lamar Advertising and the preservationists can come up with a plan all parties can agree on to save St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church. Godspeed, folks.

Barnestormin’s Gone Literary

I hate to brag, unless I am trying to impress you. Even so, I’ve been a bit reluctant about telling my faithful Barnestormin readers that I’ve managed to “sell” a couple more of my blog-published essays to other publications.
I put “sell” in parentheses because in this case I didn’t actually get paid for publishing the pieces elsewhere as I have with stories I’ve re-printed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh Magazine and other publications. But I did get some folks over at the online literary journal Sampsonia Way interested enough in my Sago Mine essay “The Other Side of the Pittsburgh Seam” to publish it in their journal.
For Sampsonia Way I also had my friend, Pittsburgh Tribune Review photographer Chaz Palla take my mug shot. I put the photo up on the blog, so those who don't know me get to see my handsome mug. The wind was blowing when the photo was shot, but that doesn’t explain how hunky my eyes look; I have no explanation for it, other than my Croatian heritage.
It’s not the first time I have had essays published in a journal—I have published a few of them in TPQ Online, the online version of literary journal The Pittsburgh Quarterly (not to be confused with the glossy magazine known as Pittsburgh Quarterly, which began after TPQ). I also have had my essays published in Philadelphia Weekly, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Engineering News-Record magazine and elsewhere.
I have my friend author Hilary Masters in part to thank for the appearance in Sampsonia Way, since he recommended me to them as a Pittsburgh writer whose work might run with his in the same issue of the journal. Sampsonia Way publishes mostly international writers, but likes to publish a couple of Pittsburgh writers in each issue—an old pro like Masters, and an “emerging” writer, like me. (I do like to emerge from my cave-like dwelling occasionally, to get coffee and other essentials.)
Hilary has a couple of new, critically acclaimed books on the market now—“In Rooms of Memory,” a collection of essays, and “Elegy for Sam Emerson,” a novel. Masters' wife, author Kathleen George, also has a new book out—“The Odds,” which also has gotten great reviews. The novel is the fourth in a series she has written, and the setting is Pittsburgh. Places in the North Side and East End will be recognizable to readers of “The Odds.”
I also recently had my Barnestormin original humor essay “At The Salon” published in another online, Pittsburgh-based publication. The publication also is named after a thoroughfare: Ophelia Street.
Obviously, I am trying to raise my profile a bit; to put a few more planks in the platform, so to speak. Again, thanks to Ophelia Street, Sampsonia Way publisher Henry Reese and others at that publication, TPQ Online, and all of the wonderful people who currently publish my work. And to those who are interested in what I’m offering, please keep reading.

