The alternate photo series for week 31 of
Put Your Leica Where
Your Money Was
30 July, 2000
They'll Be Fighting in the Streets |
In the future, so we
are told by science fiction movies, there will be riots in the streets.
Overturned cars will be burning, armed citizen firing indiscriminately from
ruined hulks of buildings, monuments will be toppled; the government
will be based on petroleum and murder: "Warriors! Come out and play...."
It stands to reason that since the year 2000 is obviously "the future", as
we've come also to learn from science fiction movies, that there should be
riots in the streets now. And here they are. Although the riot's we've
come to expect are food riots and riots against alien insurgents ("Soilent
Green est mench!"). We glimpsed a riot in Seattle at the WTO, and then
another one a couple of months later in Washington D.C. The mood has been
set that every large gathering of the establishment for any purpose is a
great venue for bomb throwing and window breaking ("Let's Stick It To The
Man by overturning this old guy's fruit cart!"). When the Anarchists took
the next step in stopping the motor of the world, I wanted to be there with
my little Leica when the engine seized.
The Man Himself is in Town |
On Sunday, July 30th, somewhere in the vicinity of the Republican National Convention I joined a Whole Bunch of other photojournalists for the Unity March where lots of protesters would meet, have some fun, and then split off and cause some mayhem.
 |
 |
The Unity Rally itself was pretty dull. There was a stage, upon which sat half a dozen people, one by one, they'd get up and give some speech at the microphone, "I'm here to tell you about ____________." (Mexican migrant workers, Leonard Peltar, Navajo water rights, some leftist in jail in Sandinsta, the Workers Party of somewhere, etc.) and Invariably twenty or thirty people would cheer "yea." and everybody else would mill around on the Parkway looking at one another and thinking that their sign was particularly clever and invariably they'd migrate back to the hot-dog stands where most of the action was. The Unity march was pretty disorganized, it was apparent that most of the factions didn't really care too much about the others, they had their private agenda's to fill and some hot-dogs to eat. So you'd pass through some enclaves of pro-choice protesters, then a little ways down some Ralph Nader people, and next to them a conclave of Mumia Abu Jamal supporters.
Unity in Chaos |
The
Anarchists seemed to have mostly eschewed the Unity march. The ones I ran
into were pretty disorganized. About forty attempted to start a panic by
storming the stage (a tactic one explained to me was meant to freak everybody
out and get the police to react) but they ended up only running about a hundred
feet and stopping short of the stage by at least that much. There were a
dozen or so photojournalists running backwards in front of them blazing away
with a Canon EOS in each hand that no doubt motivated them a little, and
in the end, my own photos made the event look a lot more dramatic than it
actually was, all that running about. So now the Anarchists (or what minor
representation they had at Unity -- I've a feeling that most of them were
laying low, biding their time for some serious monkey wrench throwing later
on in the week) are milling around towards the back of the loose crowd now
listening to a bean farmer from Tennessee who's talking about strip mining
for coal somewhere. From nowhere, comes a rattling, lurching, filthy pickup
truck with a cab completely emblazoned in huge and rather grizzly photos
of what I assume are the results of a "partial birth abortion" along with
a bunch of Pro-Life slogans. From inside the truck a gnarled old man waves
a fist out the window and shouts something at the Anarchists. They look over
in slack-jawed disbelief and someone shouts "GET HIM!" Immediately the truck
is mobbed (mostly by photojournalists and TV news cameraman), a lot of the
Unity protesters start slapping Pro-Choice bumper stickers across the windshield
and a genuine mob scene ensues. A Unity marcher climbs on top of the truck,
there is some confusion, some police and he topples from the truck, his arm
snapping and hanging strangely from his shoulder like a broken stick. There
are paramedics, and cops. They swarm around the truck and shout at the now
panicked driver: "You follow us! You will follow us!" It's become
a rescue mission. The police scatter protesters from in front of the truck,
there are cars, flashing lights, the old man makes his escape, just before
he pulls away, a young blond woman leans in through his open window and spits
on him hard and fast and loud. The broken-armed man is whisked away somewhere
by EMT's. The crowd sucks back in over the hole and it's as though nothing
happened. A freelancer with two Canon AE-1's and a video camera asks me if
I got the shot, meaning that mythical anything that captures the moment.
I shake my head. "Me neither," he laments and we part.
The Militant Contingent |
It
was the Mumia crowd (which I overheard a police officer refer to as a "Militant
Contingent of the Protesters") who split off and started marching through
center city towards the police station. Mumia Abu Jamal, convicted of killing
a Philly cop and sentenced to death in 1988 has become something of a poster
child for the anti-death penalty movement. His followers are militant, rabid,
and, oddly enough, mostly white.
