A Wednesday Night's Adventures...

[badassartiste]

 Yesterday afternoon, I drove for 2 hours to Olympia to attend a protest there. An army ship was using their port to unload Strykers that had been contaminated with depleted uranium, and our goal was to shut down the streets so that they couldn't leave. after going to a meeting to plan the night and the next few days, we all headed down to the port. the first convoy of strykers had left before we got there, but some other groups had already arrived to protest. in addition, one of the streetcorners was filled with pro-war people with tons of signs. our first hour was basically spent yelling back and forth across the road, with one interruption as the second convoy came through. A group of about 7 of us decided to invade their corner (we already had the other three, and we thought it would be best if we had people on all of them), and there was a lot more yelling, some name-calling on their side, and a bunch of media taking pictures and videos of us chanting while surrounded by people who hated us.

I believe one more convoy passed before things started to get interesting. a fairly large group of people decided to barricade the road to stop the strykers, so after the police escort passed a bunch of people (not including me) linked arms and walked into the street. the 5 cops who were there pushed them back on the sidewalk, and the convoy moved on.

About an hour passed before the next convoy, and during this time about 20 more cops arrived. we let this convoy go by without trying anything, just to throw them off a bit, but 6 or 7 of them made sure that everyone stayed on the sidewalk anyway.

more to come after class...