How We Survived Alternate Reality Television

The kids in our family were born too early. We had to suffer the Rust Belt Depression of the 1980s without a Reality Television show to bail us out. I’ll admit, when were younger we daydreamed of living in a Brady Bunch-style house, but we knew it was just musing. Maybe if we had been born several years later, things would have been different.
If the Barnes Dozen had their own show, it wouldn’t have been something ridiculous like "Growing Up Gotti" or "Jon & Kate Plus Eight." It would’ve been more refined, especially since my parents were raising eight boys and four girls on my father’s engineer salary. Anything could happen in that old Pittsburgh Victorian house, crammed with 12 kids and led by Born Again Christian parents Harvey and Joanne Barnes…
VOICEOVER: “This week on A Barnes Dozen…”
-Camera angle over shoulders of boys giggling, facing an open window
-Cut to-
-Mother Joanne Barnes answering the kitchen phone and speaking with neighbor Naomi Rittenhouse, who says: “Your sons are urinating out the third-floor window again.”
-Cut to-
-Joanne clutching a wooden-handled broom, chasing two sons around the dining room, swinging wildly at them and connecting at times.
“Stand still!” she yells.
* * *
Ah, the good old days of sharing two bathrooms with 13 people. We should’ve been stars with a TV show, but unfortunately, Reality TV wasn’t even a greedy notion in a producer’s mind back then. My parents struggled financially because they had so many kids, but that shared hardship and close living also created lots of opportunities for memories that we kids, now long grown, pass on in our own ways.
I bring this up because of the recent bad press on Jon and Kate Goselin, who are inextricably linked forever because of their dubious celebrity. Lately they have consumed themselves with mudslinging, and their kids are no doubt the worse for it. I pity the kids and their parents, who apparently were striving to make a good life for their family and destroyed their marriage in the process. I wonder if it would have been better for them if they had continued to struggle financially, at least somewhat. I doubt it.
One thing that’s clear to me is that the Goselin children shouldn’t have been allowed to be on their own TV show, because they are too young to consent to being on a reality TV show and they aren’t a family of performers like the Osmonds or Jacksons, who, like carnies and circus folk, got their professions by birth.
There should be an age of consent for allowing a child to be on TV or in movies because there is no approximating the damage that early celebrity or unwanted celebrity can have on a person. If you don’t believe me, look no further than Danny Bonaduci or Leif Garret, or more recently, Hulk Hogan’s kids. If the child is not at least, say, 15, perhaps he should not be allowed to consent to appearing in such a show. And maybe nobody else should be able to give that consent, either.
This all seems obvious to me, not simply because I can see that children are being exploited and consequently warped on television, but also because I have a bit of personal experience in this area. In 1983, not long after my father lost his job as a civil engineer for U.S. Steel, our family was on TV. We were on a show that I would now peg as “alternate reality” television—the 700 Club.
Dad had gone through a stretch of unemployment after losing his job. Then after praying, he’d finally gotten some work and was doing pretty well again, at least for the moment. Feeling buoyant, as was part of his spirit, Dad answered the 700 Club’s call to tell them how prayer had changed his life.
When he told us kids we’d be on the show, some of us remarked, “Well at least it’s not the PTL Club.” We affectionately referred to that show as the Pass The Loot Club.
Then all of a sudden, a camera crew was on our doorstep. They filmed Dad giving his story, and they filmed all of us in our Dad-led early morning Devotions, which was a routine my father had instituted around that time.
The 700 Club story on us was a short, upbeat piece, with not too much footage. I remember seeing us kids all looking tired and sitting on the couch, Bibles in laps. I know that after seeing the story, I, and some of the other kids, felt used.
The story didn’t seem to be the truth to me at the time, and still doesn’t. I remember being skeptical about the relationship between prayer and Dad getting some work, which hadn’t exactly changed our lifestyle. The tenuousness of our situation hadn’t changed, and this fact I knew in my gut at the time. Harve was in his fifties and nobody wanted to hire him on for good because of his age, experience and salary level.
Though I know Harve didn't intend it, the 700 Club story on my family made me feel like I was part of a lie. But the worst part was that the fiction was not my creation, and I resented it. Soon, the Goselin kids will feel the same way.

Jonathan Barnes is a Pittsburgh freelance writer. Email him at pittsburghreporter@yahoo.com.

A New Nobility

A minute after one of the black-clad anarchists was snatched by two guys in fatigues, hustled into an SUV and driven away, the crowd of G-20 protestors milled around the intersection of Baum Boulevard and Enfield Street. The usually busy boulevard was deserted, save a few hundred protestors and hundreds of riot-ready cops who’d closed the streets and were converging from two directions on the protestors.
The dissenters didn’t know what to do and retreated up Enfield towards Bloomfield proper, scattering from police. The cops had begun to move more quickly and were trotting behind.
“They’re charging us!” protestors said, and the crowd began to run in panic. I sprinted to the front of the group as it went through Khalil’s Restaurant’s parking lot, and passed Khalil, who shook his head.
“No, it’s not O.K. to come through here,” he said.
I don’t really know who Elliot Madison is, but allegedly he may have been texting marching orders to some of the folks in the crowd I was running with as I covered the protest for Reuters. Madison and a compatriot were charged with crimes including Hindering Apprehension, charges which recently were dismissed by police, but I wonder if he isn’t just another fly, who the system New Nobility system attempted to smash to smithereens.
Using batons, tear gas, armored vehicles, police dogs and other sledgehammer-like tools, Pittsburgh Police, ATF officials, Pennsylvania State Police and other lawmen deputized ostensibly to prevent chaos during the protests ended up causing more trouble than their time-and-a-half paychecks warranted. I say this because the ugly militarization of Pittsburgh’s streets on the afternoon of G20 Day One that I witnessed only got worse that evening and the next, when police arrested masses of protestors and even college students exiting restaurants or trying to get back home.
Welcome to G20 land, where the Constitution is suspended and the Law Class has special rights—like the titled nobility our forefathers rebelled against. How is it that an idea of freedom can be bastardized into the majority’s tacit approval of military-controlled streets?
These police overreactions were supposedlly meant to keep order during the recent G20 Summit in Pittsburgh. The irony was that the meeting of the most entrenched of old boy’s clubs, in a city so bankrupt that it has sold off some of its utilities and still can’t manage to keep its public park restrooms in working order, seemed like the height of effrontery to many Pittsburghers. The city is still climbing back from the Rust Belt Depression of the 1980s, and President Obama and other world leaders are talking about the wonderful recovery the Steel City has made.
Who's zoomin who?

