San Francisco, March 20, 2003 (Part II)

The restaurant Debbie proposed was the Magic Grill, at the corner of Ellis and Mason. As we walked up Market, we saw eight police officers mounted on horses, passing us in the middle of the street. The seemed to be a bad sign to us - mounted police are serious trouble in crowd situations, should things get violent.

We got to the restaurant a few minutes after 10. The TV was on, above the cash register, and was showing CNN's coverage of the newly begun bombing attack on Baghdad. We ordered breakfast, and ate it, talking about what we had seen and what it meant. I said that, based on what I had seen along Market Street, the size of the protest was larger than I had dared to hope. Deb expressed surprise at this. She marveled, instead, at how long it was lasting.

Debbie works in an office at Sixth and Market, and she had always planned to spend at least some time at her desk that day. I wasn't sure whether I would stick around in the city or head for home, but I would let her know what I wound up doing (and whether I got into trouble).

We left the restaurant and walked towards Market. The intersection at Sixth was open to cross-traffic. We spotted the mounted police again, coming back down the street. They turned off onto Fifth Street. Debbie guessed that they were carrying out some kind of flanking maneuver, and would be coming up on another street into the press of a crowd holding an intersection, perhaps the one that was gathered where Fourth, Geary and Kearney streets connected at Market.

We hurried to that intersection, anxious about possible police violence. The situation there was calm, people holding the street, A line of a few police officers presenting a token barrier between the street and the sidewalk. I kept looking down Fourth Street, waiting for the appearance of the riders, but they never came.

Debbie said goodbye, and headed off to her office, while I remained watching the development of the situation at this intersection. A phalanx of police jogged up along Fourth Street, then deployed into the intersection, herding people with their riot sticks held in both hands. They were not gentle. One of the people was a man carrying a large video camera on his shoulder. "You can't do this!" he screamed at the police. "I'm a member of the press! Brutality! Brutality!"

The cameraman, once on the sidewalk, continued to make a scene. "I'm calling your boss and telling him what you did," he yelled. He then pulled out a cell phone and made a show of calling the Hall of Justice and complaining about the treatment he had received. He described himself repeatedly as a "member of the press" but never identified what, if any, media organization employed him or ran his reports.

A man threaded his way through the crowd; he wore large stickers on his chest, back and arm that showed a red cross and the word "MEDICAL". He shouted, "Where is the person who was injured? I'm a physician!" A woman waved; she was standing on the street side of the BART station entrance in front of the Old Navy storefront. The medic squeezed between the people and went to take care of her. I couldn't see at all clearly what the trouble was, but he eventually tied an ice pack to her arm and led her out.

The police commenced the long, tedious process of arresting the people sitting in the streets, cable-tying their hands behind their backs and leading or carrying them away. (By now, the hard-core passive resisters were long since arrested, and most arrested demonstrators were led away.)

The crowd applauds the demonstrators as they are taken away, one by one. And the crowd taunts and jeers at the police: "How does it feel to work for the most corrupt police department in America?" (Not hardly; not even the most corrupt in the state!) "We don't have no steak fajitas!" (referring to a violent incident last November and its subsequent bungled coverup, which resulted for indictments for senior police leadership). "You guys are worse than the cops in New York! I'm from New York, and I know!" (Tompkins Square Park? Abner Louima? Give us a break.)

Another bunch of demonstrators came walking down Market Street to the intersection. They approached the line of police that separated the sit-in being arrested from the open street. A person with a bullhorn led the rest in chanting slogans, and also announced, "Come to Civic Center at noon. Rally at noon at Civic Center." After a couple of minutes facing the line of police, they withdrew.

The last sitting demonstrators were removed, and the police opened the intersection. "Come to Civic Center" people called. I checked the time on my cell phone; it was noon. I headed for Civic Center Plaza to check out the rally.

I followed the streets north of Market to get there, in a bit of a zig-zag. While walking along Taylor Street towards Market, in the heart of the Tenderloin, I passed two police officers wearing not riot gear but regular uniforms. They appeared to be walking a regular beat, talking to people on the sidewalk, sticking their heads into bars to see what was happening, and so on. I found it oddly reassuring to see that routine community policing was happening while the response in force to the demonstrations was taking place.

Civic Center held a crowd of people, but it wasn't jammed. I found a place to sit on the grass, near where a Buddhist peace group was sitting in meditation. I was impressed that they could do so, for the speechmaking through a PA system was remarkably loud, echoing off of the surrounding buildings. I rested for a while, half listening, half just enjoying being off my feet.

At 12:45 PM I decided that I had been in the sun long enough, and that nothing was really happening here. I walked out of the plaza towards the Civic Center BART station. The Asian Art Museum, newly reestablished in the old library building, appeared to be having some sort of opening celebration: there was a line of well-dressed people waiting to get inside. The sight made for an odd juxtaposition with the anarchy of the streets and the plaza.

As I walked toward the BART station, my phone rang: It was Debbie, telling me that "something [was] happening at Sixth and Market" and that she going down from her office to look at it closely. I told her that I'd try to meet her there.

Once on Market, heading down towards Sixth Street, I encountered some friends: Laurie, Shayin, and Marlene headed the other way. I told them where I was heading and what Debbie had told me about it. Laurie told me that they knew something was happening there, and that they might be checking it out later. We separated.

