Scenes from the protests

A nice balmy summer’s night – perfect for a group bike

ride around New York City, no? I thought so, anyway, so I joined about five

thousand other like-minded bicyclists at Union Square this evening for the

monthly Critical Mass event.

It’s a Take Back The Streets thing – get enough cyclists together in

one place, and they can actually control the roads rather than being sidelined

(literally) by cars. There’s something really rather exhilarating about pedalling

down the middle of Sixth Avenue in such numbers that the cars have to yield

to you, rather than the other way around. The most popular chant is simple:

"Whose streets? Our streets!"

Normally, the police are well disposed towards Critical Mass events. They help

the cyclists stay together, even if it means allowing them to run through red

lights. Ultimately, so long as the bikes keep moving, the disruption to traffic

is minimised. This time, however, was different: the AP reports that the police

made nearly 250

arrests.

I feel a need, here, to explain what these people were arrested for –

and to complain about the rather incoherent attitude of the NYPD tonight. According

to news reports, the police were handing out flyers at the start point in Union

Square – although I saw many police officers there, and none handing

out flyers. Organisers were apparently told in advance that the police would

be strict about enforcing traffic laws – even saying that we weren’t allowed

to ride more than two abreast.

But when the ride started, everything seemed copacetic between the police and

protestors. A clearly senior police officer in suit and tie, rather than any

uniform, let the riders out of Union Square and down Broadway in batches, allowing

traffic to flow sporadically along 14th Street. We had no problems riding down

Broadway and then making a right onto Houston Street; we then turned onto Sixth

Avenue to make our way up to Midtown.

The general M.O. in such events is that if you’re in the part of the pack which

happens to hit an intersection as the light turns red, you stop your bike in

front of the traffic so that it can’t move until the pack has passed the intersection.

This ensures the safety of the riders: no one wants to be sideswiped by a car,

so it’s best to make sure they don’t even think about driving into the peloton.

I found myself on such traffic-calming duty a couple of times, and it’s a nice

feeling, necessarily a little bit reminiscent of that famous photo of the lone

protestor holding up a long line of tanks outside Tiananmen Square. Mostly,

the occupants of the cars were supportive: New Yorkers are generally well disposed

towards these kind of actions, I think.

At one intersection in the 20s, however, things got ugly: a middle-aged white

guy in a shirt and tie stormed out of the taxi he was in the back of, and tried

to physically shove me out of the way. Naturally, dozens of cyclists immediately

surrounded him, and he backed off, but he tried the same stunt a minute later

with another guy.

I was a bit shaky after that, but relaxed when we hit 30th Street, where the

ride moved east over to Madison Avenue. Suddenly, the police seemed to be in

control again: rather than leaving the traffic control to the standard Critical

Mass DIY method which had caused the confrontation on Sixth Avenue, the NYPD

was making sure that tempers didn’t fray too much on either side. We crossed

Fifth Avenue without incident, biked up Madison to 55th, and then went over

to 7th Avenue with police seeming very much accommodating of the bike ride the

whole way.

The highlight of the evening was Times Square, for sure. Hundreds of cyclists

filling up the Crossroads of the World, slowly – the police were manning

42nd Street, so we backed up into Times Square proper, and at one point somehow

all managed to raise our bikes in the air at the same time, above our heads.

I hope someone posts a picture online!

After Times Square, as the New York Times puts

it, police patience appeared to grow thin. I suppose I must have been near

the back of the pack at this point, since I was up by 36th Street, while netting

was dragged across 14th Street, backing up riders. I did, however, see a major

police operation, with riot police and motorcycle cops rushing down 34th Street

in formation, creating a cordon around a group of riders, and, I assume, pretty

much arresting them all. What you have to understand is this: every single one

of the 5,000 riders was technically breaking the law, since we were not confining

ourselves to bike lanes, we were riding more than two abreast, and we had to

run through red lights just to stay with the pack.

The crowd was hyped up, and enthusiastic, but by no means were we a bunch of

anarchists intent on violence. I’m sure that the arrests were entirely random:

the police, at whatever point they decided to move in, simply rounded up whomever

they first laid hands on, either on 34th Street or a bit further down the ride,

at 10th Street in the East Village. I have absolutely no idea what they intended

to achieve by this: it certainly didn’t stop the main peloton from continuing

the ride up First Avenue and on to 23rd Street, and everybody who witnessed

it, I’m sure, was rather taken aback by the NYPD’s sudden heavy-handedness.

The thing is, this was very much the kind of peaceful protest which Mayor Bloomberg

has repeatedly said that he welcomes. Yes, we disrupted traffic, but that has

always been the whole point of the Critical Mass ride, and traffic disruption

is not violence. New Yorkers on the sidewalks, whether it was uptown or downtown,

East Side or West – even the tourists in Times Square – were all

hugely supportive of us, cheering us on all the way and flashing peace signs.

They understood what we were about.

And the NYPD has a history of being very good at dealing with protests –

when the World Economic Forum was in New York in 2002, say, or during the UN

Millennium Assembly. Very few arrests, professional crowd control – I’ve

always thought that New York managed to show its mettle in hosting such events,

in contrast to, say, Seattle or Genoa.

The RNC, however, is a whole different kettle of fish. When protestors abseiled

down the Plaza Hotel with an anti-Bush banner (great stunt), a policeman on

the roof fell through a skylight, which allowed the protestors to be charged

with assault: they now face possible long jail terms. And the hundreds of arrests

today have already easily broken the total for the entire duration of the DNC

in Boston – and the RNC hasn’t even officially started yet.

Up until this evening, I was confident that the protests, though large, would

not be marred with too much antagonism between the protestors and the police.

Now, however, I’m not so sure: the NYPD seems keen to prove a point, even if

the point it’s trying to prove is hard to fathom. Earlier this evening, I inwardly

scoffed at the grungy downtown types handing out emergency phone numbers for

people who got arrested. Now, I’m going to make sure that I take that phone

number with me to the big demonstration on Sunday. I have no idea what might

happen.