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When the New York City authorities denied a permit for antiwar demonstrators to march, allotting them only a fixed space near the UN, they didn't expect a mobile throng of hundreds of thousands, spontaneously filling twenty- and thirty-block stretches of Third, Second, and First Avenues. It was lovely to watch the NYPD lose control of Third Avenue in the mid-40s. They were reduced to pleas like "Please get on the sidewalk." They tried nudging a few vehicles through the crowd, sirens blasting, but as soon as they passed, the crowd took the street again, chanting "Whose streets? Our streets!"
There were arrests late in the day - as many as 400. Here are some pics of the ugly side of things, a lot uglier than what appears here. But for much of the day, the cops seemed fairly resigned to the loss of the avenues. One was overheard saying "I don't want to be here. It's too cold for this shit." They made it hard to go east, forcing demonstrators to trek ten blocks before making a right. Chants of "Whose streets? Our streets!" didn't impress the cops behind their barricades.
It was a wonderful day, made more wonderful knowing similar things were happening all over the world, in large numbers. Bush probably will get his war, but he also has a worldwide rebellion against American imperialism on his hands. That was visible on the streets today, but it's also happening among elites. It'd be nice revenge on Bush if his America Firstism fosters the rival centers of imperial power that his strategic policy aims to strangle at birth - if, say, the EU were actually to develop a common foreign policy, no longer under U.S. command (which is what the "crisis of NATO" is about, a refusal to honor the chain of command). It's not clear that big capital approves of the war, or the general aggressive posture. It'd be nice to be a fly on the wall at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting.
But demos are much more fun than ruling class studies. Here are some pictures.
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