Walking The Talk: Vermonters march on Manhattan
Gutterson Field House, UVM: It is 3:30 a.m., Saturday, February 15. I am wearing wool-lined boot and mittens, two layers of socks, long underwear, blue jeans, five shirts, a wool sweater, a down jacket, a hat and scarf. Similarly bundled figures – too densely wrapped to make out features or gender – pile on the New York City-bound bus. “Peace and Justice!” yells the driver, as if he’s hawking hot dogs. “Peace and justice!”
My bus – a standard yellow school bus – is one of four leaving at this ungodly hour, sponsored by the Burlington-based Peace & Justice Center. The American Friends Service Committee, United Electrical Workers, and other organizations are transporting Vermonters to today’s peace rally near the United Nations – one of dozens of antiwar gatherings being staged in cities around the world.
The bus is full. Ahead of me, most people are trying to sleep. Behind me, it sounds like a party. Students from UVM – some drunk, some stoned, some giddy in anticipation of the demonstration – talk eagerly amongst themselves. A blonde, tin-voiced girl scoots into the seat behind me and confides to her neighbor, “I might not make much sense; I’m tripping on LSD.”
A girl in a green wool hat is pensively reading a printout of public bathrooms in midtown Manhattan – the NYPD has decided that Port-o-Potties would pose a “security risk.” A woman across the aisle announces the contents of her satchel. She has three apples and Kool-aid. The tripping girl asks her, “Did you bring anything to drink?”
“Yeah, I have some Kool-Aid.”
“No, I mean, like alcohol?”
“Oh. No.”
We get started. I try to sleep. The walls of the bus are cold. Condensation builds and freezes on the windows.
*
Five hours later, we stop for gas somewhere in New York. It’s warmer now, and I can see who else in on the bus. A blue-haired boy shares a seat behind the driver with his mother. A young woman with a plume of red and brown dreadlocks and a blue tattoo by her right eye dangles an arm over the back of her seat. A salt-and-pepper coifed woman sips from a silver thermos. An older lady with a white mohair hat has the wool collar of her jacket pulled up to her nose. I’m hungry. In my backpack I have crackers, a wedge of white cheddar cheese, a Fig Newton and a darkening banana. I eat some cheese.
As we move closer to the city, Vermonters look out the windows and make disparaging remarks about the flat suburban landscape. Hard-edged office buildings read above the highway: Daewoo. AGFA. Fleet. From a distance, the city skyline is an opaque blue-gray. As we move closer, it deepens and sharpens into a complex nexus of streets, buildings, taxicabs, New Yorkers.
The driver is talking on two cell-phones at once. People laugh nervously and speculate about the possibility of an accident. We head into Manhattan. As we spill out onto 34th street, disoriented and overdressed, I hear someone mutter, “I feel like the country mouse going to the city.”
I head toward the New York Public Library, where people are gathering to walk en masse to the demonstration on First Avenue. Along the way, I pass 15 police vans parked bumper-to-bumper, all filled with policemen in riot gear. In Times Square, under towering commercial signs, a skinny white guy with a beard is stopped by two policemen. They take his Bush-bashing sign, tear it in two and hand it back to him. They break the wooden stick to which the sign was affixed. No sticks allowed.
The walls of the Public Library bear an epigraph deeply etched in stone: “But above all things truth beareth away the victory.” Today, more transient slogans flutter below on fabric and paper: “Go Solar, Not Ballistic,” “Power to the Peaceful,” “Foreplay Not Warplay,” “Duct and Cover.” A group hands out free signs printed on recycled paper in vegetable-based inks by a union shop – sponsored by Working Assets. Graying men in military garb rally under a maroon banner: Veterans against the War. They face police officers across a narrowing swath of sidewalk.
Nearby, middle-aged men and women hold photographs of their sons and daughters in uniform. Military Families for Peace. I see people in jackets that read “United Steelworkers.” I stand beside a woman with a broad smile and dreadlocks reaching her ankles. GLAMericans For Peace, swathed in stylish faux fur, stand under a sign reading, “Peace—It’s the New Black.” Here and there, the odd spray of plastic beads – courtesy of the Mardis Gras Carnival Bloc – glitters in the sunshine. The crowd is diverse, and slogans and expressions vary, but they share a single message: No War.