As I was walking along the sidewalk, a phalanx of police jogged down Market Street, passing me and going through the Seventh Street intersection, presumably going to whatever was happening at Sixth. I hurried after them. As I approached the corner, I called Debbie. She told me that the police had just told the people in the street that they weren't allowed to leave, and were getting set up to arrest them. The police I had seen moving ahead were standing in formation just to the southwest of the intersection.

As I made my way along the sidewalk on the northwest side of Market, approaching the corner, the police standing in formation suddenly deployed. A line of them cut across the sidewalk behind me. An officer shouted "You are not allowed to leave here!" I was caught between two lines of police with no apparent way out of the trap in which I found myself. I virtually certain that I had just been arrested.

I called Debbie once more, and quickly explained my situation. She was philosophical. I got off the phone and waited. A woman tried to walk past the police who had cut us off from the rest of the sidewalk; they gently but firmly barred her way. There was an officer wearing a cap rather than a riot helmet, holding a bullhorn — perhaps a lieutenant. I was nerving myself to approach him to ask him if I and the other people here were in fact under arrest, when he turned and pointed up Golden Gate Street, and announced through his bullhorn that we could leave the way he was pointing if we did not wish to be arrested. I took advantage of the reprieve, and walked up Golden Gate. I called Debbie yet again, and told her of my escape.

I turned onto Jones street and walked once more towards Market, which I was able to cross. I made my way yet again towards Sixth Street. Another double line of police prevented access to the intersection. I could see Debbie on the opposite corner. I called her once more, and told her I could see her, and waved at her. She said she thought she could get to me. She crossed Sixth by moving southeast past the end of the police line, but she couldn't get past the double cordon on the south corner.

The police finished taking the handful of sitting demonstrators into custody, though, and the double cordon suddenly lifted. Debbie and I were reunited. We talked about what had been happening and what each of us had seen. Laurie, Marlene, and Shayin joined us. We talked and watched the scene for some minutes. The police formed up into phalanxes. Some jogged away, others waited for their next deployment.

That next deployment came suddenly: a line across Market Street facing southwest. More police showed up to join them, filling in the line, until the officers were standing shoulder to shoulder.

The line of officers begain to advance up Market. We ducked into a storefront to get out of their way. The store's bemused owner, came up front and looked out at what was happening.

The line of police reached the storefront. The officer at the very end told the shopkeeper to drop his store's shutter. We couldn't stay there, so we got back onto the sidewalk trying to hurry to stay ahead of the police sweep. It seemed like something bad was going to happen.

What happened was this: the rally in Civic Center Plaza had evidently ended, and a significant crowd of people had marched through UN Plaza and had turned onto Market Street, heading straight towards the line of police, who were now holding position. At the head of the marchers was a line of safety monitors wearing day-glow open-weave vests, like those worn by road construction crews. The marchers came up to the police line and halted. There was lots of noise: chanted slogans, drumbeats, whistles, horns blown, cheering. But there was tension in the air, and it grew thicker with each passing minute.

I looked up Market Street and tried to guess how many people were there. My best (untrained) estimate was something on the order of three thousand marchers.

The tension grew. This was the kind of situation that could end in violence, either by a cop losing his cool and starting swinging, or by a demonstrator losing his cool and throwing things at the cops. It didn't look good, and we were right in the middle of it.

To my complete and total surprise, and to the discomfiture of the police, the marchers turned around and withdrew! I have never seen anything like it. The line of safety monitors quickly ran to the side and towards the other end of the march. Space opened up between the marchers' rear and the line of police. Most importantly, though, the thread of serious violence had dissipated.

After a couple of minutes of confusion, the police began to advance once more. The marchers had come to another halt — perhaps they had encountered another line of police in the other direction (I never saw one way or the other). People milled around, confused. Debbie and I and our friends thought it would be a very good idea to get out of there, if we could. We made our way through the crowd across Market to Jones Street, and went around back up to Sixth.

Debbie wanted to go back to her office briefly to pick up her things, and I went with her. I sat on a couch by her cubicle while she attended to a last-minute job that had been left on her desk. When she had finished, we went once more into the unruly streets.

It was more of the same — demonstrators holding intersections, police arriving, demonstrators being arrested, demonstrators moving on to another intersection — but the energy level seemed to be flagging. Or perhaps it was our own energy level. We walked towards Civic Center and watched for a while as the troop of mounted police we had been seeing all day faced across McAllister Street, confronting a line of demonstrators lined up across Leavenworth. That situation was actually quite calm, so we moved back towards Market. Another group arrest was in progress at Jones and Market. We watched as a young man tried to run through the line of police blocking the curb. An officer grabbed him. The sergeant shouted, "Let him go, let him go!" and the officer released the young man. The young man seemed determined to get into trouble, as rather than fleeing he went back into the intersection.
Two officers detained him, and he made a substantial fuss. "I'm not resisting, I'm not resisting," he yelled as he was marched along, his hands cuffed behind his back.

Our own energies were flagging. It was 3:00 PM, and we had both seen enough. Supposedly there was to be a rally at Hallidie Plaza, where Powell Street meets Market, at 5:00 PM, but I had been on my feet for eight hours, and we were both ready to go home. We made our way to the BART station without incident, and took the next train.