A Freelance Account of Thurdsay and Friday

A Freelance Account of Thursday and Friday
By Nathan Wood


It was Thursday and the war had started. War always makes me feel ill so I called in sick and reported to Justin Herman Plaza at 7am as a freelance protester. There was a brief orientation that answered most of the questions I had about civil disobedience and getting arrested. I had never been arrested before. A few minutes later a pied piper arrived to lead my orientation group into the waters of democracy. We walked quite quickly to the corner of Market and Beale and planted ourselves firmly in the intersection. A short time later police, who were in turn surrounded by non-arrest protesters, surrounded us. A man arrived on a bicycle trailing music and began to circle the police. He must have gotten too close because they started to beat him with their batons. A short time later an officer yanked a young child off of his mother’s shoulders and shoved her to the ground. The crowd was furious.

I was surprised at the length of time the police allowed us to sit in the intersection before they began their arrests. We had a couple of bakers in the group who passed around a delicious loaf of bread. I patiently waited my turn to be slipped into plastic cuffs and get my picture taken. I learned later from someone who had been watching the arrests from the street that the officer who was taking the pictures was throwing the empty Polaroid cartridges on the ground after each picture. He refused to pick them up when he was done despite a great deal of outrage from the crowd. They loaded us onto a MUNI bus and we began to drive away. We were heartened by a group of on-lookers who planted themselves down in the intersection to take our place. One of my fellow arrestees managed to pull the “stop request” with his mouth. The bus didn’t stop.

When we arrived at Pier 27 there was quite a wait before our bus pulled into the warehouse and we were unloaded into the holding pens. Bus after bus arrived as I waited and we greeted each one with rounds of applause. After a few hours it was my turn for a citation. I was warned that if I was arrested again within 48 hours I would be booked. I was also warned to update the address on my driver’s license.

It was early afternoon when I was released, and I headed back to Market through Justin Herman Plaza to see where I could do the most good. I walked towards the Civic Center where I knew there had been a convergence at noon, but did not find much. I stopped for a quick lunch of french fries and a bathroom break. At the end of Market I hadn’t found a good place to put my energy and I began to contemplate going home. I started to walk back down Market as my vehicle was parked near Second and Brannan. At Third and Market I found a huge group of protesters in front of me, with the police blocking their passage. I waited until the police let them through and joined in. We were off to the Civic Center for a brief rally, followed by a short march to the Federal Building to support the protesters there. Our timing seemed to be appropriate and we sat down in the street, adding enough bodies to the blockade so that the police could not carry out arrests. Around 5pm we called it a success and were off again.

Shortly after 5pm the size of the march increased quite rapidly. The police would not allow us to march down Market and we were diverted to the South. It was unclear where we were going, but I heard people talking about marching on the Bay Bridge. A few minutes later I found myself close to the front of the crowd with an on-ramp in front of me. The police were scrambling to block the entrance. About ten people got through and began to run down the bridge. A string of motorcycle cops showed up and headed through the crowd in pursuit. In front of me one cop rear ended another in the confusion and knocked his fellow officer’s bike to the ground. It became clear that we were not going to get through and we headed the other way back to Market. At a different ramp I watched about twenty people get through. The police pushed back with their batons and I was in the middle of the beginning of a panic. Cooler heads prevailed and we moved on. Behind me I could see a protester lying at the feet of the police holding his head in pain. The police did not seem concerned. As we passed the Transbay Terminal the second group of people who had made it onto the bridge came running out and into the crowd, avoiding arrest. We made our way back to Market and this time they let us march its length to the Civic Center. I went home to get some sleep.

On Friday morning I went to work. When my shift ended at 3pm I had been planning on going to the DMV to get my driver’s license address updated. Near the end of the workday a co-worker of mine was reported as saying something to the effect of “I’m going to write a letter to the mayor demanding they use police brutality on these protesters.” The DMV was no longer an option. I made my way to Market and did not find much at first. There was a lone woman with a sign. I stopped and asked her what was going on. She was unsure. As far as she was aware all of the people she had arrived with in the morning were in jail. I worked my way down to Justin Herman Plaza and found a group getting ready to march. I joined in and we started moving down the sidewalk on Market. We blocked an intersection, waited for the police to order us to move, and then moved on. At one point they surrounded us for a time, but let us go after demanding we stay out of the street. I stopped for a short break and lost the group.

I made my way to Market and Powell for the 5pm convergence, and shortly after we began to march down the sidewalk. The police ran along beside us shouting into their megaphones that people in the street are subject to arrest. We made a turn and went into the streets. It appeared that there were too many of us for them to arrest. At a crossroads confusion set in as the front tried to go forward and the front-middle tried to go right. We ended up turning right and in the confusion the group was spread out. The police took their opportunity and cut off the middle of us. We immediately made our way onto the sidewalk. There were about 250-350 of us stuck on Franklin in between Fulton and McAllister. It took them about four hours to arrest all of us. Someone had a drum and the singing began.

I had a variety of conversations with the people I was with. None of us had been planning on being arrested at this point, but almost everyone was in good spirits. I was speaking with a very pleasant man from the sixties generation when the police chased one of our fellow arrestees into us. They chased him on top of the legs of the man I had been speaking with and began to beat the person they had chased. We managed to pull him out from under the mess and he seemed to be okay. I was in the last bus of people that were arrested, and the luck of the draw gave us an actual prison bus. Despite the smell of urine I had no complaints. There was “No War” graffiti waiting for us when we were seated. It was heartening. Our song selection having been exhausted while waiting to be arrested, my fellow arrestees began to sing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” They finished, from 99 to 1 just as we arrived at Pier 27 and began to be unloaded.

The police were much more organized than they had been the previous day, so the process went somewhat quicker. I was a second arrest, so I was with about five others who were put in the paddy wagon and we were off to the county jail on Bryant. They shuffled us around from room to room, presumably so that we couldn’t sleep. They also seemed to purposely separate us from the people we had been arrested with so that we couldn’t compare what was happening with us. Shortly before 5am Saturday morning they finally charged me and I was released on my own recognizance. I hailed a cab and went home. I took a short nap and it was time for the Saturday protest. I wondered what the next week would bring.