As the crowd at the library swells, police line up along the streets to keep folks off the asphalt. An officer with a bullhorn directs people to move towards First Ave. People ignore him. They’ll move in their own time. The crowd gets bigger. Police in riot gear – helmets, batons, guns – arrive on the scene. They walk back and forth, ostentatious plastic handcuffs dangling from their belts. I cross the street and stand on the corner. From here I can see that the library steps are packed. The crowd stretches from the doors of the library down the curb and spans the city block.
Around noon, the crowd starts moving, oozing like a mountain of molasses from the library steps towards First Avenue. I tag along in the shadow of the GLAMericans to the sound of chanting: “La Peace, C’est Chic.” A sign dripping with blue tassels proclaims, “Peace is Not a Fringe Movement.” Police dart alongside the procession, jogging in the gutter. We pass people trapped under the awnings of Bloomingdale’s and Godiva chocolatiers. Some smile and wave. Many seem confused. One strangely stationary sign further adown the sidewalk catches my eye. It looks incongruous in the midst of all the moving signs, and the crowd splits around it. When I get close enough I c see that it reads, “Sample Shoe Sale.”
At Third Avenue, the city’s refusal to issue a march permit abruptly becomes irrelevant. The crowd has outgrown the sidewalk and spilled out into the street, filling it. The walk becomes a massive, slow-moving march. We inch forward, shuffling, squeezing. Some people carry radios tuned to WBAI, which is covering the demonstration. We hear that Third Avenue is full from 52nd Street to 72nd, and that a similar crowd is moving down Second Avenue. Cars waiting for the light to turn are trapped in the crowd like flies in amber; the people inside them look aggravated and uncomfortable. People are drumming. Syncopated chants of “Peace… Now!” thunder up and down the avenue.
Police prevent us from moving towards the demonstration on First Avenue. Every cross street has an aluminum barricade, and behind every barricade are officers persistently waving us north. Behind the police officers, we can see that the crowds on Second Avenue are surging southward. The handfuls of people leaving the rally are allowed to cross unimpeded.
“Where can we cross over? We want to go to the demonstration.”
“You can cross over at 52nd.”
At 52nd, another blockade. “Where can we cross over? They said we could use 52nd.”
“You can use 68th.”
At 68th, more of the same. “You can use 72nd.”
At 69th, the crowd plows through the barricades and begins a torturously slow walk south in search of a place to cross over to First. Again, the barricades block us at every corner. The police erect barricades across the Avenue, bringing the march to a temporary halt before protesters muster sufficient oomph to break through. In spite of the inevitable chanting that erupts at every whiff of confrontation with the NYPD, people are by and large reluctant to disrupt the arbitrarily erected barriers. Even so, discarded metal frames and blue wooden planks litter the open intersections, marking where the crowd, however recalcitrant, broke through.
At about 4 p.m., we finally arrive at First Avenue, but even though we are now within the rally’s officially “permitted” area, police are still erecting barricades. After crossing one intersection, I hear a scraping of metal on asphalt and turn around. Police are blockading First Avenue. I can’t believe it. “Isn’t there a permit for a rally on this Avenue?” I ask one officer.
“I only know what they tell me.”
When I pose the same question to a female officer, she’s a little more eloquent. “Do you want to negotiate with me?
“No, I’m just wondering – isn’t the rally permit for First? Why are you cutting us off?”
“It’s to keep mass chaos from breaking out,” she snarls. “ You have a problem with that? It’s so you don’t get trampled. You want to know what this is for? Wait until the ambulance can’t come for your bloody body. This is for your own safety.”
Finally, after a full day of marching, I arrive at the rally. The organizers are congratulating everyone on their participation. The demonstration is over.
Turning to leave, I’m surprised to see the end of the march. Litter is strewn everywhere. As I walk towards Grand Central Station, taking care not to jaywalk, my feelings are mixed. The experience overall has been encouraging. I’ve seen concerned citizens coalesce from all over the country to demonstrate their opposition to war. I have marched with the largest, most diverse group of people I’ve ever seen rally around one cause. But encouraging as it has been to march for peace, marching really isn’t enough.
One of the chants that I’ve heard throughout the day is, “This is what democracy looks like!” The earnestness of the voices raised in these choruses makes me wonder whether too many of us confuse marching with civic participation. Demonstrations are dramatic and make you feel good. But they dissipate quickly. We need to find more lasting forms of activism, more effective ways to register dissent. At the end of the day, I find myself asking: What else could democracy look like?