Hindering Comprehension

New Yorker Elliot Madison recently was charged with Hindering Apprehension and other crimes for using Twitter to inform protestors about police movements during anti-G-20 Summit demonstrations in Pittsburgh. Police found Madison and another protestor allegedly directing their comrades via computer in a suburban Pittsburgh hotel room on the first day of the Summit.
As a Reuters freelancer I covered some of the protests, and I’m wondering why police were allowed to hinder my comprehension of what was happening. Their RoboCop-sounding message threatened everyone present with arrest and physical action by officers, and warned:
"No matter what your purpose, you must disperse."
Blasted over a military-issue PA system that was mounted atop an armored police vehicle, the message was serious enough for many journalists to lose enthusiasm for the humid march on G-20 Day One. Just after that day’s first protestor-police clashes, a large Wall Street Journal reporter huddled close to a couple in their yard as riot police stormed past.
“They can’t arrest you on private property,” he said to me.
“We’re protecting him,” the couple said.
Later, at 5 p.m., after more than two hours of cat-and-mouse between protestors and officers, police again chased protestors—this time, ironically, near Liberty Avenue, in Pittsburgh’s Bloomfield section.
“Get out of the street!” a shotgun-armed officer shouted at a CNN journalist near him. She collapsed on her haunches.
I was nervously reporting on the scene, while trying to evade police. Several journalists weren’t as lucky and were arrested during the protests. But dodging the cops while trying to work made me wonder how we can hinder or stop reporters from covering news and still have a truly free press.
Police texted each other during the G-20 marches, protestors tweeted one another and reporters texted and phoned their peers while being threatened for doing so. The Internet has changed the political game, but our law officers, and our laws, are slow to reflect the anarchic freedom and immediacy of the Texting Age.
Even so, you can’t harass, threaten and arrest journalists for covering news, then say you have a free press. When journalists cannot freely report news happening on the street, those scenes will lack objective eyewitnesses to give the details of what happened. Without journalists covering such incidents, whose job will it be to tell the entire truth about them?