They were mobilized and ready to kick some ass.
From the Art Museum, down the parkway and into Eaken's Oval comes the Mumia crowd, surrealistically lead by a slow moving police car, which is followed by an intermingled line of plain clothes Philly cops with bright orange armbands and a mayhemic mob of photojournalists and TV news crews. The news crews are the oddest, they run full tilt down the street away from the marchers, throw down a tripod, clamp the camera on it, tape the approaching crowd as the first few rows move past them, then rip the camera from the tripod and haul ass up the street to do the whole thing again. The process is oddly reminiscent of Woody Allen playing the cello in the marching band in Take the Money and Run. I'm running backwards up the street with a bunch of guys in Domke vests who look oddly familiar and I seem to recall running backwards up some streets with a couple of them shooting something or other. It's an odd business.
At Eakens Oval something really weird happens. A large group of Pro-Life anti-demonstrators have ringed both the inside and outside of the traffic circle with signs. They stand silently, or mostly silently, and watch the Mumia faction chant through. At this point, they're chanting
Brick by brick
and wall by wall
we're going to free Mumia
Abu Jamal!
which I have to admit, is darn catchy. I overhear one of the Pro-Lifers say to another " ... and they say we're extreme! Look at these freaks!" And look at them; they're a bunch of unwashed idealists. Right or wrong it's amazing to see so many people, so young, who believe so strongly, or, by inference want to believe in something and lives are lived in the yearning.
 |
 |
A patrol of bike cops has shown up and they line both sides of the march stoically proceeding. At intersections they pull ahead and stop traffic while the marchers pass, then they catch up again, riding alongside between the Pro-Lifers and the Pro-Mumia-ers. It's not as though these two groups are actually at odds with each other -- much of the Pro-Life movement is anti death-penalty as well, but most, if not all, of the suburban unwashed Mumia movement is also Pro-Choice. The epithets move this time in one direction.
 |
 |
Somebody Makes a Stand |
The megaphone switches hands three or four times as new people start old chants (
What do we want?
Justice!
When do we want it?
Now!
) somewhere after Mace's crossing the microphone is handed to some guy who says "just because we're marching doesn't mean we can't stop in the middle of an intersection!" and the march comes to a halt. There's some anticipation as to what will happen. Will the police stop them from blocking traffic? Will there be arrests? Foul language? The crowd halts for five or six minutes and the police don't bite. The march starts up again, but pauses again at most intersections, the bicycle cops stopping traffic as they go through. And still, for some crazy reason, everybody is still following the police car. It turns left, they turn left, it turns right, they turn right. I suppose if they'd a mind to, they could have led us all right into the Delaware like the rats of Hamlin. They don't though.
As
we're passing Love Park there's some suggestion that the crowd wants to turn
south, to city hall. And from nowhere a group of 30 or 40 cops on foot come
stomping rapidly up the street in this perfectly synchronized doubletime
march. They face off the crowd for about five minutes. This street is not
an option. This time the demonstrators don't bite. They continue east. The
foot patrol stomps doubletime away and they vanish. Another photojournalist,
veteran of some many riots tells me how this all works. Helicopters above
(there are at least three in the air the whole time) pinpoint the location
of the demonstrators, busses filled with police shadow them on all sides,
out of sight, but ready to pour a force up any street in any direction to
heard the crowd back in the desired direction. They have the advantage of
seeing all the terrain, all the time. After a bizarre parade through Chinatown
(where dozens of terrified Chinese stair through their windows and in doorways
at this loud clump of the unwashed shouting slogans through a fuzzy bullhorn
in some strange language announces its solidarity with their Asian brothers
and sisters by taking up the chant
They say stadium
We say no!
Which is in reference to Philadelphia's dull witted idea to move the Philadelphia Philly's baseball stadium from it's current location in the boondocks to the exact center of Chinatown. A proposal fiercely contested by every resident of Chinatown. No one seems to understand that the protesters are on their side. Some snap photos and stare, most flee inside as the marchers pass by.
Finally the march trickles down to the police station, on 4th and Arch street. Where they stop and many people sit down on the grass and it's pretty obvious the march is going to end peacefully -- everybody's fatigued and dehydrated from the walk. After about thirty minutes I round up a couple of the other photojournalists and we depart for other pastures.
Epilogue |
And when the whole thing's over, me and the press corps are sipping Fruity Rum Drinks at a riverfront bar on George W.'s dime, surrounded by a bunch of fatcats while the Republican's sing songs loudly at the piano bars, waving their own drinks, while others scheme in hotels and the Anarchists scheme in West Philadelphia basements, planning the revolution, and the only thing that is important it tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.....
[photo of me by tim carroll]