* * *
Published in Seven Days 19 February 2003
My bus – a standard yellow school bus – is one of four leaving at this ungodly hour, sponsored by the Burlington-based Peace & Justice Center. The American Friends Service Committee, United Electrical Workers, and other organizations are transporting Vermonters to today’s peace rally near the United Nations – one of dozens of antiwar gatherings being staged in cities around the world.
The bus is full. Ahead of me, most people are trying to sleep. Behind me, it sounds like a party. Students from UVM – some drunk, some stoned, some giddy in anticipation of the demonstration – talk eagerly amongst themselves. A blonde, tin-voiced girl scoots into the seat behind me and confides to her neighbor, “I might not make much sense; I’m tripping on LSD.”
A girl in a green wool hat is pensively reading a printout of public bathrooms in midtown Manhattan – the NYPD has decided that Port-o-Potties would pose a “security risk.” A woman across the aisle announces the contents of her satchel. She has three apples and Kool-aid. The tripping girl asks her, “Did you bring anything to drink?”
“Yeah, I have some Kool-Aid.”
“No, I mean, like alcohol?”
“Oh. No.”
We get started. I try to sleep. The walls of the bus are cold. Condensation builds and freezes on the windows.
*
Five hours later, we stop for gas somewhere in New York. It’s warmer now, and I can see who else in on the bus. A blue-haired boy shares a seat behind the driver with his mother. A young woman with a plume of red and brown dreadlocks and a blue tattoo by her right eye dangles an arm over the back of her seat. A salt-and-pepper coifed woman sips from a silver thermos. An older lady with a white mohair hat has the wool collar of her jacket pulled up to her nose. I’m hungry. In my backpack I have crackers, a wedge of white cheddar cheese, a Fig Newton and a darkening banana. I eat some cheese.
As we move closer to the city, Vermonters look out the windows and make disparaging remarks about the flat suburban landscape. Hard-edged office buildings read above the highway: Daewoo. AGFA. Fleet. From a distance, the city skyline is an opaque blue-gray. As we move closer, it deepens and sharpens into a complex nexus of streets, buildings, taxicabs, New Yorkers.
The driver is talking on two cell-phones at once. People laugh nervously and speculate about the possibility of an accident. We head into Manhattan. As we spill out onto 34th street, disoriented and overdressed, I hear someone mutter, “I feel like the country mouse going to the city.”
I head toward the New York Public Library, where people are gathering to walk en masse to the demonstration on First Avenue. Along the way, I pass 15 police vans parked bumper-to-bumper, all filled with policemen in riot gear. In Times Square, under towering commercial signs, a skinny white guy with a beard is stopped by two policemen. They take his Bush-bashing sign, tear it in two and hand it back to him. They break the wooden stick to which the sign was affixed. No sticks allowed.
The walls of the Public Library bear an epigraph deeply etched in stone: “But above all things truth beareth away the victory.” Today, more transient slogans flutter below on fabric and paper: “Go Solar, Not Ballistic,” “Power to the Peaceful,” “Foreplay Not Warplay,” “Duct and Cover.” A group hands out free signs printed on recycled paper in vegetable-based inks by a union shop – sponsored by Working Assets. Graying men in military garb rally under a maroon banner: Veterans against the War. They face police officers across a narrowing swath of sidewalk.
Nearby, middle-aged men and women hold photographs of their sons and daughters in uniform. Military Families for Peace. I see people in jackets that read “United Steelworkers.” I stand beside a woman with a broad smile and dreadlocks reaching her ankles. GLAMericans For Peace, swathed in stylish faux fur, stand under a sign reading, “Peace—It’s the New Black.” Here and there, the odd spray of plastic beads – courtesy of the Mardis Gras Carnival Bloc – glitters in the sunshine. The crowd is diverse, and slogans and expressions vary, but they share a single message: No War.
As the crowd at the library swells, police line up along the streets to keep folks off the asphalt. An officer with a bullhorn directs people to move towards First Ave. People ignore him. They’ll move in their own time. The crowd gets bigger. Police in riot gear – helmets, batons, guns – arrive on the scene. They walk back and forth, ostentatious plastic handcuffs dangling from their belts. I cross the street and stand on the corner. From here I can see that the library steps are packed. The crowd stretches from the doors of the library down the curb and spans the city block.