No matter what your purpose

Nature’s wisdom at times is unquestionable, like with the milder temperatures we’re having in Pittsburgh. The unseasonable weather seems a cooler-heads-prevail time, following an angry and angst-filled period during which Pittsburgh hosted the G-20 summit. The weather cooperated for the event, meaning it was hot part of last week, with the Pittsburgh humidity thicker than the bullshit in city government.
During the protests on Thursday it was humid and uncomfortable as Pittsburgh summers can be, but hot weather makes tempers flare. Running with those protesters, I literally soaked the top half of my shirt with sweat. I looked terrible, when about two minutes after the cops shot the gas around 32nd Street I was retreating with the crowd and ran into former Pulp newspaper editor Geoff Kelly. I gave him a big hug and he was half seat-soaked himself.
But the thing that has me thinking is the vague, not-quite-formed thought that ran through my head a couple times on Thursday as I was following the Black Clad Rapscallions.
How can I cover this if you’re going to arrest me? I wondered.
I tried my best to cover the protests on Thursday, but I was hampered by the fact that I was trying to duck the cops, who at times were running after us. At one point closer to the end of the hours-long march on Thursday afternoon, the police chased a group of protestors I was with through the parking lot of Khalil’s restaurant in Bloomfield.
“They’re charging us! They’re charging!” people yelled, and everyone began to run in panic. I looked over my shoulder and the military or whoever these stormtrooper-looking guys were indeed were close on our heels. I ran faster, to the front of the crowd, as someone said “Don’t run!”
As I sprinted to the front of the group, I passed Khalil. He was shaking his head at the protestors.
“No, don’t come through here, it’s not OK,” he said.
A lot of reporters covering the somewhat violent protests, which were nothing compared to an impromptu, student-led Steelers or Panthers victory celebration in the streets of Oakland, also had mixed feelings about their situation. They didn’t want to go to jail, either.
Running up Denny Way I think it was, after the cops appeared out of their armored vehicle in front of me, I saw a Wall Street Journal reporter I’d met, hiding behind a front yard chain-link fence, standing close to two residents who owned the place. He was about six feet three inches tall and not slight.
“We’re protecting him,” the couple said.
How can a reporter do his job when the government says doing so will get him thrown in the clink? But it’s not even that simple, or so benign.
We’re talking about a government that blasts high-pitched, deafening whistles meant to disperse crowds while ordering over a loudspeaker in a computer-generated creepy Robo Cop-sounding voice:
By order of City of Pittsburgh Police Chief Nate Harper
You are in a restricted area
You are hereby ordered to disperse
No matter what your purpose, you must disperse
Failure to disperse could make you subject to arrest or other police action
That could result in injury
We have a free press, but reporters who are covering a protest will be arrested or roughed-up if they do their jobs? Sadie Gurman of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and five other journalists were arrested during the melee in Oakland on Friday night. Two of the journalists are from Minneapolis-based Twin Cities Indymedia, including Nigel Parry, who said at a press conference yesterday at Thomas Merton Center that the police tactics follow a pattern of unconstitutional methods used by police to harass protestors in the days leading up to and during the G-20 summit.
“Police responded to the demonstrations with riot control equipment including batons, tear gas, pepper spray, percussion grenades, and Long Range Acoustic Device used by the New York City Police Department during the 2004 Republican National Convention,” said a press release put out by Twin Cities Indymedia, Thomas Merton Center, and Glassbead Collective NYC.
The acoustic device was used by the military to disperse crowds in Iraq, according to the press release.
“Pre-recorded dispersal orders including the phrase ‘no matter what your purpose’ were blasted from police loudspeakers in crowded public spaces, making it clear that anyone who stayed in the areas following the warnings would be in danger of riot control weapons and arrest—including journalists,” the release said.
Melissa Hill, a reporter for Twin Cities Indymedia, had her camera broken and footage confiscated while being arrested Friday night by Pittsburgh Police. She hasn’t gotten her tape back.
Among the others arrested were Dominic Dimauro, a freelance journalist who had his camera confiscated and was charged with Obstruction of Justice and Failure to Disperse. Freelance cameraman Tom Larkin had his camera damaged by an impact round, and while he was he filming, he was punched in the face by a policeman. Keith DeVries, a member of Pittsburgh Filmmakers and a University of Pittsburgh student, had his camera destroyed as police tried to confiscate his tape following his arrest. He was charged with Failure to Disperse, and was part of a mass arrest on the lawn of the Cathedral of Learning.
The Thomas Merton Center, ACLU and some of the individuals who were arrested (100 were arrested Friday night) intend to sue the City of Pittsburgh and others, including the University of Pittsburgh.
The thought of more costs to Pittsburgh reminded me of some of the comments of protestors during marches last week: “This city is bankrupt, and it’s putting on a $20 million party,” some said.
Pete Shell, a member of the Thomas Merton Center, said the police actions on Friday night were a stark contrast to the G-20 protest march earlier. “We had a peaceful and legal march of 8,000, and hours later it was the police who acted violently and unlawfully,” he said.
Twin Cities Indymedia and Glassbead Collective were the core part of the team that made the documentary “Terrorizing Dissent,” about the 2008 Republican National Convention. According to Twin Cities Indymedia, during the Republican convention, which TCI said was the last major political gathering to get a “National Special Security Event” designation, a similar pattern of police and security overkill happened before, during and after the event as happened here in Pittsburgh.
“We are left with many questions about the state of freedom in America, about the casual and indiscriminate use of police violence and authority in non-riot situations as standard practice, and about a society that accepts the militarization of its cities in the name of ‘security,’” the press release finished.
I’m wondering about it, too.

