PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

What happened today.
by someone in pog Sunday, Mar. 30, 2003 at 9:50 PM
pog@mutualaid.org

from someone in pog.

3 people have confirmed as being arrested. It's estimated 25+ were pepper sprayed to varying degress. I couple people took full sprays to the face and one man was vomitting due to spray in his mouth and throat. Those arrested face charges of failure to disperse and one person a charge relating to interfering with an arrest. They will have hearings at either 10:30pm or 12:30 tonight. There are a couple people down at the county courthouse for solidarity and in case they need bail. It's been confirmed that one women arrested and severely pepper sprayed had a broken wrist prior to today. It's unknown if she was injured although she was heard screaming I have a broken wrist as her wrists were being twisted back rather forcefully.

Personal notes:
We were less then 2 minutes from the location that we were planning on dispersing from. We had been marching for less then 13 minutes when the first arrest took place (we had told everyone we would be marching for 15 minutes). Not one single piece of property was moved or damaged. I'd like to ask people to keep that in mind when judging how those actions have impacted past events. It seems apparent we are in the middle of a crackdown on dissent. We must continue to stand up non-violently to the violence of the police. I think it was a mistake for us to obey the police commands to leave the street to begin with. I did so (like everyone else) because I believed that would avoid violence from the cops but it actually made it easier fro them to brutalize people. We were split up and they didn't have to deal with a critical mass of people standing together. They were again unwilling to arrest everyone due to our numbers. Perhaps everyone siting down would have worked in that situation? I don't know. The solidarity shown during the event was amazing. So many people attempted to help those who were injured or being arrested.

As far as route decisions. We went that way because the road-bridge to Squirel Hill had 35+ police on it with dogs and we had only planned on having a short march that looped back on the sidewalk to our starting location.

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