Around noon, the crowd starts moving, oozing like a mountain of molasses from the library steps towards First Avenue. I tag along in the shadow of the GLAMericans to the sound of chanting: “La Peace, C’est Chic.” A sign dripping with blue tassels proclaims, “Peace is Not a Fringe Movement.” Police dart alongside the procession, jogging in the gutter. We pass people trapped under the awnings of Bloomingdale’s and Godiva chocolatiers. Some smile and wave. Many seem confused. One strangely stationary sign further adown the sidewalk catches my eye. It looks incongruous in the midst of all the moving signs, and the crowd splits around it. When I get close enough I c see that it reads, “Sample Shoe Sale.”
At Third Avenue, the city’s refusal to issue a march permit abruptly becomes irrelevant. The crowd has outgrown the sidewalk and spilled out into the street, filling it. The walk becomes a massive, slow-moving march. We inch forward, shuffling, squeezing. Some people carry radios tuned to WBAI, which is covering the demonstration. We hear that Third Avenue is full from 52nd Street to 72nd, and that a similar crowd is moving down Second Avenue. Cars waiting for the light to turn are trapped in the crowd like flies in amber; the people inside them look aggravated and uncomfortable. People are drumming. Syncopated chants of “Peace… Now!” thunder up and down the avenue.
Police prevent us from moving towards the demonstration on First Avenue. Every cross street has an aluminum barricade, and behind every barricade are officers persistently waving us north. Behind the police officers, we can see that the crowds on Second Avenue are surging southward. The handfuls of people leaving the rally are allowed to cross unimpeded.
“Where can we cross over? We want to go to the demonstration.”
“You can cross over at 52nd.”
At 52nd, another blockade. “Where can we cross over? They said we could use 52nd.”
“You can use 68th.”
At 68th, more of the same. “You can use 72nd.”
At 69th, the crowd plows through the barricades and begins a torturously slow walk south in search of a place to cross over to First. Again, the barricades block us at every corner. The police erect barricades across the Avenue, bringing the march to a temporary halt before protesters muster sufficient oomph to break through. In spite of the inevitable chanting that erupts at every whiff of confrontation with the NYPD, people are by and large reluctant to disrupt the arbitrarily erected barriers. Even so, discarded metal frames and blue wooden planks litter the open intersections, marking where the crowd, however recalcitrant, broke through.
At about 4 p.m., we finally arrive at First Avenue, but even though we are now within the rally’s officially “permitted” area, police are still erecting barricades. After crossing one intersection, I hear a scraping of metal on asphalt and turn around. Police are blockading First Avenue. I can’t believe it. “Isn’t there a permit for a rally on this Avenue?” I ask one officer.
“I only know what they tell me.”
When I pose the same question to a female officer, she’s a little more eloquent. “Do you want to negotiate with me?
“No, I’m just wondering – isn’t the rally permit for First? Why are you cutting us off?”
“It’s to keep mass chaos from breaking out,” she snarls. “ You have a problem with that? It’s so you don’t get trampled. You want to know what this is for? Wait until the ambulance can’t come for your bloody body. This is for your own safety.”
Finally, after a full day of marching, I arrive at the rally. The organizers are congratulating everyone on their participation. The demonstration is over.
Turning to leave, I’m surprised to see the end of the march. Litter is strewn everywhere. As I walk towards Grand Central Station, taking care not to jaywalk, my feelings are mixed. The experience overall has been encouraging. I’ve seen concerned citizens coalesce from all over the country to demonstrate their opposition to war. I have marched with the largest, most diverse group of people I’ve ever seen rally around one cause. But encouraging as it has been to march for peace, marching really isn’t enough.
One of the chants that I’ve heard throughout the day is, “This is what democracy looks like!” The earnestness of the voices raised in these choruses makes me wonder whether too many of us confuse marching with civic participation. Demonstrations are dramatic and make you feel good. But they dissipate quickly. We need to find more lasting forms of activism, more effective ways to register dissent. At the end of the day, I find myself asking: What else could democracy look like?
* * *
Published in Seven Days 19 February 2003
Labels: Seven Days
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