The Unofficial G20 March

In Lawrenceville around 34th Street on Thursday when the riot police were chasing us from one end of the alley we’d just run up and more of them appeared in front of us at the other end of the alley, I thought I could be arrested right then, since cops were piling out of armored vehicles in front of me. They passed me, chasing after the real protestors, as some of the neighborhood people on their porches and in their yards yelled encouragement to the militarized police.
It was like they were cheering the home team. I rooted for another home team that day—the protesters—because I can’t imagine any other course but to object to the status quo now, given the economic situation and the disparities the majority is being forced to fund.
So I wore an all-black polo-style shirt on Thursday for the Unofficial G20 March, in a smartass sort of way but also because I wanted the home team to win, and they wear black, no gold. I don’t agree with all the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance, P.O.G. or Thomas Merton Center or whoever the main group of protesters were stand for, but I am appreciative of their efforts to confront those they say are oppressing others.
Two days later, I can still hear the Black Garbed Mob chant:
“Anti. Anti. Anti-Capitalista!” they said over and over again.
The group, most of which aren’t football-player-sized and many of whom are women, got up practically in the grills of the cops. While I know it isn’t right or fair to destroy windows of businesses because you hate them, I don’t think those actions represent the bulk of the group’s behavior, which while being confrontational, seemed lawful enough so that many people joined them out of curiosity, swelling their ranks.
Let’s be straight up about it: Multi-national corporations, “Free Trade,” and other organizations and policies are hurting Americans and other people throughout the world, and you don’t have to be a Commie to say it. Example: Alcoa closes aluminum smelters in North America, while simultaneously building a smelter on the edge of a pristine glacier in Iceland—a setup that also will include a hydroelectric plant to service the smelter and many residents, so a lot of folks there are all for it. Global conglomerate A.B.B. seeks to cap its asbestos-related liability, successfully cutting future claimants out of the payment pie for asbestos-related deaths and health problems. PNC Bank wins, and many other banks lose, because PNC was picked as the winner. Steel industry executives sell out themselves and the entire industry for a few more short-term profits, buying steel from foreign competitors and neglecting capital improvements, killing the once-dominant Golden Goose-like U.S. steel industry. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are gone almost overnight, and a standard of living and a part of the middle class vanishes along with the jobs, depressing wages for generations.
*************************************************************************************
“They’re just college students,” said the bald, middle-aged looking guy wearing a white polo shirt and khakis. He shook his head. We were watching the growing crowd of protestors in front of Carlow University on Friday afternoon, checking the human tapestry of the folks there. But I got his meaning: They’re kids and they don’t know shit.
“College students don’t have opinions?” I asked. He didn’t respond.
“Were you a college student?”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t you have opinions when you were in college?”
“Yeah, but…”
I’m thinking of that exchange because so many people want to marginalize the actions, beliefs and issues associated with Thursday and Friday’s protests, and say it was just a bunch of college kids, or rich boys from Mt. Lebo, St. Clair or Shaker Heights, so what they hell do they know anyway?
Of course Friday’s Big G-20 March was a stew of beefs, causes and convictions, with a healthy smattering of crazies. It went off well, except that the cops looked like military. Most everyone played their part in this human drama practically scripted from earlier confrontations. Still, it was fascinating to see.
But back to the guy by Carlow University. His perspective reminded me of comments of many Pittsburghers regarding the marchers, like the near-altercation that happened in Bloomfield between a hard-looking, heavy-set middle-aged gal and a group of black-clad protesters right after nearby businesses had some windows smashed.
“Get a job!” the gruff-voiced gal shouted at them.
Clearly there’s an age and sometimes a class difference that is perceived by other Pittsburghers when they see these protesters in action. That could be one of the divides that must be bridged before these protesters can be embraced by more of the working class and middle class. But some people will never be convinced that such protests are anything but a nuisance.
“They were like a bunch of little ants, scattering when the police came up,” said Smarty Huffing, a local reporter who has the neo-con bully pulpit of Pittsburgh’s best news radio station. At a different point during his show, he said: “They’re just kids. You want to give them a hug and tell them to go home and take a bath.”
The conversation that opened my eyes was a talk I had with a middle-aged white guy wearing a black Steelers shirt, which is practically an all-occasions-acceptable uniform in Steelers Country. He and some black-clad friends and others had followed Saturday’s march, and I was walking back through Bloomfield with them for a bit.
“I was worried for a second that I might get it from the cops, because I’m wearing a black shirt,” I confessed to the guy.
“They wouldn’t if it said ‘Steelers’ on it,” he said, tugging on his shirt.
“I’m kind of more on the side of the protesters than the cops, in this case,” I said.
“You are?” he said, looking surprised. “I’m not.”
“Why not? Aren’t you from Pittsburgh?” I asked. He said he was from here.
I judged him to be a few or so years older than me. “For short-term gain, they killed the steel industry,” I said.
“I know.”
“Hundreds of thousands lost their jobs and a whole class of people was gone.”
“Yeah, but what are you gonna do?”
I felt like saying, “Just continue to take whatever they dish out.” But I said nothing.

Militia Controlled Corridor

Standing high in the landscaped median in front of the Allegheny County Courthouse, we laughed with the crazy anarchist-peaceful-hippie-whatever protestors on the street in front of the Oliver Building side of Grant, dancing their heels off around a core of three garishly painted gals, flailing their limbs in joy. Their effusiveness was one extreme of the crowd, and juxtaposed to the angry, in-your-face brazenness of the Nameless Black Bandana Mob, it seemed to balance things some.
Counterpoints in the same crowd, the two groups were just planets flying in a galaxy of people representing causes, beliefs, grievances and interests of the 10,000 gathered on Grant Street, the heart of downtown Pittsburgh’s legal/governmental section. Lots of journalists in town for G-20, plus an equal number of attention-seekers in the crowd, such as an Abe Lincoln impersonator and a guy dressed in a Batman suit, added color and flair to the group.
At the starting point of the march in front of Carlow University, a reporter held a microphone to Faux Batman’s face, and asked: “What do you think of Christian Bale?”
It was a melting pot of malcontents and others, simmering and bubbling but never boiling. Wall-to-wall riot police along Grant Street and elsewhere along the parade route effectively cordoned activity into a militia-controlled corridor. The force included National Guardsmen and Pittsburgh Police, Port Authority of Allegheny County officers and Allegheny County Police, officers with the ATF, CIA and Pennsylvania State Police and cops from other parts of the nation. It seemed like a hell of a waste of a bunch of money spent on an occupying army in a free country.
The overwhelming force was offensive, but not as seemingly malevolent as police appeared the day before, when a much smaller group of protestors clashed with the armed forces, bashing a street barrier with a dumpster and being gassed in return. I wasn’t at the front of the crowd when that happened, because I was texting like a teenage girl. My boss wanted me to text him with info every half-hour, and more frequently if anything happened. As I was trying to do that, I’d fall behind as the Leaderless Mob ran up and down side streets in Bloomfield, Lawrenceville and the Strip District.
Back to grooving with the kids while they danced—in that lovely elevated stone-edged planter, looking at the dancers and hopping to the drum beat, I laughed with a guy standing next to me who also was enjoying the scene.
“Why’d you come here? Did you come out of curiosity or to protest?” I asked.
“Both,” contractor Mike Kelly said. “I’m a contractor…I work for rich people. And my wife can’t get health insurance…”
Unfortunately, I didn’t get the rest of Mike’s story, and I am sorry about that, because I know it is a powerful one and I missed the boat. But the point is that he is just one of many folks who went to the Big G20 March on Pittsburgh to have their say for a moment. That’s what made it so beautiful.
*************************************************************************************
I’m trying to tell Anne about how it felt to see the police occupying our city, to hear their Apocalyptic-sounding Robo Cop loudspeaker demanding that everyone disperse, upon penalty of arrest or worse.
It’s one thing to talk about jackbooted militarized police, about Guardsmen and cops from Alabama deputized to kick ass and not take names of locals and non-locals alike, and it’s an entirely different thing to be there to see, hear, and smell the scene—and to feel the bad vibes of it all.
“If you remain in this immediate vicinity, you are in violation of Pennsylvania Police criminal code,” the loudspeaker from the armored behemoth warned during the protest in Bloomfield on Thursday. The vehicle was about as big as a combine, and that’s why the cops nicknamed it the Hippie Harvester.
Taking in this scene, with riot-ready cops chasing people around and gassing them, it’s hard to not feel pissed as an American—that the police can treat people like this because they disagree with their beliefs. You start to feel very resentful about that police pressure.
“Why do they have to be so intimidating?” said a well-dressed lady in her sixties whom I met when she and a collared pastor from Greensburg allowed me to share a cab ride home with them afae Friday's march. The lady could’ve been one of the pastor’s parishioners, but she actually lives just blocks from me.
Seeing the police act like that can radicalize people, making freedom-loving Americans angry—like the contingent of folks who thronged to join the marchers as they traveled through Uptown and the Hill District.
Being Americans, most all of us feel in our hearts from birth (or from when we adopted this country) that being American isn’t about being Black, White or Latino, or about being rich or poor—or at least it shouldn’t be about these factors that for many are dependent upon the circumstances of their birth. Being truly American, we know in our hearts, is about doing the right thing by treating people fairly.
When some people can’t make a living because they are denied a living wage, that’s not fair and it aint American. When nations are oppressed ostensibly for liberty but truly for greed, that’s un-American. And when Americans are denied the right of free assembly, that is a sin.
You have to be there to feel it—to hear the heavy click-clack sound of leg protectors slapping boots stomping pavement, and the whack-whack of hundreds of Billy clubs against body armor. The message: Don’t even try to mess with us.
But who was this roving band of police protecting? They clearly were guarding the important stores, businesses and landmarks along the marcher's route. This was especially apparent in Uptown, where the troops formed protective barriers around particular buildings, and left the old beat-up and empty or nondescript storefronts and buildings unguarded.
Ted Haretos, a building owner in that section of town, watched the marchers bemusedly as he stood in front of his building along Fifth Avenue. “They have the right to protest,” he said.
Taylor Smith of Philadelphia, a member of the Peoples Caravan—a group of about two dozen demonstrators who traveled from Philly for the protest—said the Caravan is meant to connect grass roots organizations. “I think it’s undemocratic for the G-20 leaders to be meeting here,” he said.
Prague, Czech Republic native Jana Ridvanova held a sign that read: “Organize, occupy, fight for the right to work.” She was unabashed in her Socialism.
“I’m here to protest capitalism not only because it’s not working, but because capitalism is enslavement, through slave wages, and also murder, in Third World countries," Ridvanova said.
Members of the Green Party, Socialists, Communists, Palestinian activists, single-payer health care proponents, Free Tibet people, peace activists, Libertarians, and proselytizing Christians mixed together in the crowd, along with many others.
Dressed entirely in black, wearing a “Free Mumia” patch on her shirt, Denver-resident Renee Sandefer said she came to the Big G20 March because the people who caused the current economic crisis are here.
“Obama needs to be speaking to those who are suffering,” Sandefer said. “I want to be here in the streets because I’ll go home tonight and sleep easy because I tried. I support the people, not the bigwigs who caused the crisis.”
Perennial Pittsburgh activist Vincent Eirene said he came to the march to spread awareness of what G-20 is, and the effect it’s having. “It’s cutting labor laws, cutting environmental laws, and controlling people through loans,” he said.
Some protestors carried signs that read: "End Corporate Rule,” and “People Before Profit.”
Bail Out The People activist Larry Holmes led part of the crowd in chanting as they marched.
“When I say bailout you say people. Bailout!”
“People!”
“Bailout the people!”
“Not the banks!”
Pittsburgh resident and peace activist Jessica Benner directed the marchers at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Grant Street, waving them onto Grant. “We’re hoping for a people’s march combining many voices as one to protest G-20 policies,” she said.
Through it all the Black Garbed Mob carried their black standards and banners, chanting “Anti Capitalista!” At a few places they confronted police, forcing their black banner up to within feet of the occupying force while chanting their slogans. The cops were unmoved.
Within feet of the Black Garbed Mob was Ithaca, N.Y. native/CMU grad student Gwendolyn Barr. She was happy to share her views, which she said are based in her Evangelical Christian beliefs.
“Clearly the G-20 [attendees] won’t pay attention. But the world media will pay attention to the issues we care about and are raising here," Barr said. "The G-20 makes decisions that are good for their countries, and are devastating to third world countries.”